Entryway Reveal...

​When you walked into the front door on the left-hand side was a small 10 X 10 room that had laundry hookups. I knew right away it would have to go. The kitchen itself was on the smaller side I knew I wanted to eventually incorporate an island to balance out the shortage of storage in kitchen cabinets but no matter how I mapped it we couldn't gain kitchen space. As for the new entryway I knew we needed storage for shoes, jackets & possible space for charging devices. It was a non-structural interior wall so down it came, we were lucky there were no electrical wires and the plumbing was easy enough to re-route. The only issue was inside the first two feet of the wall was the bathroom vent pipe that ran straight up. After we finished the demo, with the new-found knowledge I had to re-work the initial plan. Instead of my original plan of kitchen cabinets extending into the new entryway I would have to start them where they started originally and instead of cutting the wall back to two feet we rebuilt it at the same depth of a standard lower cabinet. I knew we were going to build a bench of some sort, something I could plop kids on to take on and take off their shoes with ease, somewhere to place daily shoes and then somewhere I could store seasonal footwear without it looking like a total mess all the time. With the new wall we wrapped the bench around the corner to create an L-shape. Left side lifts and has two large baskets for seasonal storage and the right side has two small areas to keep everyone's shoes. 

  Initially I was going to use the wall space for either a family picture or coat hooks. But let's get real for a minute when it comes to kids and their "stuff" added to all your "Stuff" and your husbands "Stuff" there is nothing we need more than storage. So Pinterest to the rescue, I found a basket storage idea where they used it as the bench itself and added a cushion to the top and I thought to myself why not build this right into the wall. I reached out to my father in law who happens to be a retired builder and master craftsman( once again how lucky am I) to pick his brain about the best way to go about this. He took measurements and within a couple weeks he returned with the unit pre-assembled, all we had to do was get it in place and screw it to the studs. My husband and I later finished the look with some crown molding & used a 3/4 MDF beadboard for the backing. I made the cushion seats myself ( buying them custom was super expensive)which I will post in a quick and easy tutorial and my baskets are from IKEA -Knipsa $14.99/each I use the baskets for more seasonal gear and I rotate. Lower level would be Summer hats, sunglasses, summer bags, baseball caps & bubbles. Upper-level winter hats, gloves, mittens and scarfs. As the seasons change I will switch them for easy accessibility.