MUDROOM SHELVING

Mudroom before shelving put in

Gorm shelving from Ikea, oh how I loathe thee...


This is one of those projects that looks simple when you see the finished picture in the catalog or the display sample in the showroom, but wow, it was anything BUT...  So, let me back up.  We have the above mudroom, empty as can be, new floors, and ready for shelving.  Ma (who lived there before) just had shelf brackets on the wall with shelves, which is fine I suppose, but it really doesn't take advantage of all the space there is in that room.  So flash forward to a visit to Ikea earlier this year where we saw their "GORM" line of heavy duty shelving.  Simple design not fancy, "easy" to assemble (cough cough), and best of all, affordable.

Gorm shelving before assembly

So we loaded up the back end of the Jeep on Saturday with shelves, a set of three, in the deepest size plus a corner unit.  Well, here they are all lined up nice and neat on the porch waiting to be assembled.  If only I knew the problems awaiting me, ha.  Putting together an individual unit was no problem.  I put together the first one, then the second.  Then I looked at the corner pieces and thought, "hmm, how do those fit onto the sides of each of the ones I already built?"  Oh wait, they don't, you have to build them IN PLACE.  Ugh.  So I moved them into the mudroom, and started.  This was on Saturday afternoon.  Oh and to make matters even more wonderful, Ikea no longer gives you the tool in the package to use so I had to make sure I had the right one.  The cordless drill I brought to make life easier did not have the exact size needed (standard, not metric) so it was slow going.  Sunday afternoon I continued and had to actually take apart what I had already done the day before.  Then it took two of us (three would have been better and easier) to hold the corner sections while you attached them to each side.  It was a project in physics to be sure.
FINALLY though, I got it all finished...and here is the result: 

Mudroom shelving finished!

You can see, in the photos above and below, the shelves really fill up the space and they give us LOTS of storage out there.

Closeup of the shelving

This is a closeup of the shelves.  They are very sturdy, and best of all, can be stained or painted, if you desire.  We decided to leave ours "au naturel" for now.  We like the contrast of the lighter wood with the darker wood walls.  I'd recommend these shelves if you have an Ikea near you, but you might want to rethink the corner section, ha.  They are great to use in a pantry, a mudroom such as ours, or a garage, basement, etc.


Still a little bit of room at the end

There is a little bit of space left on this end, and we'll probably add on a section of shelving at this end and also at the other end.  Since the house is small, we want to make sure we maximize all the available space for storage.


Our orchard rack I blogged about a few months ago will go in this room as well. That was one of the projects I didn't get to this weekend because these shelves took up so much of my time.  But the instructions seem pretty easy so I should put that together quickly this weekend.  Once we have that in place in the mudroom, it will let us see how much space we have for more shelving from Ikea.