14 Unique Ideas For DIY Custom Built Ins That Look Professional ~ With Tutorials!

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Enhance your space, increase functionality, and boost your home’s value with DIY Custom Built ins. Plus there’s a detailed step-by-step tutorial for each of our 14 ideas. You can achieve a professional looking finish on a budget. They’re easier than you may think – and we’re here to help!

Would it surprise you to learn that building custom built ins is far easier than building furniture?

There are so many reasons to love built-ins, but let’s start with the most enduring: they look gorgeous! They add character and beauty to generic spaces and make already-lovely rooms feel like a designer magazine space. They also can evolve and age with trends; as long as they have good bones, a coat of paint will make them pop and look updated.

Built-ins are also a great DIY project that you can scale to your abilities! Don’t believe me? Well, let’s break down built-ins and see.

First off, lets talk about the cost of built ins.

Having a professional cabinet maker come and measure and build your something for your space will turn out amazing, for sure. They are highly skilled artists, and their work, justifiably, comes with a price tag. This has been out of our income bracket, but not out of our wish list. We wanted beautiful spaces and spending time learning to DIY built-ins for our home has meant tremendous cost savings.

Next, if you are new to DIY, custom built ins are a pretty good place to start.

You can pick smaller projects to learn on (our hallway bookshelf + plant stand was one of the first we tried) and use some stock materials (like bookshelves and drawer units) to give you a confident frame for your project. Even if you have to buy/hack some store-made pieces, it will still work out much cheaper and more personal-to-your space. Plus you get to say, “Yeah, I made this.”

Lastly, you can scale the project to your tool inventory.

Just like building up your skills, if you actually don’t have the tools for something, you can adjust your scope down to suit what your do have. While many of you projects use a bunch of things like table saws and drill presses, several, like the fridge surround or entrance way storage could be done with just circular saws and power drills.

Feeling like you want more general guidance on how to make a built-in for your space? We learned most of our custom built-in tricks from these books from Taunton Press. Taunton books have great images and step-by-step instructions for skills as well as beautiful inspiration photos to get your creativity going.

So have a look around your home. Is there a boring, basic space that you feel would benefit from the personality that a built in can provide? If there is (and let’s face it, most homes have a space that fits this bill), we encourage you to give DIY-ing it a shot!