My Minimalism: Project #3 {DIY storage bench}

I am a native of Los Angeles, 44 happy years there, but we moved to a small historic town in North Carolina at the end of 2011 for a new life!  In SoCal (Southern California) the average home is under 2,000 sq ft and sits on a lot of typically 1/8 of an acre.  To put it politely, we could hear our neighbor's toilet flush.  Our rental home in Long Beach was around 1,400 square feet and we sold almost all of our furniture and appliances to move east so imagine how HUGE our new home was to us, all 2,615 square feet of it NOT including the ginormous finished basement and on almost an acre! We had virtually zero furniture to fill it and even five years later only have partially furnished rooms.  One room in particular is quite odd to us.  It's our fireplace room, or Hearth Room as we've titled it, though the gas fireplace no longer works.  It's sort of the breeze way from the front of the house to the kitchen, like a giant hallway.  It has an 80s chandelier so I imagine that the previous owner had a small table under it but that would sit right smack in the middle of our pathway so we just shortened the chain and now it's serves as a light more than a chandelier.

In 2012 a dear, sweet gal, who was my Bible study group leader knew of our situation and gave us two excellent condition wingback chairs so we placed them in our Hearth Room allowing us to enjoy our fireplace. Then a neighbor gave us an end table that we stuck in the middle of the chairs and before we knew it, it became THE "hot-spot" to set all of our stuff on.  Do you have hot spots in your home?  We have several but this is the worst.  I could tidy it up and within a day everything (stuff) was right back cluttering these three pieces of furniture.  

After watching the documentary The Minimalists (on Netflix) I knew I had to start streamlining my home.  IF every item had a home then it couldn't be left out to clutter.  The only way to give everything a home is to edit, in other words, give STUFF away that no longer adds value to your life, or spark joy.  See my first post on Minimalism where I completely decluttered my office/Gracie's work space, and my second post on my clothes closet.  

And this is not that bad compared to how it usually looked.  Stuff, stuff, stuff!

Project #3.... the Hearth Room.  I mean, what is this room anyway?  I wanted to surprise my family so this project had to happen all in one day and be completed by the time my husband came home.  I moved the chairs to the basement, put the end table up in the guest room, and ran to Ikea, the home of streamline and organization.  I decided I wanted a bench but didn't want to pay a bench price tag, and I also needed storage.  I needed something that could contain Gracie's backpack, my purse, and Rob's messenger bag.  The Kallax shelves worked great in Gracie's work space but I didn't want 8 cubicles for stuff so I went with the single layer Kallax in black/brown.  My purse fit perfectly into one square area and there was even room for my sleek laptop bag and maybe a few books, I'm a HUGE reader.  

I wanted it to look like a bench and not just a lateral shelf, and since hubby works for a manufacturer that uses foam, I asked if he could find a remnant piece that was long and narrow.  Score!  He found one and off to the Ikea fabric department I went.  I love the material I chose, only $7.99 a yard and nice and thick.  On the way to checkout I went through the art department and one piece really caught my eye, a series of 5 small pencil animal sketches by Picasso.  I wasn't going to buy it because we're chipping away at debt but I haven't bought a piece of decor art in YEARS and I knew I wouldn't stop thinking about it, especially because Gracie, Rob and myself are all so fond of sketching.  It just fit us, you know?  

I ran home to put the shelf together.  They also had a double drawer you could buy to fit into one of the cubicles.  If you've ever put together Ikea furniture, you know how HEAVY the pieces are since they're all made of MDF, and how tricky it can be to assemble all alone.  But I did it!  

Once everything was assembled I ran down to a concrete floor in the basement to cut the foam to fit the shelf and hot glue the material onto it, wrapping the ends almost like wrapping a gift.  Once completed I grabbed some picture hanging wire and museum quality hardware to hang it.  Ikea doesn't provide any of that.  With the help of Gracie I was able to hang it easily.  

Bam!  Done! 

The Kallax shelf can be vertical or horizontal.  See the double drawer insert?  We can place sunglasses, keys, etc.  

Doesn't the cushion make it look like a bench now?  I love how smart it looks!  

Looks much better in person but it is stark and that's how we like it.

Imagine.... five Picasso sketches!  Ok, they're replicas, but they look like real pencil close up!

See?

This needs work but a low priority, at least it's not cluttered, but I will streamline more.

Isn't this an odd room?  The left doorway leads to our family room, the right leads to upstairs and the front of the house.  Our plan someday is to line the entire right wall with bookshelves and put in big chairs for reading.  Maybe a music/reading room?  It's adjacent to the kitchen so guests could sit and visit while I cook. 

I just love how it looks and for several days now there has been zero clutter.  We each get a cubicle and now have a great bench to sit on as we put on our shoes.  Rob flipped out when he saw it.  Every day my family tells me how much they love it.  It's still a strange room but now when passing through it feels good.  I was able to tidy up the fireplace mantle though it's still in progress and hopefully someday we will be able to have our gas fireplace fixed.  We miss our fires!

I completely changed this room for only $115.  The Kallax shelf was $44.99, the two drawer insert was $20, the material was around $10 (7.99 yd), the foam was free, and the Picasso picture was $39.99.  Normally I wouldn't spend money on the house until we're debt free but my sanity needed it and I'm much more productive and happy when my life is clutter-free.  And I feel no guilt which is usually an indicator that I made the right decision, no buyer's remorse, at all!

Please share with me any projects that you're doing in your home.  It inspires me and others.  If you haven't already, please subscribe to my blog at the top of the page and/or follow me on my Facebook page Fit by 50.  Thanks for reading, I hope it's been A Good Fit.

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