DIY Apothecary Shoe Storage

I’m going to show y’all how to turn this IKEA shoe storage piece into an apothecary cabinet!

Before

After

If you’ve seen my shoe collection you understand I am always looking for storage ideas. Ikea was a lifesaver when we went looking for shoe storage! This super tall pieces can be rearranged and mixed and matched to have many different types of shelves. Here is our large shoe display:

When I came to the realization even this beast could not contain all of our shoes, and I wanted easy access to the few we use the most, I found this shoe storage cabinet (We bought two):

While I liked the simple look of our large shoe display in the bedroom, the smaller cabinet definitely did not flow with the rest of our decor. So, I decided to give it a makeover!

I’ll give y’all a quick guide as to what we did. I won’t give measurements because they would be specific to this cabinet and I want you to be able to create your own unique pieces! (Although, if you do want to recreate this exact piece, send me a message and I’ll have Steven type up the measurements.) 

Here’s how we put them all together!

     1. Determine how many “drawers” we wanted. I used Snapchat to draw imaginary lines to see which number looked the way I had imagined. ​

     2. Order/Buy the materials. Here are the materials we used:
Drawer Pulls
Birch Hardwood
Liquid Nails
Base Spray Paint
Chalked Spray Paint
Circular Saw
Orbit Palm Sander

     3. Measure and draw out where the “drawers” will be on each section. Then cut the boards into squares.

     4. Sand the board pieces down so they do not snag anything.

     5. Glue the board pieces onto the drawn out sections using liquid nails. (We took the front pieces off of the whole furniture piece to make these next steps easier.)

     6. Spray paint! After trial and error, we decided to prime the boards with a white spray paint before using the chalked finish spray paint so it was more evenly covered.

     7. Steven drew out where to place the drawer pulls so they would be even.

     8. Drill holes and attach the drawer pulls.

     9. Attach the finished pieces back onto the cabinet.

That’s it!

If you have any questions, please reach out or leave a comment here!