DIY Upcycled Shoe Cubby

I had a problem in my home.  A big, practical, problem.  With a family of 5 soon to be 6, we have a lot of shoes.  A LOT of shoes, and inevitably they always ended up strewn across the floor of our small entrance-way.  Even if I could get my kids to actually straighten them every time they came in the door, it still just looked messy and cluttered.  I hated it.

We don`t have a closet close to the door where the mess of shoes could be stashed, and definitely no room for a beautiful mudroom complete with individual lockers and cubbies for each family member - so I had to come up with something different.

Awhile back I had purchased some used, upper kitchen cabinets off of Kijiji.  The larger ones I ended up using in my studio renovation, but I still had 2 small upper cabinets leftover (the type you would typically find above a fridge or stove), sitting purposeless in my garage.  The more I looked at them, the more I thought about my shoe problem and saw a solution.

I began the same way I did with the other cabinets I had used in my studio.  I dressed up the flat doors with a little bit of trim (see tutorial HERE), painted them out, and then added these legs from Ikea to the bottoms:

http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/80211923/#/00211922

Then I created custom cushions for the tops, tossed in a throw pillow, and voila!  I had solved my shoe problem and created a little bit of seating in my entrance way!

Super easy, super effective = a super happy me!