Dressing up a Storage Cube.

 

While been away from my blog I've had the opportunity to watch other blogs and to see what all the other talented ladies are doing. What I discovered is that January is the month to start organising.  Many people organise their homes, some their health, others set challenges and others make changes to their blog, business etc. Organisation is a swear word in our house, it's something that I struggle with everyday and unfortunately I'm modelling this behaviour, potentially making my children lives difficult. As there mother I want a better life for them, I don't want to be running around like a mad thing looking for the permission slip, Caelan's sports socks or trying to figure out when Mackenna starts kindy for the term.

 

So during January, I decided that I was going to get on top of some of the clutter that has infected our new house and I was going to make a start on one little project. We're lucky enough to live within a 10 kilometre radius of two major hardware stores, so when it comes to wanting supplies it's never too difficult getting them. Masters is running a 'Australia Day Pledge' campaign in which you have until Australia Day (January 26th) to complete a DIY project around your home. Upon seeing the copious number of advertisements promoting the campaign I decided that I would pledge to sort Mr Opoes and my shoes.

I had read about the Closetmaid storage cubes a some months ago here, I decided 8 cubes would work best in my walk-in robe and I went off to Masters to make my purchase. While there I remembered that Masters offers free wallpaper samples so I grabbed 4 designs I liked and I bought them home with me. As this is the first project in our bedroom (walk-in robe) I knew I wanted to introduce some colour so I went with purple, black and silver. This is what I started with.

Light purple fabric cube

Black fabric cube

8 cube storage box
source

 



I was able to do this project for a little over $75, however if I'd given myself time I'm sure I could of reduced the overall price. Now I was able to save a little bit of money, taking samples meant that I didn't have to buy 4 different rolls of wallpaper which meant I saved $179. Now for a project this size I would never have spent that much money, I'm just keeping it real. Like most furniture these days I did experience problems when it came to putting it together. Firstly, the instructions were difficult for me to understand, this was because the diagram was difficult to interpret. Now I'm very familiar with Ikea flat pack furniture so I was pleasantly surprised to see that I needed a hammer and phillips screw driver to construct my storage cube.

 

Putting the unit together wasn't difficult once I'd returned to Masters to ask a few questions regarding the extra screws I had. What caused a huge headache for me was hammering the backing boards (pre cut cardboard) into place as shown in the picture above. I messed the first cube up on the last bang of the hammer, it went in crocked thus splitting the chipboard. I was so annoyed with myself that I put everything away and decided to work on finishing it off the next day. I haven't included a picture because it wouldn't photograph for me. When I downloaded my pictures I had two black images so I've had to leave this picture out. It won't be too much of an issue as it'll be hidden from view so there's nothing to worry about.



So this is what my storage cube looked like when I'd finished it. Now to find all over Mr Opoes size 13 shoes and place them correctly in the fabric cubes. I've got the cubes with the wallpaper for me to use but I have a funny feeling Mr Opoes will find a few more shoes to put in there.

This is the finished cube all dressed.

 

 

Close up of top four cubes.



Close up of bottom four cubes.







 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best thing about my storage cube is that it so practical, if I want to move the shoes I can always use the cubes to hide away our swimmers, socks, hats, small presents etc. So I'm really happy to have finished my very first DIY project in our new house. I'm hoping that it's the start of a beautiful relationship and that I get to complete more DIY projects in 2013.

Megan