A place to hang your hat (and, more importantly, a place to hide all the winter coats that have taken over my entryway)

One very important storage component has been dearly missed since we (rather bravely) claimed our old mauve house.  At some point in the past 100-ish years, someone (quite unfortunately) removed an existing entryway closet.  And the resulting lack of entryway storage has been a bit of a bur in my tooshy, truth be told.

It wasn’t nearly so dire in the early fall, when the odd light jacket would occasionally end up temporarily draped across a chair.  Even in later autumn, when heavier coats began to appear once in a while, I remained impressively calm and sane about the whole situation.

But then winter hit.  Snow and scarves and jackets and more jackets and Sweetie’s ginormous jackets (he is 6’4″ afterall) and the odd mitten strewn haphazardly across the dining room table all happened, all at once.  And I sort of lost my marbles just a wee bit.  It was uncontrolled outerwear chaos.  And I decided that we desperately needed to find a containment unit for the renegade toques and the bulky parkas that were rather ruthlessly taking over our house.

The solution: a wardrobe.

My first instinct?  Ikea, of course!  My favourite of the bunch was this one…

Oh, Hemnes, you make me happy.  :)  But at $299 (plus taxes and travel), handsome Hemnes was a bit beyond my post-holiday budget.

So I turned to ever-dependable Kijiji.  And Kijiji didn’t disappoint!  I found this…

And after a little well-calculated haggling (aka begging) I brought the price down to a fairly reasonable (and somewhat wallet-friendly) $100 buckeroonies.  Was I happy?  Yes!  At one third the cost of my beloved Hemnes wardrobe, I got twice the character (and, truthfully, a far better fit for our space.)

I immediately gave her (since she’s far too pretty to be a boy wardrobe) a good scrubbing with good old fashioned Murphys Oil Soap – there were paint splatters here and there and old water marks everywhere and the whole cabinet reeked of smoke and dirt and old.  Luckily most of the paint came off fairly well with a little work, but there’s one big splotch on the side that refused to budge.  My next cleaning attempt might involve a wee bit of steel wool, but I’m calling the paint splotch “character” for now.

And then, like every good found-furniture fluffer, I swapped out the dirty brass knobs for something a little sparklier.  Because every old wardrobe deserves a little fancy new hardware.  And because glass knobs make me happy.

I also added a couple baskets on top.  Because scarves and hats and miscellaneous mittens seem to fit best in baskets.

And someday, maybe, down the road (if I’m feeling super ambitious and DIY-ish) perhaps my lovely little wardrobe will even get a new paint job.  I think she’d look rather pretty in a creamy white.  Or maybe even something more adventurous (if I’m feeling super wardrobe-brave.)

But, for now, I’m just happy to have a coat chaos containment unit.  :)

Want something equally awesome? Check these out!: