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FAKING A MUDROOM

I’ve always wanted a mudroom. I have friends with homes who have mudrooms or the very popular laundry/mudroom combo. Every time I would see theirs or see mudroom photos on the internet I would think to myself “I want one!”  This hallway is in between our family room, laundry room, half bath, and master bedroom.  Our garage is right off the laundry room and is way too small put anything inside, so this hallway became a natural place to hang and pile our junk.  Backpacks, coats, hats, and scarves would all collect here.  There is a very small coat closet in this hallway but not everything makes it in there, actually not everything will even fit.


One day while casually walking through this hallway I thought ugh, this space is so ugly I really should do something with it. Then I hung my sweater on the already over crowded hooks, the nail pulled out and it crashed to the floor.  We need better hooks and more of them I thought.  Light bulb!  At this moment I realized oh my gosh this hallway can be our mudroom!  Why not?  No longer is it just going to be a boring little hallway.  It’s workin’ for us now!


I’m pretty sure that the builders who built our house took a special class on how to put all our light switches and thermostats in the most awkward spots possible.

First idea was to get the weird metal wall art off and add something that would serve a purpose.  Ta da a chalkboard! Who doesn’t love a chalkboard?  I could write upcoming events and reminders.  Plus chalkboards are just so cute.
I picked up a thin piece of wood from Home Depot and we glued it to the wall. Once dried, I lightly sanded, taped it off, primed, then I painted it with black chalkboard paint.

Then, my husband got out his miter saw and added white trim around our new chalkboard.  I really wish I had a photo of us doing this.  Sorry about that!

Then it was time for hooks and beadboard.  I love the look of beadboard.  I first considered beadboard wallpaper just for convenience but the rolls at the hardware store were already scratched and dented, so I knew it wouldn’t stand up to our heavy abuse.  So regular beadboard was for us.  I found these bronze hooks at Lowes.

Again, I wish I had taken more photos of our steps but the blogging thing was just barely a thought at this point.  I was more into just before and after photos back then.

So here’s the thing about hooks as your probably know.  They aren’t strong when mounted into drywall.  Especially when your daughter hangs a super heavy backpack on it (she must keep rocks inside it).  So we used solid 1×4’s cut to length and screwed into the studs to give the hooks super strength, and then we added a piece of trim to the top.  Because I wanted the beadboard a certain height and did not want the thermostat on the actual beadboard we moved the thermostat up several inches.

Then I found this light fixture from Shades of Light.

So here is our finished mudroom. It’s very functional and a great space.  We love having the chalkboard.  We will write to-do lists on it, inspirational quotes, or just draw goofy pictures on it.  We did upgrade to a Honeywell Wifi thermostat which is great.  We can adjust our thermostat while on vacation from our phones and program it to come back on an hour away from home.  An exciting bonus about this upgrade is how much smaller the unit is.  It now fits much nicer.  That was just luck.

I do wish there was room for a bench but there just isn’t.  Oh, well.  I’m extremely happy with this little upgrade!  It really feels like a mudroom and we even call it that.  It hardly ever looks this nice though.

It usually looks like this….And that’s on a good day.  Sometimes you can barely see the beadboard.

Little spaces are so fun!  Do you have areas of your home you could change to make your life easier?  Maybe turn a small hallway or a nook into something that serves a purpose for your life?

Well, thank you for reading and tolerating my extremely low quality looking phone & camera pics.  Our mudroom doesn’t have much natural light.  You’re the best, the best I say!

Laura

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