I had the idea to transform the closet to a DIY mini mudroom for awhile, but decided to finally pull the trigger when I started working with Bill (a 5th generation carpenter) who owns Deer Lake Designs, a Kansas City company that specializes in creating high quality hand made wood furniture.

He offered to build us a custom cabinet in trade for my honest review.

I knew the custom console cabinet would be a perfect fit for this space. I placed my order and had a two week window to get the closet in gear.

I started by removing the doors and emptying out the millions of items shoved in it. Then I painted the inside walls to match the entryway (Sherwin Williams Opaline) and added some hooks we had on hand.

We plan to remove the inside jam of the door and replace with a flat painted piece to finish it perfectly, but that will have to come later.

Once our console cabinet was ready, we headed to pick it up in person. It turned out great!

Once we got home, we placed the cabinet into the closet and I quickly styled it with some art and items we already had on hand.

Then I added six baskets that I purchased from Target, which are perfect for storing cold weather items, dog leashes, and other misc. items.

In only 5 minutes our mudroom was ready for her semi-finished reveal (minus the new door jams I mentioned before).

You might be wondering what we plan to do with our coats?

Vivienne’s small coats fit nicely folded in the storage bins, and hung on one of the available hooks. The less-worn adult coats are hung in a guest bedroom closet and the ones we wear the most are hung on a coat hanger in the garage.

That works for us and to keep the entryway looking less cluttered.

Oh, and we still have a couple of entryway projects to go before that area is finished. We need to add the baseboards as well as finish the stairs. As you can see they are still parquet. We were planning on replacing them with wood stairs (white rises and dark wood runs), but decided to go ahead and carpet them with the same nice grey carpet we used on our attic stairs to save money and make it easier on our aging dogs. The carpet should be installed in two weeks.

Here’s a zoomed out, non-styled shot for ya.

This shot was taken before we redid our stairs, but I wanted to show to give an idea of the entryway area.Anyone else ever converted a closet to a DIY mini mudroom?