Hellobee

Over a year ago, our home addition project began with my wish for a family-friendly mudroom. Our main entrance, which was off of the side of the house, entered into our tiny kitchen and dining room, and I just didn’t want shoes and coats in the dining room anymore. Today, while we’re struggling to get the project as a whole finished, our dream mudroom is complete. And dare I say, it was worth the struggle?! At least it has been so far.

The front ~10 feet of the addition (the new part is on the right side) is dedicated to the mudroom, powder room and pantry. It’s essentially all of the space that sticks out from the front of the original house on the right side, plus a few feet.

When we designed the space I asked the architect to make the hallways in the entry as narrow as possible, while still being within the normal range. I wanted to make the coat closet as wide as possible – it’s eight feet wide – and jam as much storage into the space as possible. Now that we’re in here, the open area and hallways feel very spacious and all the doors swing open very wide.

I began drawing sketches of mudroom cubby storage areas on the architect’s plans. But I didn’t really have a solid idea of how I wanted it to work until the drywall went up a few months ago. I knew I wanted hanging space below with cubbies for bins above. Initially I thought three cubbies to the left of the window would work best, but once we got in there I saw that doing so would leave a lot of wasted space to the right of the window. So we changed gears and decided to sketch out two sets of two cubbies facing each other.

Since the window isn’t centered in the mudroom area, I added a deep bench with storage underneath to the left cubbies. Having a 32″ wide bench gave us plenty of seating, so we decided to make the right hand cubby unit shorter, sitting on the floor instead of on a bench. So the right side is essentially the “little guy” side and the left is the adult side. I know little kids grow quickly, but the right hand side will work well for hanging backpacks down the road too.

When I finally had our ideas on paper, I handed them over to my father in law, who set to work bringing my vision to life. He and Mr. Stroller were supposed to work on them together, but a scheduling issue and a snow storm left him doing everything except final assembly himself. Including all the painting! We owe him. Big time.

We went back and forth on hook options, bought a ton and returned them all. I searched etsy and the rainbow of colors available in different hooks caught my eye… and started a rainbow hook obsession. One seller had dock cleats available in a rainbow of colors, but they were just a little more than we wanted to spend. Plus, when hung vertically they only provided space to hang either a coat or a hat. I decided that all eight hooks – two for each cubby – had to be a different, bright color. So we priced out traditional coat hooks and eight cans of spray paint. But I kept going back to the chunky dock cleat look. Then Mr. S suggested we use the cleats and do three hooks in the two taller cubbies – one on each side and one in the back – so he’d have a spot for a coat and two hats. So ten boat cleats it was. We ordered 4″ cleats and bought ten different cans of spray paint. I’m kind of excited that I now have 10 cans of brightly colored spray paint for other fun projects down the road.

Mr. S devised a painting board for me so I could paint all the hooks and screws at once and quickly bring them back inside so they could dry in the warm air – there was just no way I could wait until warmer painting-friendly Spring days to finally start using our mudroom.

After the hooks were fully cured we set to work choosing which hook would go where. I let Little M choose his hooks first: “boo and rrrrred.” Mr. S wanted blue and gold and I wanted the hot pink. The rest we arranged to equally space out the pink and purple hooks, just in case the next family in this house has a bunch of boys or girls – we don’t need any fights over who gets the “girl” cubby and we certainly don’t want renters moving the hooks. So Mr. S got blue, gold and light pink. I got periwinkle, hot pink and bright green. Our dog got purple and orange.

I’m so in love with the cubbies. Little M loves hanging his coat on his “hoo” and points out all the other “hoo” every time we come inside. They’re a great way to work on colors!

I have several woven felt baskets to use above the taller, wider cubbies, but they don’t fit as well on the right. So for now on the right I’m using inexpensive folding baskets that I got from Target years ago. I’m planning to either sew new cloth baskets to fit or make covers for the Target baskets.

On the wall opposite the cubbies we have our eight foot long coat closet. Eight feet. We used to have less than two!

I knew I wanted to use this closet for coats and for our out-of-rotation toys, so we had to make sure to use the space as efficiently as possible. I have several long coats, but not enough to fill eight feet of closet. So we decided to add a second hanging rod on the right at a height that would be high enough off the floor for my shorter jackets and low enough so Mr. S’s jackets could still hang above it. We added a shelf above the rod and stuck a few small, lesser used things like a hand-me-down car DVD player on there under our coats.

Over on the left Mr. S and I made shelves from leftover cabinet-grade plywood that we dove into the dumpster to salvage. We cut them to fit Little M’s 3 Sprouts animal toy bins.

They’re over-sized shelves and we figure that they’re are a good size for sports equipment later on, so they’re not just useful for these specific toy bins. I love that all his toys that aren’t in his little play area in the family room are stored in one, out-of-sight spot. On the top shelf I have his box of art supplies and under the lower shelf there is just enough space to tuck his shoes, which he’s outgrowing way too quickly! I love having a place for everything; it’s such a treat.

This area is quickly becoming my favorite spot in the house. There’s a place for everything and it’s totally out of sight from our main living areas. I love not having anything but placemats on the dining room table. The only thing that will make the new mudroom better is having a functioning powder room so I can take Little M for a quick potty trip before we head out the door, but that will get finished eventually.

Do you have a mud room in your house or has having kids left you dreaming of mudrooms like me? What’s the most important element of your ideal mud room/entry room?