Shoe Cabinet.
Project involving a discarded IKEA shelf and maple wood.
Finding a new use for an old item is the way to go.
A problem with our house is that there are no real entry ways or mud rooms. When you walk into the house from the garage, you essentially step directly into the kitchen. We found ourselves taking off our shoes, and lining them up endlessly along the wall in the kitchen.
I had seen an idea like our shoe cabinet before. Rather than purchase something of poor quality or spend a lot of money on something very well-made, I decided to build something myself. While we had plenty of “good” wood in the garage that I could have used, I decided to repurpose a dusty, falling-apart, IKEA shelf that was taking up space.
I knew that I was going to paint the cabinet, so the fact that the shelf was made from pine was not going to be a problem. So, I took the shelf apart and began milling down the pieces to the size of the cabinet that would work in the space.
For the cabinet fronts, I routed the edges of a maple board, cut them down to size, glued them up, sanded, and cut the front down to size again. I didn’t just want a flat maple front, I wanted some texture.
Nathan then engineered the doors so that the mechanism would work properly. And it does.
Overall, very happy with the end result. I’m happy to say that some of the shoe mess has been taken care of. I also admit that only one of the compartments is currently being used for shoes.
