Basement Plans

With a little one on the way, we are bound to accumulate loads of toys over the next few years.  With toys comes the need for storage.  We have plenty of storage in our house, but not a lot of storage in our main living area downstairs.

Currently, the basement looks like this:

The furniture is all in the middle of a long/narrow room - so we have plenty of room at each end for play space and additional storage.

I was inspired by this post on one of my favorite blogs: Centsational Girl.  She took book shelves from Ikea and made them look like they were built right in.  With that idea in mind, I started brainstorming a way to create built-ins on one of the open walls in our basement.

I don't want all bookshelves; I want an area that is a combination of bookshelves for open storage, some drawers for closed storage and a desk. 

Here is what I came up with for the wall on the far end of the photo above:

The ends will be anchored with bookshelves, then I plan on using a media cabinet that has drawers for some closed storage.  The cabinets will also double as benches!  The bookcases and media cabinets will all come from Ikea.  Unfortunately, they didn't have a desk that'd fit the center dimensions, so I'll be building the desk from scratch.

I also have a chair I got on craigslist for $5 waiting to be reupholstered.  It'll be perfect to sit at the desk.

I have no idea when I'll get around to actually building/implementing this, but I'm excited to start - whenever that is!