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-friendlyhouse can't be built in 150 days for $150,000, and i say it can. i'm allen smith, join meas 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'rethinking about shelves is, well, we don't have the money for cabinets, but i've gotlots of things to store. and the mud room is a place where a lot of stuff gathers. youknow what i mean? you have certain drawers in your kitchen where everything piles upand gathers. well, the mud room is a room where everything piles up and gathers. soi'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 foundone that i really like, and this is the largest size that i will use. this means that oncei 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 takesinto account the slight bevel that you can see here. so the top of it extends a littlefurther than the bottom, so you have to account for that. so the shelving that i wanna putin this room, you can see, i've started this little drawing. and this is basically theeast wall of that room. here's the door that goes outside. and what i'm thinking aboutis bringing a shelf that would run all the
way across here. and then another one thatwould come in under it like this. i may want to put a broom closet right here. just a little1 foot cabinet with a door, so we can hide the mop, the broom, a bucket, those sortsof things for cleaning the floor. so what this would do is give me a shelf here anda shelf all the way across the top here. and then i'm looking at a bench that would beseat height that would be right here that would be movable, but that i could actuallystore 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 coatsand jackets because there's gonna be a lot of coming and going through this door, andpeople will wanna hang there coats up here.
this wall over here affords opportunitieseven though you've got this odd angle. what i wanna do is come across here with threeshelves. 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 shelfspace up here. again, using baskets and totes to conceal what's up here. now what i'm gonnause for these 16 inch shelves will be 1x pine -- it's the least expensive. i'll probablygo with a #2 grade. i'll do 8 inch boards. two 8 inch wide boards will give me just aboutwhat i need. and then we'll do some wood brackets. we'll paint it all white. it'll blend withthe trim of the room, and it's gonna look great. and there'll be tons of storage inhere. if you're enjoying these updates, check
in with us regularly. we're about to startthe decorating. and subscribe to ehow home.