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Hey, if you're short on cash or short on space, here's an alternative to cabinets. Let me
show you what I mean. They say an eco-friendly house can't be built in 150 days for $150,000,
and I say it can. I'm Allen Smith, join me as I push the limits with time, budget and
creativity with the Garden Home Challenge, exclusively on eHow Home. You know, when you're
thinking about shelves -- and the reason we're thinking about shelves is, well, we don't
have the money for cabinets, but I've got lots of things to store. And the mud room
is a place where a lot of stuff gathers. You know what I mean? You have certain drawers
in your kitchen where everything piles up and gathers. Well, the mud room is a room
where everything piles up and gathers. So I'm anticipating that. We don't have any money
in the budget to buy cabinetry to go in there, so what I'm gonna do is use some of these
totes and baskets. And what I did is I found one that I really like, and this is the largest
size that I will use. This means that once I put shelving in there, if I base it on this
dimension, which is about 16 inches long here, if I create a shelf that's 16 inches, this
will fit up there, nicely. And that takes into account the slight bevel that you can
see here. So the top of it extends a little further than the bottom, so you have to account
for that. So the shelving that I wanna put in this room, you can see, I've started this
little drawing. And this is basically the east wall of that room. Here's the door that
goes outside. And what I'm thinking about is bringing a shelf that would run all the
way across here. And then another one that would come in under it like this. I may want
to put a broom closet right here. Just a little 1 foot cabinet with a door, so we can hide
the mop, the broom, a bucket, those sorts of things for cleaning the floor. So what
this would do is give me a shelf here and a shelf all the way across the top here. And
then I'm looking at a bench that would be seat height that would be right here that
would be movable, but that I could actually store things under it. So I'd have shelf one,
shelf two, and shelf three for this wall. And now for this space from here to here,
then I can use this for pegs for hanging coats and jackets because there's gonna be a lot
of coming and going through this door, and people will wanna hang there coats up here.
This wall over here affords opportunities even though you've got this odd angle. What
I wanna do is come across here with three shelves. One of them here would come out 16
inches. Also one here and then one up here. And then I'm just gonna let them die into
this diagonal, which will afford lots of shelf space up here. Again, using baskets and totes
to conceal what's up here. Now what I'm gonna use for these 16 inch shelves will be 1x pine
-- it's the least expensive. I'll probably go with a #2 grade. I'll do 8 inch boards.
Two 8 inch wide boards will give me just about what I need. And then we'll do some wood brackets.
We'll paint it all white. It'll blend with the trim of the room, and it's gonna look
great. And there'll be tons of storage in here. If you're enjoying these updates, check
in with us regularly. We're about to start the decorating. And subscribe to eHow Home.