… On a dark wooden hallway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of catnip rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night…
I’m not weird. You’re weird.
Childless cat ladies creeping around…
Since we moved into our gorgeous home nine years ago, I’ve had a shame. (Well, the bedroom furniture is tragic, but no one sees that.) With an open floor plan, it’s hard to hide. Unless you’ve been to my house, you haven’t seen it. I have probably shown photos of every inch of my house, but not this one. In fact, I’m glad I took some before pictures knowing I was doing a makeover. I can’t find any old photos of this hall! I always clip it out or avoid it in photos. Unfortunately, it’s on display in the house though. It’s the hall where our garage door meets the downstairs bathroom and the cat’s litterbox room. It’s fully visible from the dining room and kitchen and I’ve HATED IT for years.
So, as you know, we recently had our floor redone. After it was done, we had a few days waiting on the movers to move our shit back in. During this time, I saw a fully clean hallway. I realized how much I REALLY fucking hated that hall. And that’s when I decided, I gotta fix this like NOW.
You all know, my husband is not a spender. So until we pay off the house, we aren’t making big purchases. So this hall has always just been some cheap 13-year-old short Target shelves full of shit. I TRIED to make it better by using storage cubes I already had. But yeah, bad. Especially, always seeing the cleaning tools. So I’ve been telling myself that we will have the cabinet people come and build some nice storage there. The other side of this wall is the garage so we could even steal some space from the garage to make them deeper. But that’s gonna cost.
But I finally broke. I needed to fix it. Here it was in its CLEANEST state. That’s because we had just moved everything back in and I tried to make it look neater. I don’t even have any photos of this area before the floor redo. Notice I never hung anything over here so no one would look.
We kinda need the storage. Some of the stuff could go other places (and since has). But we want our shoes there by the door. This works out as a great feeding station for the cat. It’s a spot to drop things off when you come in and out. And there’s just some shit that doesn’t have a home, okay? Where do you keep all your spare candles? All the clips and command hooks and stickies? All you bottles of chemicals? And before the litter closet makeover, this was where the spare food and litter and supplies went as well.
So I needed something with doors. Cabinets. But I needed a broom storage so tall cabinets. So I looked at IKEA. I’ve never used IKEA. But they make affordable stuff, right? Everybody has “cheap” IKEA furniture, right? I decided on the PAX system. Just kidding, that’s sold out and unavailable. How about the Billy? These are Billy shelves with Oxberg doors.
OK, OK. The tall cabinets have a non-optional middle shelf… but like it’s not the LAW that I have to install that. So a single for brooms and cleaning shit. A double for everything else. The 15 inch doors above the cat food station are only available in glass, but I can put some contact paper or something on them. Their cabinets are wider than what we had, so the shoe bench won’t fit anymore. So I added a single short for shoe storage.
I can make that work! And I DID — look at this shit: My so not-at-all-shameful hallway!
Look at how CLEAN it is! Holy shit! All those plants are from IKEA too. They were absurdly cheap. I didn’t intend for them all to go here. However, I like the inspiration to not set anything on top of the cabinets. As you can see, our base molding is taller than normal so they don’t sit flush against the wall. Hence the hanging plants. They were super shiny, but I hit all the plants with some matte clear spray.
It’s so clean! The white is so fresh too! And there’s so much storage! Here they are before I got the tall doors on:
They are shallower than the shelves I had before. So I didn’t get to keep my easy cube storage. But I made it work. Everything has a home! Those storage boxes from IKEA are a perfect fit. They’re the Kuggis boxes that are 10.25 inches deep so fit like a glove. I’m so glad I bought enough to do a whole row of them. I wish I had bought more. They’re like useful little junk drawers. One is for clips and hooks. One is hardware and wires. One is craft miscellaneous. The last is WTF miscellaneous. I got a basket with all the pool bits and bobs in it. But most importantly…
I HAVE A BROOM CLOSET, MOTHERFUCKERS!
I never thought a broom closet would make me so fucking happy. But it does. It really really does. Like I didn’t know those broom handles were eating my soul until I put a door there. LOOK! (For those wondering, that middle shelf did seem kind-of required. I assembled it without the middle shelf and when I stood it up it bowed out just enough for the back to pop out. My solution was to install the middle shelf vertically. It is glued in using the wood dowels in the back most holes.)
Now look at the difference when you exit my downstairs guest bathroom. I mean da-y-mn. Such a difference. Holy shit. I’m so pleased. I just want to look at it. Before vs after:
I am an IKEA convert. Holy shit. This is better than I could have hoped. I meant this to be a temporary stopgap until we could get some professional stuff built. But I’m so happy with it, I think I might just hire someone to do some hacks to make it look more built in later. You know, move the floor trim, flush against the wall, cover the outside sides with real wood. For now though — holy fuck, 90% there! I can’t believe it was so affordable! I can’t believe how much I HATED THIS HALL.
Oh oh oh — did you notice the hardware? The IKEA Oxberg doors come with the tiniest joke of a door knob known to man. So I went online and picked up some simple handles and knobs. Turns out I bought the EXACT SAME hardware that is all over my house. I guess my tastes on cabinet door hardware doesn’t change much. I used the existing screw hole for the bottom of each handle. The shorter doors I bought the option of handles or the matching knobs. I did not like the look of the handles. Since they wouldn’t line up with the other three, I thought it looked bad. So I used the knobs. I don’t absolutely love the knobs, but they match the handles (same set). Oh and I used extra knobs to switch out the silver ones in the guest bath so that cheapo cabinet matches now too!
This is such a big win. I just can’t stop looking at it. No more avoiding photos now! This is AWESOME!
Oh, and I know I already did a whole post about the cat lounge and litter room makeover before it was complete. I painted the cabinet doors now. So now all of the extra cat stuff that was on these shelves lives in the litter room (tons of unopened food, cat litter, deodorizers, ect). And the stuff I need daily for feeding lives above Louie’s Jazz Lounge! The opened kibble, the opened case of cans, all of his treats, paper plates for wet food, a water carafe for water refills, even a knife (in the green glass) for splitting the cans of food. And look — hooks for the food scoop and can opener! IT’S SO PERFECT! I whipped up a box to hide/protect the fountain cables and extension cord too.
NOTE: The doors are not painted perfect and you will not comment on them when you see them. It isn’t noticeable, but it’s not perfect. First, I tried just using contact paper on the glass. That was far too stark white, slightly see through, and the corners weren’t great. So I painted it with our house trim paint. That was a huge debacle of rusted paint cans, paint spilling out of holes in the bottom, and rust spots in the paint. But it’s a super thick luxury eggshell paint. I did 3 coats with heavy sanding between each one. But I’m a human without a mechanical sander and you could still see the paint brush lines! UGH! I finished it off with a white wash of acrylic and two coats of clear matte sealant. I’m fucking done with them. Even though some of the god damn paper over the particle board peeled off with the blue painters tape! It was a tiny bit and I touched it up with the acrylic paint. It’s fine. It’s all fine. I’m done. Five fucking coats of paint plus two coats of sealer, I’m not messing with them anymore.