With back to school in full swing and this being our first year in “real” school I wanted a fun and functional way to contain all the school stuff. We do not have a ton of storage in our home, so I found this vintage locker on Facebook Marketplace and I fell in love. I had seen lockers on Pinterest being used in entryways and mudrooms and I wanted one…so so bad! Let me show you my metal locker entryway idea!
Originally this locker was blue and yellow, it probably had been through a few paint jobs in its day. It came as three lockers already screwed together. I paid $300 for it…probably paid way too much but I wanted it.
We had to do quite a bit of work to get it ready for paint. We cleaned it and scraped off all the flaking paint…it took awhile. For the first coat, we mixed our white paint with BB Frosch to make sure the paint would adhere better to the metal. The paint color is Super White by Benjamin Moore in a satin sheen. We used our paint sprayer to get the job done, 2 coats in all. Once it was fully dry we moved it inside. It sat for awhile until we finally got around to wallpapering!
We did secure the locker to the wall, especially since my children are very little and safety was a concern. We screwed a long rectangular piece of plywood to the studs in the wall with six 3 1/2″ cabinet screws and then screwed the locker into the wood with six 3 1/2″ cabinet screws as well. There is a saved highlight of us doing this on my Instagram page if you want to see the process. Please note that we are not experts, this is just how we decided to secure the locker. Then we added baseboard trim to left and right of the locker to make it look more “built-in”.
Since we have four people in our family, each person gets a large locker for jackets, hats, backpack/purse and each person gets a smaller locker for a pair of shoes! Each of our names are on the inside of the larger lockers. Kids get the bottom, adults get the top ones!
Here is a round up of other locker options that I would have pursued had I not found mine on FB Marketplace.
- IKEA LIXHULT – The most affordable option by far. I love that you can mix and match with different shapes and sizes, stack and combine (with or without legs). Very fun and insanely affordable. I absolutely love IKEA.
- Realroom Shadwick Single Metal Locker – Pricey, but this locker already comes in great colors (black, white, terracotta, pale green, and pink). Buy a few and connect them depending on how much storage you need.
- AdirOffice Triple Compartment Storage Locker – If you need a locker with smaller compartments this one would work well. If this bright green doesn’t suit you you can always paint it!
- Novogratz Cache Single Metal Locker – Comes in three fun colors and has the appearance of a single locker but actually has four storage shelves inside.
- Mustard Made (The Twinny) – By far the most expensive on this list, this is the Rolls-Royce of lockers. I love that this one looks like a wardrobe, but metal. They have a lot of different styles including a skinny locker like the other options. The color choices are on point, you wouldn’t need to paint at all.
There you go! I hope you are inspired to get organized for back to school!
Sources
- Wallpaper
- Acrylic Locker Shelf
- Dry Erase Board
- Butterfly Magnets
- Gold Hanging Grid
- Succulent Magnets
- Lilac Soft Magnetic Letters
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