We love this project from local mom Katie Anselment:
I have 4 children under 10 and have a large entry way that was pretty much wasted space. I was browsing at the Habitat ReStore one day when I came across this large long, deep, low cabinet with a drawer (that even had the quiet close feature!). I grabbed it for $10 and took it home.
A few weeks later I came across a pair of matching white cabinets, each opening the opposite direction, for $15 each. Once I got them home and sat them on each side of the long, low cabinet – I was in love.
I attached the three cabinets together with screws from the inside (so the whole thing is one unit – this was necessary so that the middle/low cabinet wouldn’t tilt forward when the drawer was extended all the way).
I attached base molding around the whole unit at the floor level, once the cabinets were attached to each other.
I purchased some inexpensive stain-grade wood for the tops and had the home store cut the tops to the size I wanted for free (I use power tools all the time, but this way I wasn’t trying to cut down an unwieldy large sheet of wood on my own). I purchased some very thin trim to run along the edges of the wooden tops. I sanded, stained and attached the tops (with screws from underneath/inside the cabinets). I cut and stained the trim and then attached (trim nails and wood glue) the trim to the edges of the wooden tops. I bought new handles/knobs and installed those.
Voila. My DIY entry bench that looks like a built-in piece of furniture. Under normal use in our house, one cabinet top holds the books my kids are currently reading while the other holds our mail basket. The kids’ book bags go in the back of the middle bench section. There is still room for a kid to sit in front of the bags, on the bench area, to put on their shoes in the morning. The large drawer holds 2-3 pairs of shoes for each of the kids in any given season. We use the inside of one of the cabinets for random weather-related supplies (hats, gloves, scarves, earmuffs, goggles, extra/empty water bottles, etc.) and the other cabinet for art supplies and coloring book storage.
This would take someone about half a day, but with four children, it took Katie a weekend!
