Before & After: From Balustrade to IKEA Built-In Storage

Written by

Tara BellucciNews and Culture Director
Tara BellucciNews and Culture Director
Tara is Apartment Therapy's News & Culture Director. When not scrolling through Instagram double-tapping pet pics and astrology memes, you'll find her thrift shopping around Boston, kayaking on the Charles, and trying not to buy more plants.
published Feb 15, 2015
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(Image credit: Ewa)

Ewa and husband Andrew approached their new home’s balustrade in an interesting way. With only a tiny hall closet, they could benefit from some additional storage. See what they did with a trip to IKEA:

(Image credit: Ewa)

From Ewa:

My husband and I moved into this VA townhouse late summer. We knew we would be removing wall to wall carpeting before our furniture was to arrive in only 4 weeks. We had little time and not a huge budget. We decided to DIY the floors.

Right from the start the question of a balustrade divider in the entrance came up. I had an idea to transform this space into useful storage. It made sense because of the proximity to the entrance door and the fact that our hallway had only one tiny closet. This project had to be coordinated with installing the new flooring so we had to decide fast. We both love IKEA and while flipping through their catalog we agreed to install shelving with bins to augment this space and give us extra storage for running gear, hats, gloves, scarves and dog leashes etc.

My husband was the executor of this project and did it so well. We had many ideas how to incorporate the shelving systems into the balustrade and decided to leave the horizontal beam for stability while removing all the vertical pieces with the exception of a few at the very entrance.

The shelving we used was IKEA signature Kallax, 2×4 unit cost about $65 and 2×2 unit was $35. To fill the shelves we purchased baskets, also in IKEA ( I think it was $14 per basket). There was a slight gap between the top of the Kallax surface and the banister. This gap was filled with a piece of appropriately cut 2×4.

We love our new entrance storage unit. It is custom made to fit our house and we did not break the bank!

Update: Ewa sent in a photo from the other side:

(Image credit: Ewa)

Thank you Ewa & Andrew!