Thinking Through Storage Room Details

I’m still working away on the concrete faux “stones” for my front porch skirting, and it’s looking like I won’t meet my goal to have my outdoor projects finished up by my birthday this weekend. I’m a little disappointed, but I’m working as fast as I can, and I’m not going to leave projects unfinished just because of an arbitrary deadline that I placed on myself. So I will be finishing up the front porch (finishing the concrete faux stone skirting and painting the wood porch), installing the new front porch lights, and painting the area around the new bedroom door. Then I’ll get all of those areas, as well as the area around the side studio door, cleaned up, and I’ll be done with the outdoor projects for now. I hope to return to them in the fall.

After I reach that stopping point outside, I’ll finally be working on the storage room in our bedroom suite. If you’re new here, the room I’m talking about is a hallway bathroom that used to be our main guest bathroom, but has since been subsumed by our master bedroom suite. And since it’s rather odd to have a guest bathroom inside of a master bedroom suite, and I really need more storage for Matt’s equipment, I’ll be turning that guest bathroom into a storage room.

For now, that bathroom is hidden behind closed doors in the foyer of our bedroom suite.

I’m so glad that it can be hidden away because that bathroom/future storage room, which used to look like this…

…currently looks like this…

I started on it, and then decided that I just wasn’t prepared to jump into another major interior project right on the heels of finishing my bedroom-to-walk-in closet conversion and our bedroom remodel. So I closed the doors, walked away temporarily, and turned my focus to some out-of-the-norm exterior projects for now. But as soon as I wrap up these last few outdoor projects, I’ll be starting back on this storage closet project. I’m feeling prepared and geared up for another interior remodel project now.

But before I get there, I need to make some decisions. I’ve already worked through the basic layout of the room. When standing in the doorway, I want cabinets on the right wall to be arranged like this (which you’ve already seen in a previous post). The large, blank area will be where I store Matt’s power wheelchair and shower wheelchair when they’re not in use…

And then the wall on the left will be arranged to look something like this…

I’ve been trying to think through exactly how I want to build these cabinets. Since this is just a storage room, and I’ll really be the only person who ever accesses this storage room, it really comes down to what I want and how much effort I want to put into this room. I have two options for the cabinets.

First, I can go all out and build actual cabinets like I did in my closet.

If you followed along during that project, you know that each section in my closet is a separate cabinet, and each one has its own sides, back, bottom, and top. Then I lined up the individual cabinets against the wall, screwed them together and anchored them to the wall, and then added all of the trim. That’s the more involved way of building a closet, but to me, it results in a more custom look.

But a much easier and faster way to create a lot of usable storage would be to use wall brackets (like these from Home Depot) and put shelves directly on the wall.

If I go that direction, I would still need to build or buy the drawer sections, but then above those drawer sections, I could have continuous shelves spanning the entire length of the wall.

I really haven’t been able to decide which direction I want to go. What I do know for sure is that I want to use this wallpaper in the room…

And I want the cabinets and/or shelves (and probably the ceiling) to be painted either pink or orange. I haven’t even looked at paint colors yet, but I just grabbed these two colors directly from the wallpaper.

I know I’m in my pink era right now 😀 , so pink seems like the obvious choice. But don’t forget that this storage room is in our bedroom suite, and our bedroom is the one pink-free room in the house. That room has a lot of orange in it.

Anyway, as I’ve been working these last few days, these are the thoughts and plans that have been swirling around in my mind. As you can see, I’m still working out the details. If I go with the full cabinet option, the paint color will play a much more prominent role in the room, and the wallpaper will be an accent. If I go with the open shelves on brackets, the paint color will be less prominent, and the wallpaper will show much more. Plus, there are those other considerations that I listed above with each option.

I’m still thinking through it, and I still have a while before I need to make my final decision. Even when I’m finished with the outdoor projects, I still need to finish up on the demolition of the room before I can even start building. I have some time, but I’d like to have a solid plan in place within the next couple of weeks.

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.