10 Built-In Storage Ideas to Maximize Space
Adding built-in storage has been critical for our family’s sanity. I mean, you can never have enough storage, but that’s especially true when you’re a family of four (including two toddlers) constantly moving from one small fixer upper to the next.
Over three houses in five years, we’ve had to get creative with our storage solutions, and here are some of our favorite DIY built-ins that add function and character.
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Playroom built-ins
The makeover of this playroom also happened in phases for us, starting with the built-ins. We used stock base cabinets and built up from there. It adds so much storage and is to this day one of the more professional-looking projects we’ve done.
DIY cozy breakfast nook bench
After building a cozy breakfast nook bench in our last house when we had a giant open kitchen to fill, we knew we wanted to do the same in our current house. We simplified the design a little from the last time we did this (AKA added a flip-top storage as opposed to drawers), and added a decorative back to make it look more custom.
The flip top is actually a lot more functional than drawers were, because we found that it was hard to crawl up under the table to pull out the drawers if we needed something, and flipping up the top is a lot easier to access the inside day-to-day.
DIY electric fireplace surround
We added two storage areas when building our custom DIY electric fireplace surround. The hearth opens with drawer slides — where we would store blankets and baby toys — and our personal favorite was the hidden storage in the fireplace mantel. We shamelessly showed off this sneaky mantel whenever guests came over.
Mudroom makeover: Entryway coat rack
Our old mudroom served really no purpose and shoes would always end up piled by the door. We added a sitting bench with shoe storage underneath, hooks for coats, upper cabinets and a large base cabinet with a plywood top. It made the room so much more functional and was one of our first big room updates all the way back in 2020.
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DIY dining bench
Our first DIY breakfast nook bench taught us a lot. It’s huge, first of all, at about 8 feet one side and 6 feet on the other, and has drawers which were so intimidating to build and install. It added so much storage and purpose to the awkward dining area, though, and looked like it should’ve always been there.
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Bright functional laundry room makeover
We can’t even pick our favorite part of our laundry room makeover. It’s such a game changer to have that big closet for all the utility/cleaning stuff like the mop and vacuum, plus random things like air filters and the beach bag. And adding a countertop to stand at while you’re folding all the laundry is so nice.
DIY kitchen island
Our old home’s kitchen was just waiting for an island. It was a disproportionately big room and the small row of existing cabinets really didn’t give much prep space. So, we stacked three unfinished kitchen cabinets side-by-side and secured them to our tile floor. But then it was just three cabinets on the ground which is not really a high-end look, so here’s how we built around the island to add some much-needed support for the butcher block counter and a cute little bookshelf for our cookbooks.
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Pantry makeover
This beautiful beast of a pantry/laundry room took six weeks to makeover and added so much functionality and storage to our small home. This before & after was so different that we had people on the internet tell us our photos were fake, so that seems like a win.
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DIY floating shelves
We built these chunky, rustic-looking DIY floating shelves to fill an awkward space in our entryway way back in our first house. They looked amazing and really gave that empty area some character, plus they tied in perfectly with our DIY fireplace mantel on the other side of the room.
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Moody black built-ins
Saying goodbye to these moody black built-ins was one of the hardest parts of selling this house. We looked up every tutorial on how to cut an arch out of plywood, and eventually Emma just eyeballed it and *checks notes* absolutely nailed it.
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