The big task on hand at the moment for us is the completion of Noah’s new “big boy room”. And whilst it still will be another few weeks until everything is completely done, the one thing we have mostly finished in his room has been his new built in wardrobe which we bought and installed ourselves. Instead of waiting until the complete room reveal, I thought I would do a little write up of his new wardrobe and give you all a better idea of the fit out process. I will include more of the “before” pictures in the bigger blog piece I will write up once Noah’s room is completely finished.
BEFORE
As you can see we had one of the more “standard” wardrobes in Noah’s room where there was just a clothes rail and a shelf. I never liked the idea of having so much extra wasted space in his wardrobe however when we built our house at the time, our budget just didn’t cover being able to build custom fit outs into these spaces. So as soon as we started toying with the idea of moving Noah into a toddler bed and updating his room, we immediately started to do some research on built in wardrobes. We wanted to utilize the space in here and also be able to get rid of his large chest of drawers which very much served its purpose well while he was a baby, however it took up a lot of room due to how big and bulky it was and we were also no longer needing to us it as a change table anymore. My main wish was to be able to put all of Noah’s clothes, shoes, bed sheets and accessories into the wardrobe so we weren’t needing to have another chest of drawers in his room, therefore freeing up a lot more space. Getting it custom built was also out of the question as we didn’t have the budget for it, however this didn’t matter too much as luckily my husband is incredibly handy and was happy to do all the building and handy work himself
IKEA PAX storage system
After much deliberation we decided to purchase the IKEA PAX system as we have also used the same pieces for our built in wardrobe and have been extremely happy with it so far. We did look at Bunnings as they do offer a similar concept, however when compared to the PAX you get a lot more of your moneys worth and there just wasn’t a lot to choose from in terms of accessories and frames in the Bunning’s range. Ikea does offer a Pax planner tool on their website as well which we found super helpful to use. You are able to put in the dimensions of the space you are wanting your wardrobe to go into, meaning you can get quite an accurate idea of exactly what items you want to put into your wardrobe and how much it is all going to cost. I’ve listed below an exact breakdown of the items we needed, how many pieces we used and how much they were
Item + cost breakdown
○ PAX wardrobe frame | $130 each | x2 | 75x58x201
Shop HERE
○ KOMPLEMENT shelf | $20 each | x6 | 75×58
Shop HERE
○ KOMPLEMENT drawer | $30 each | x5 | 75×58
Shop HERE
○ KOMPLEMENT clothes rail | $10 each | x2 | 75cm
Shop HERE
○ Cover caps | $1 pack of 100 | x3 packets (we will need one more packet)
Shop HERE
So I’m secretly hoping that my husband skims over this particular section of my blog (LOL!) BUT I do think in comparison to if we had gotten the wardrobe custom built it would have cost us a whooooole lot more. We are super happy with how it turned out and we only made two trips in total to IKEA to purchase all the items. We will still need to go back and buy another packet of the cover caps to cover the rest of the open holes within the wardrobe however this isn’t a major thing that needs doing and we can buy them at any time. The other thing I really like about the PAX system is that it is interchangeable which was a huge factor for us as we wanted this wardrobe to be able to grow with Noah. His nappies and wipes obviously won’t be staying in his wardrobe forever so once he has grown out of these we can remove the boxes which then creates more space. And also once he is older and his t-shirts are longer and shoes are bigger, we can create more space just by changing around the configuration of the shelves, drawers and clothes rails. I have done this many a time with our own wardrobe and it’s easy enough for me to do even by myself
AFTER
The smaller details
○ White wash large basket | SHOP HERE
○ Cardboard box house | SHOP HERE
○ Maileg mouse | SHOP HERE
○ Bear suitcase | H&M | Currently out of stock
○ Nappy + wipe baskets | SHOP HERE
○ Acrylic tags with labels | SHOP HERE
○ Christmas lantern | SHOP HERE
○ Baby box | Write to me | Currently not in stock
○ Easter/ Christmas box | Shop similar HERE
○ Wooden carousel | Shop similar HERE
○ Metal train | Vintage find
○ Rattan suitcase | SHOP HERE
○ Wooden sitting dog | SHOP HERE
○ Wooden stacking bear | SHOP HERE
*All thoughts and words are my own. No stores or brands were asked to collaborate for this blog*
