Mudroom Tour and Building a Shoe Storage Bench

Thanks to The Lettered Cottage's tour of mudrooms today, I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (renovation of our living room), to bring you my most sought after tutorial. The mudroom bench (and coat rack)!

Welcome! If you are a friend, you know that all our friends and family enter through our mudroom. This door is the closest to our driveway. Only the door-to-door salesmen go to our front door.

Come on in! This blackboard, mirror and memory board used to be a discarded window.
Make one of your own! Tutorial here. 

This is my pride and joy! My mudroom bench and coat rack. Yes, I made it myself.
And no, I didn't have any help from my husband. I am the handywoman of our home.

I'll give you a little background about how this bench came to be. I really loved having a mudroom to begin with. But, the piles of shoes and coats that accumulated behind the door were making me nuts! Who knew that a flip flop could double as a door stop, not allowing me to enter my own house!

My son tried to help out by piling all the shoes on top of the coat rack. Better, right?!

Sure, I could have hopped over to Pottery Barn and bought a mudroom bench and shelf, but I balked at the price tag. So, I continued to ponder a solution. I dreamed of having a perfect storage solution to streamline my mornings of getting two little boys out the door to preschool. A bench to perch the kids on while putting on their shoes. (A task I know someday I will miss doing, but for now I can't wait for them to learn to tie their own shoes.)  Everyone's socks and shoes would be at hand but not in the way. And a place for every jacket, book bag, and hat. The final product was beyond my dreams. I love it more than any other piece of furniture in my house. It is my sanity saver!

My dreams began to form when I stumbled across some kitchen wall cabinets on clearance at Lowe's. These are the short cabinets that mount over your fridge. They were marked down to $45 each.

The wheels in my brain began to turn. I started to see how I could use these cabinets to solve our shoe dilemma.

I bought some lumber. I also had some salvage pieces that had been collecting dust in our attic. An old door with recessed panels, four ornate old coffee table legs, and some shelf brackets from a yard sale.

After a few days of distressing and staining boards, cutting lumber, rounding some edges, hammering, nailing, driving screws and sweating, this is what I ended up with!

 Chain throwing and hammer marks add a distressed look to new wood.

Decorative shelf brackets add nice character to the back rest.

Salvage coffee table legs add that much needed detail.

The finished bench (the only time it was ever empty.)

Loaded with shoes and with the salvage door on top as a coat rack.
And, the tutorial for the coat rack is here!

A mudroom bench with shoe storage and a clear floor! My sanity has returned.

If you are intrigued as to how I constructed this bench – keep reading. If not, thanks for stopping by. I hope you will come back again soon.

Here is the abbreviated tutorial:

I flipped the bench on its back to show you the base construction:

 I built the base frame by nailing 2x4s together.

Added a 1x4 board (toe kick) to hide the cheap 2x4's. 

Then finish nailed this to the base frame.

Now the upright view to show you the bench construction:

I screwed the two wall cabinets to the base frame.

Added a 1" thick pine board cut to size to fit between the two cabinets. 

This board also hid the base frame.

Used two 1x4 pine boards with rounded top corners for the back rest.

Mounted decorative coffee table legs by driving a screw down through the bench seat.

 Next a back view of the bench: 

 You can see the two wall cabinets from the back side.

Another view of the two 1x4 back rest boards.

Shelf brackets used to mount back rest to bench seat.

Screwed 2x2 cleats to back of cabinets, then attached the bench seat by driving a screw down through the seat and into cleats.

Now to show you how the pieces were attached, here is a close up of this section:

A guide to the hidden screws and nails as seen from the back corner.

Base cabinets had fiber board ends, so I added veneer end caps.

Close up of end cap veneer with base moulding profile cut out.

Read more about scribing and cutting a profile here.

Then I added L brackets inside the cabinets to support a shelf.

Add the shelf and you've got double the shoe storage.

Hmmm, but if you have shoes, you need to have sock storage as well.

I purchased one magazine basket at Target

 Added some recycled baby wipe containers to separate son #1 and son #2's socks.

And voila, I have an efficient sock storage spot.

Loaded with socks, shoes and coats!

The coat rack is made from an old door, antique hooks, and yard sale shelves.
 Coat rack tutorial is here!