When my family moved into our house about 4 years ago, it was a new build home which meant everything was white, plain, and lacked any kind of character. It’s been a fun few years of making this house a home, and one of my favorite spaces that has remained largely unchanged since it’s initial makeover was my front entry closet.
If you want to see more of the before pictures of the closet, you can see them here when I initially redid the closet as part of my sitting room transformation for the One Room Challenge. But if you’re here, then my guess is you’re far more interested in how to turn a plain, builder grade closet into a custom closet that actually functions for a family, so let’s get to it!
To create my “custom” closet, here are all the things I used:
- 2 Closetmaid 15-unit Shoe Organizers
- A Roll of Marble Contact Paper
- IKEA KALLAX 4-Cube Unit
- IKEA DRONA Fabric Bins
- MDF Project Panel
- L Brackets (Corner Braces)
- Closet Rod
It really was as simple as putting together the two shoe organizers and placing them in the closet, then securing them to the wall with L brackets, also called corner braces. Then I cut a piece of 3/4″ MDF to fit inside the closet, wall-to-wall to serve as a bench to place gym bags/purses/etc… To cut the MDF, I used a jig saw that I already had, but if you don’t have a saw, you can have Home Depot cut the project panel down to size for you (for FREE)!! To “pretty it up,” I used the marble contact paper to cover the MDF. Obviously you could paint it if you prefer, but this was way faster (no dry time!) and more durable for what I knew my family would use it for.
From there, I put together the KALLAX unit from IKEA and placed it into the closet on top of the bench, pressed against the side and back wall, then secured it to the wall with L brackets. Then, to finish it off, I took a basic rod from Target and attached one end to the wall and the other to the KALLAX so we could hang our coats from. And because each family member has a bunch of random junk that needs to stay semi-close to the door, but out of sight, we used the awesome fabric DRONA bins from IKEA for just that!
TA-DA! It’s literally THAT easy to customize your closet to make it high-end, but on a budget! 🙂
