ever since we bought our house (almost a decade ago now!), the tiny little entryway that’s in the middle of our living room has been incredibly awkward!

the last owners added an oddly tall and slender built-in cabinet that we promptly tried to disguise a bit when we moved in – we removed some of the moulding pieces and promptly painted it white and then a few months later we modernized the doors.

still, years went by and the space never felt like it made much sense. we never really had a place to store our 1000 pairs of shoes that ended up by the door, and a friend suggested that a built-in would probably be a really good use of space for us… i got to thinking about how much space we actually had in terms of width and realized how much better it could be for us!

it’s been a few months now since we had the built-in finished and i am so thrilled we did it. (sorry about the delay on this post!) not only did we gain so much storage we needed so so desperately, but we changed the look of the whole great room too and basically our whole house since it’s so small!

how i planned the entryway :

our room had limited depth space, so that really dictated the plans of what we could fit – because of the location of the front door, i had to go really slim and i worried about the depth shift looking weird, but luckily with the design we went with – it totally works and doesn’t feel awkward to me at all!

the cabinet on the right is much smaller than the rest of the unit, but the design looks intentional (to me anyway!)

i used the IKEA designer planner tool on their website which helped a lot – it’s just always so challenging when you’re looking at different sized items and can’t tell how they’ll look in relation to each other so i just measured our exact space and figured out what we could fit from wall to wall.

it worked out pretty beautifully that we were able to fit everything with an even 3 inches on each side. that would give us space to open cabinet doors and look like it was intentionally designed that way!

after talking with a friend who did a built-in herself, she advised me to do a little cubby for each family member. i loved this idea and incorporated it by doing four cubbies in the bench area for each of us – for shoes mostly, but also backpacks and whatever else would otherwise be on the ground at the entryway.

(ps I AM SO HAPPY TO FINALLY HAVE A PLACE FOR ARLOS BACKPACK TO TUCK AWAY)

i also knew i wanted to do hooks above the bench for jackets and hats – i was sad to lose the mirror in the entryway but i knew the storage was more important. we have so much stuff and so few places for it all.

other than that i wanted as much closed storage as possible, because i know realistically it’s all gonna be gross and cluttered behind the doors and i love that i no longer have to see it.

while planning – i knew things i wanted to store in here were cold weather gear, mail supplies, office supplies, decor i wasn’t currently using, our hand vacuum, board games, puzzles, if i had even more space to work with i’d also love to store art supplies in here but it’s not happening. what i didn’t expect to have space for but i’m so happy we did was izzy’s toys. we ended up having three drawers just for toys to tuck away and while it’s not a playroom, i’m just so glad to have somewhere to put even some of them away!

which pieces i purchased from ikea :

PAX wall-mounted storage frame with rail (QTY x2)
(29 1/2″ width x 13 3/4″ depth x 92 7/8″ height)
KALLAX bookcase (on it’s side)
(16 3/8″ width, 15 3/8″ depth, 57 5/8″ height)
BILLY bookcase
(15 3/4″ width x 11″ depth x 79 1/2″ height)
KALLAX Insert with door, white (QTY x4)
(13×13″)

doors and hinges are all sold separately!

what we customized :

in order for everything to fit properly, he had to cut out baseboards and we had him move outlets so we would still have access to plugs inside the cabinets (we have one for our hand vac on the left and one in the kallax)

because the small depth pax cabinets only have sliding doors, i had my carpenter build the doors out of MDF. i love the way they turned out – BUT FYI!!! since finishing the project, my cousin informed me you can use the normal PAX doors for the shallow depth PAX wardrobes (you may just have to use different hinges!)

i had no idea, so maybe i’d have just done that — but honestly i’m really happy with the custom doors because they’re much less likely to chip and probably higher quality than the ikea ones would have been. that’s what i’m telling myself!

i knew i wanted a landing spot with a bench for sitting but was planning on a cushioned bench for a while until right before we started i changed my mind and thought wood would look so good against the rest of the piece. i am SO glad we did this – a cushion would have gotten filthy with young kids and the wood looks so handsome. it’s birch wood with a lip that hangs over the top of the kallax below.

for the shiplap paneling behind the bench, i didn’t want standard ship lap but instead liked the look of something flat – so he just cut grooves into a big piece of MDF and it turned out exactly how i wanted! he made enough to go above the shelf as well, but it felt busy to me so i decided to keep that area plain instead.

he built all the trim pieces to surround the entire thing which really make it look actually built-in and barely resembling ikea cabinets!

your questions answered

why use doors on the bench when you have to bend down?

a lot of people suggested not using the doors on the kallax because it would be a pain to get down on the floor to open, but honestly it looks so much better to me than if we’d used open shelves with baskets. i don’t mind the doors, in our tiny cluttered house i’m just happy to be able to throw all the crap in, close the doors and not see it! the paint has chipped a tiny bit below the doors but everywhere else seems to be intact.

how did you paint the ikea cabinets? i thought you couldn’t paint ikea!

it took the paint better than we expected but we used a LOT of primer (if you know me you know i hate priming) i was worried about using something that supposedly would work best but was super toxic and smelly – but after many visits to the paint store for advice and a lot of reddit boards – we went with this primer and it worked out great! we rolled on two coats and had to have a lot of drying time and SO MUCH sanding before actually painting.

is it renter friendly/removable?

not at ALL! it’s heavily attached and customized to the wall so i would never want to remove it! but luckily i feel like there are lots of beautiful pieces you could buy instead. i found a couple here!

how did you choose your task rabbit to work with?

i had used the same guy on a smaller project (arlo’s desk and closet shelves) and was happy with him and his work. but when it comes to choosing someone to book for a project, i always look at the highest rated taskers, read a couple of reviews to make sure they are professional/nice/etc. they also have photos of their work which you can browse through to make sure you can find similar work.

what was the cost? was it actually cheaper than doing custom?

for the ikea pieces (with delivery and including all the accessories inside) i spent $800.

my carpenter paid for the rest of the materials (the paint as well as all the trim pieces, the doors, the wood bench, the shelf above), i paid him $3500 for labor + materials.

$4300 is not cheap but i’m pretty sure it is WAY cheaper than doing something totally custom!? i believe it would have been around 6-8k for custom, but i’d love to hear from an expert!

can you share the contact for your carpenter?

he is very busy already, so i didn’t want to overwhelm him with giving out his info – if you want his info and live in los angeles, you can message me directly and i can give!

how is it functioning for you? is it cluttered?

it’s been amazing and probably the best thing i’ve done to the house honestly. for a small house like ours with very little storage, it’s sort of life changing! i still haven’t gotten around to fully organizing the inside yet but it’s still been working out so well for us.

so yes it’s very cluttered inside but you would never know!!!!! WOOOOO.

why didn’t you go up higher with the cabinets?

i know we have a lot of vertical space and i considered adding an additional whole row of cabinets to the top for even more storage, but because this is in our great room – i wanted to mimic the height of the rest of the space. our kitchen cabinets go up to this same height and it just felt like that would be more cohesive in terms of the entire design of the house.

if it was a contained room i’d definitely have considered going higher (imagine if i had space up top for all my seasonal decor?!!)

all the details in one place :

paint color : sherwin williams “eventide”
we used two PAX wall-mounted storage frame with rails
(29 1/2″ width x 13 3/4″ depth x 92 7/8″ height)
KALLAX bookcase (on it’s side) with 4 insert doors
(16 3/8″ width, 15 3/8″ depth, 57 5/8″ height)
BILLY bookcase
(15 3/4″ width x 11″ depth x 79 1/2″ height)
wooden shaker peg rail hooks