If you are considering adding DIY mudroom lockers to an unused small area in your home and want to see one option for mudroom storage cabinets, keep reading!
Old homes sometimes lack in storage, so creating a space to store our coats, jackets, shoes, and other outdoor gear was a necessity for us. The room that we ended up converting to a mudroom is right at the front door of our house, and is about 6 feet wide by 15 feet long. Check out the before photos of the room below. This post will be mainly focused on the cabinets that we built in this room.
Getting Started & Materials
Once we had the room itself constructed and “finished”, we then focused on the main feature: diy storage lockers. Given our circumstances at the time of this, we knew we needed a few things.
- Affordable
- Quick Construction
- Super Functional (and Customizable)
With these in mind, we decided on constructing a series of storage lockers.
Our general supply list for diy mudroom lockers is as follows:
- Quality Pine Boards (1x12s 8 feet long for bench, bottom, and sides)
- One tip that we have learned is buying 1x12s or another larger size of board and then ripping it down on a table saw can save you a bit of money and ensure that your boards are all very straight and even! If you don’t have a table saw, this step is not required. You could buy the sizes you need outright.
- Hardware
- Paint
- Wood Stain & Sealant
- Wood Glue
- Construction Screws
- Impact Driver
- Miter Saw
As you can tell, the materials are not super complex. This project itself was not very complicated, but the end result turned out extremely functional and pretty to look at.
First, we made a frame for the cabinet with the 1x12s. You will need to decide how many lockers you want and how deep and long you prefer them to be. We decided to do 5 lockers at 11 inches deep and approximately 13 inches wide. I would recommend measuring the space you’re working with and organizing the lockers to work with the space. This ended up working well because the 1×12 is wide enough to use as the full depth, keeping things really simple. I also knew that I wanted an above and below locker storage component. I decided to give each locker a lower cubby for storage, and have space on top to store baskets. The great part about this is that you can super easily alter this idea to fit in any space.
See our “outline” of the lockers made out of 1x12s below:
Budget Friendly Tip:
Another tip to save money is to use “hardboard” as a backer instead of plywood or boards. You can find this at any home improvement store, like Menards. We used 4×4 feet sheets of 1/8 thick hardboard nailed to the back with a brad nailer (which is also a fantastic tool).
After our base frame was up and in place, we essentially added the bench to the front. This was also made with 1x12s, and was basically just a mirror of the bottom but with a bench top. The top edge was detailed with a router, but you could also just sand the edge if you don’t have one. To make things look extra fancy, we ripped down some 1 inch boards to about 1 inch wide and tacked them on the face to serve as trim. This is a very simple step that can add a lot of character and a professional finish to a DIY project.
At this point the shell was pretty much done, so I began painting.
The paint color of the cabinets was “Sprucey” by Dutch Boy. I wanted to stain the bench top to add a bit of contrast and make sure that it flowed with the rest of our home. Again, this is so customizable! One thing I love about this is that this room would be very easy to restyle in years to come because the cabinets could just be painted and the hardware changed.
As for the doors, we began by cutting panels out of the hardboard that I mentioned earlier to the size of the door desired with about a half inch subtracted on all sides. Then, we ripped down 1 inch boards and cut the corners at 45 degree angles to make a picture frame type rectangle. Next we used the table saw to cut a small divet into the picture frame so that the hardboard can slide right in. This is a super easy way to make shaker style cabinet doors for a very low price. All it takes is some wood glue and some brad nails to hold them together. To be very precise, we use a rope clamp to hold them square while the glue dries, but this could be worked around if you don’t have one. After some paint and drilling holes for the hardware, they were ready to mount!
Because I’m high maintenance, I also wanted drawers on the bottom. My design was to leave enough room at the bottom for our outside work boots to fit in while also having a small drawer for hats, gloves, and other small items. These drawers were super simple and are made out of 1 inch thick boards cut down to the length and width of the space while considering some wiggle room. We purchased drawer slides from Menards and mounted them in the top of the opening. Drawers can be a little daunting to tackle, but after a couple are made, you will get the trick. Most of the trouble is measuring. Constructing them is mostly cutting wood, gluing together, and securing with a brad nailer.
Finishing Touches
The last things that I did were attach hardware and stain and seal the bench. For the stain I used Provincial by Miniwax. The sealant that we have is satin polycrylic also by Miniwax. I would recommend buying a gallon of a sealant that you like and keeping it on hand for all kinds of projects because it really comes in handy.
Here are some photos of the finished cabinets. The rest of the room still needs some finishing touches, but it’s usable and has already been super useful for storage.
If this is a project you are considering taking on, know that it is completely doable with a bit of time and patience. Buying custom cabinetry or hiring this out would have been in the thousands, but instead we paid about $200 including all of the fancy hardware like soft-close hinges. That’s a savings of $1,000+!
Thanks for reading along and feel free to leave any questions about making diy mudroom lockers below!
