August Head Over Heels Friday #1: "DIY-ikea" Creations

This month it's "DIY-ikea" Creations every Friday (oh yea, you know I love a clever title)!  

I'm pumped to kick off this month's Head Over Heels Friday theme because we've actually repurposed a lot of Ikea accent furniture & decor haven't shared these projects on our blog yet.  Most of these DIY projects are pretty simple and added more functionality to something we weren't even using before!  Gotta love putting something to work for you, right?!? 

Let's get to our first "DIY-ikea" Creation for Head Over Heels Friday Week #1: Ladder Shelf Turned Bathroom Towel & Storage Rack.

I forgot to take a 'before' picture of the Ikea Ladder Shelf but you can see what it looked like in this photo I took of the vegetable vestibule.

Since our largest bathroom is actually really little, I had been looking for some new storage ideas and came across all of these bathroom storage ladder shelves and towel racks...

Photos via Home Klondike, DecorPad, Bathroom Storage Ideas, About.com

It didn't take me long to look over at our little ladder shelf from Ikea and realize that I could easily turn that into a storage and towel ladder.  After all, it would be a lot more useful to provide some extra storage for us in our bathroom rather than sitting in the living room holding four picture frames.  So I got to work!

The first step was removing the top two shelves by taking out the screws holding them in.  Next, I took out the top two pieces of wood that leaned it against the wall (shown in the first two photos in this post).  Since the space in our bathroom was narrow between the wall and door, I needed to take this piece out so the door would close.  It also made it look more like a ladder anyway.  After that, I sanded the surface in order to paint it white to match our bathroom trim & decor.  That was it!

Once it was dry I added a little basket to hold extra TP (everyone could use extra TP storage right? LOL), a few rolled bath towels, and hung up our hand towels.

 Here's a look at what we had in it's place before.  Just a small stool that held a couple towels and the same basket with washcloths inside. 

Click here for a link to our whole bathroom redo post

It was nice enough, but I love the extra storage that our Ladder Storage & Towel Rack provides!

 It is doing more work for us now and it is an awesome way to add storage into a tight space!

Are you Head Over Heels for our "DIY-ikea" Creation too???

I hope you are excited about this month's theme!  You know there are five Fridays this month, so make sure you stop back to see the next four DIY-ikea Creations!  Let me know if you've made any lately too!  I'd love to see how other folks repurpose Ikea castoffs!