I live in a very old home that was built in 1901. One thing I have noticed is that back then, storage wasn’t a priority. Probably, because they didn’t have as much junk as we do now-a-days. My house has also been remodeled and had additions built on throughout those 100+ years.
There are very few closets in the house, but since there are no closets in the bedrooms, the closets we do have are used for our clothes. I will be building a master closet in our bedroom at some point! That’s a project for another day!
The kitchen is also very small with limited cabinet space, so I’ve had to get creative with my DIY skills. I built a pantry not too long ago, check it out here! It has helped significantly with keeping my cabinets and counters clutter free.
With limited cabinet space, I needed to utilize the space under my kitchen sink for pots and pans. Since I’m using under the sink for my pots and pans rather than the normal cleaning supplies storage, I needed a place to store all my cleaning supplies. How many of you have a corner in your house where the broom, vacuums, and mops are stored? Do you have a closet or pantry that you can store these things in? I did not, until now!
I have a Rainbow sweeper, a Bissell Crosswave, an O-Cedar spin mop and several other cleaning tools that just didn’t have a home. There are 6 animals, a toddler, a teenager, a pre-teen and a man that live in my house so you can imagine the messes sometimes. With the animals, I got tired of having to clean the hair and dust off my cleaning tools before I could even clean. In this household, it’s essential to have the perfect cleaning supplies ready to go! Check out the links above to see my favorites.
I may not have much storage space, but I do have a lot of space that allows me to add storage to my home. I decided to build a utility closet in my room that is supposed to be a dining room but is getting used for many purposes, all that do not involve dining.
I started with a blank wall that is usually full of clutter. Check out the sliding gate I build many years ago to keep my dogs out of the litter boxes! More on that in a post later!
I started by removing all of the trim and structuring the sliding gate to keep it sliding in a straight line without damaging the wall or new closet.
Then the framing begun….and let me tell you, when a house was built over 100 years ago and this room was an addition originating from an outside wall, goodness was it uneven. I did my best to make it level even though in some places, it does not look it.
I love the planked look like I did with my pantry, so I repeated that look with this cabinet as well. Then I moved on to placing the brackets for the shelving. You will see later on, I decided to add a couple more shelves as well. To keep things from falling behind the shelves in the groove that the gate goes into, I used plywood to create a back to the shelves.
Probably the hardest part of this build was the doors. I didn’t want them to overlap the frame so to keep them straight, they pretty much had to be perfect. I was pretty much over this build by the time I got these doors on. I think I even took a break for a couple weeks before completing it.
After a little break, you can see I started putting stuff in there and finally got it painted. I used the same paint that I used for my pantry to keep the look similar.
After seeing how much unused space I had, I decided to add a couple more shelves and some cute baskets. We have 4 laundry baskets that are easily stored in here when not being used and I hung a broom holder for the smaller cleaning tools.
That was that! All finished. Well almost. I still need to add molding around the top and bottom, add a power strip of some kind to be able to plug in all my tools and gadgets, and get the molding back on the original wall. If you would like a product list, or a how to guide, sorry about your luck! I just wing it over here with the thoughts running through my head! 🙂
As always, thank you for visiting and follow me for more DIY shenanigans.
