We Made a Mudroom!

When I envision my dream home it has a large kitchen with a center island, high ceilings, and a mudroom. There are other elements on my wishlist but these three things top the list. I’m sure we all have things we’d like to fix or change about our homes if we had unlimited time and resources. Well, with all the time spent around the house over the past several months because of COVID-19, I’ve been critiquing our spaces and in turn, questioning how to make the existing footprint of our home more functional for our family. Also to give me some projects to work on! We’re not taking on a major kitchen renovation and I can’t make my ceilings higher so, we landed on creating a mudroom. One out of three ain’t bad.

The new mudroom leads directly to the attached garage so one would have expected it to be used as a mudroom all along. However, we live in a 1932 Tudor style home and attached garages in older homes generally do not accommodate the larger cars and SUVs that exist today.

All this to say, I used to park my SUV on the street and enter the house with the kids through the front door. As I’m sure you can imagine, the front entry quickly became a disorganized pile of shoes, backpacks, snow pants, swim bags, you name it, in addition to an array of adult coats, shoes, and random belongings. Now picture me with my arms loaded with grocery bags and all of us piled on top of each other trying to take off our dirty shoes and outerwear at the same time. Are you amused or frustrated by that thought? Both are acceptable reactions. Needless to say, our small entry space just wasn’t cutting it. Even with a shoe shelf and a small coat closet, it was a constant battle to keep the area clean and organized and we inevitably piled on top of each other trying to put things in their place.

Here are some shots of the soon to be mudroom while we were in the process of clearing it out and testing paint colors. I can barely look at these pictures. We were using it for storage and at one point as an office. What a disaster area!

A series of unfortunate events led us to transform this area into an mudroom and start parking in the garage.

1. I got in a car accident and my SUV was totaled. Down one vehicle.
2. A pandemic hit and we were homebound for months left to reevaluate if we were using our spaces efficiently.
3. There were warnings about catalytic converter theft specific to Toyota Prius’ all over Minneapolis. Guess what our remaining car is.

I miss my Murano but we’ve truly embraced becoming a one-car family #carbonfootprint and did not see the need, given current circumstances, to buy a second car as long as we, along with the rest of the world, are going nowhere.

The Prius tucks nicely into the garage now that we’ve cleared out some stuff that we were storing in there. Mostly dumb stuff that we really didn’t need anyway. Can you relate? Once the garage was cleaned out and the car was inside, we started converting the attached room into the mudroom even though it would mean entering the house on the basement level. Not really a big deal. Sometimes we put up mental blocks or get so used to doing things a certain way that it’s challenging to make changes even though they often end up being for the best. I’m not the only one who gets set in my ways, right?

Now, the design process. We didn’t want to spend a ton of money on this project but we did want to make a pretty drastic transformation in terms of how the space looked and felt. At the top of my list was changing the room color and creating a space that felt intentional with built-ins rather than just hanging a bunch of hooks.

I did my homework and image searched terms like “mudroom design” and “Ikea Hacks” until I gathered enough info to map out a plan. I was inspired by House of Hoff’s use of the Ikea Hemnes series for her mudroom redo. After measuring our room I was thrilled to discover that the Ikea ‘Hemnes’ media unit would fit along our wall perfectly with the addition of a bookcase from the same collection. Built-in coming your way! I headed to IKEA to pick up the media stand, the coordinating overhead wall shelf, and the bookcase.

I went back and forth in terms of color options, because being indecisive is kind of my thing, but ultimately decided on a deep chalky blue. I have saved enough Pinterest images of dark blue kitchen cabinets and moody mudrooms to know I wanted something dark but welcoming that reminded me of an English country home. Let me dream. I chose Sherwin Williams Slate Tile and I haven’t looked back.

As with most DIY home projects of this scale, I do the design work, layout, painting, decorating and accessorizing and my brawny sidekick does the building. I guess we’re a good team. We partnered on installation which, I’m not gonna lie, had it’s challenges. We had to cut out a small piece of base board to get the bookshelf flush to the wall and balancing the overhead shelf, making it level and attaching it to the wall was a sight to see. There was cursing.

Once the wood for paneling was cut and the IKEA pieces were assembled, I painted the wall and each individual piece before we set everything into place and attached it to the wall. Needless to say, by planning, painting, and building ourselves, not to mention shopping at Home Depot, Ikea and Target we did this on the cheap. You really don’t need to spend a lot to see major results.

I chose three prong black hooks from Home Depot for the built-in paneling and the adjacent wall because you can hang more things on them. I placed several over the radiator specifically for hanging wet jackets and snow pants and added a few extra for random bags. I’ll be putting a shelf up above the hooks for additional storage and to hide the uneven wall surface. What can I say, it’s an old house.

So what do you think? I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and boy does it feels nice to have a clear front entry and a place to store all of our stuff. It’s not totally done yet. I would like to add some artwork, boot trays and maybe a rug though I don’t mind the grayish fitted carpet. It’s durable and I don’t hate the color. I’m not going to worry too much about what happens when we eventually get a second car. I’ve learned to take things as they come and that for every problem there is a solution. You just have to find it or create one!

Resource guide – Click images to shop

The antique oak dining chairs came from my parents but you can search online for “antique dining chair with leather seat” and similar styles pop up on ebay, craigslist and antique stores. Good luck!