Mud Room Musings

We have a small entry hall in the back of the house that is just off the driveway. We currently have hooks hanging on the walls and I would like build a mud room bench and some shelves to go along with the current hooks.

We store all of our coats, jackets, hats, gloves, car keys, and shoes in this area so it needs to be functional as well as cute. I am looking for 3 main things: a bench with shoe storage beneath it, shelving or cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling, and beadboard backing with hanging hooks,

Below are some ideas that I have been collecting from the internet on what I want my mudroom to look like and how I want it to function.

1. This little beauty is probably the most simple to accomplish what we need with what we want. It has basic straight lines and we could do it with shelf brackets and just store the shoes in baskets under the bench.

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2. This is one of my favorite ones. I think that the colors of the knobs are stinking adorable. I like the way that the bench curves around the wall. This one is about the same size as what we could make. Plus we could extend the cabinet all the way to the ceiling and add a second row of hooks without it getting too crowded.

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3. This is another one that  is pretty cute. It's got the beadboard and the shelf goes all the way to the top, like  I want ours to do. I like separated partitions on the tip that match the separations on teh bottom.

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4. This one is cute. The height of the shelf would be easy to add a second row for hats, purses, and the like. I like that it has legit drawers instead of open bin space.

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5. This would be my ideal bottom bench if we can figure out how to build it. It looks like it might be a bit more complex to make than some of the things above. I really like the storage for the shoes and the small drawers for putting mittens and hats in. I plan on making a cushion to go with the bench and this demonstrates what that might look like.

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6. This next one shows what it might look like if we had a second row of hooks on the mud room wall. I also like the partitioned shelves on the top (and the fact that they go all the way to the ceiling). As of right now, the hubby thinks that looks too complicated to build, but I think we could do it. Youtube baby.

Let me know in the comments what you think, or if you find something that you think I might like but haven't thought of yet.

Where do we go from here?

I love fixing up our little-old-farmhouse. It was built in 1904 and there was a small expansion done in the late 60's so there's a lot to do. But, things are going well with the house. We still have some things to do to the interior but I'm excited because we've started to improve the exterior this summer. We are doing some landscaping, painting, building a french drain around the back of the house, and building a deck/patio for the sliding door that we installed in the back room last summer. 

There used to be a small window that looked onto the back yard and no easy access to the back yard. You had to walk out of the side door and around the fence to the gate in order to get into the back yard. And the room was tiny and had a tiny window. We knocked out the wall between that room and the laundry room and made a large laundry/office room and took out the tiny window and replaced it with a 6-ft wide sliding door which adds a ton of natural light and makes the whole house flow much better with the outside. 

The  new sliding door opens straight onto the grass as of right now so we're installing a wood deck at the ground level. We have to install a french drain to keep the water out because the back room was originally built on the house's original patio, so the room is right at ground level. Our whole house has a fenced yard surrounding it, and we are going to install a fence to separate the front yard from the back yard this summer too. 

We have plans to paint a lot of the wood on the exterior of the house because the paint has chipped badly and we are afraid if we don't do something that the wood will rot. We are going to refinish our front porch because the ceiling is starting to collapse in one part. I think when we get to that repair we are going to install a porch swing. 

We have plans to build some planting boxes to do some gardening in the backyard as well as build a sand box under one of the trees in the yard. We put down grass seed last fall, but the grass hasn't grown very well so we're going to re-seed the lawn again. 

Our bathroom (the house only has one) was partially remodeled when we bought the house but when we painted the whole house, we somehow didn't get the bathroom painted so we still need to paint it. We are going to make some little built-in shelves above the toilet to give ourselves a little more storage. We want to replace the mirror with something more decorative and we want to make a small set of drawers to extend the counters. 

We have a small entry hall in the back of the house that I want to convert into a mud room with a little bench with shoe storage, shelves, and lockers. We have a good-sized detached garage but it has manual garage doors. 

Next year (hopefully) we will install new automatic garage doors, or at least get new mechanisms for the old garage doors. 

We want to install some beadboard or wainscoting in the living room and kitchen. We also want to put in crown molding in the bedrooms. 

Our bedroom has a window seat that I want to make a cushion for. I've bought the fabric and want to make a cushion for the window seat, some throw pillows for our living room and then a cushion for the bench that we plan on making for the mud room. We're kind of attempting to have the same color scheme in every room for a more polished look to the home. 

We've done a lot to make the home nice, but I feel like there's so much more to do before it's the home that I have envisioned in my mind. We've been lucky. The house was a foreclosure in disrepair so we got a good deal in it. We paid $76,000 for the home but before any repairs the home was valued at $95,000. We've invested about $12,000 into the home since we bought it (replacing the furnace was the most expensive thing we've done so far) the home has been estimated to be worth about $110,000 to $120,000. So, it's been worth all of the work because of the return we will get on the house when we sell it.

It's the Little Things

One of the things that I recently did was put up some pictures in my bedroom. This may not seem like much to some people, but for me it was a big project. So, I had my mother help me tackle it. We printed out a lot of pictures that have been taken of my family over the past year or so. I realized that I had no idea how I wanted to hang the pictures so I searched online until I found a layout that I liked. I actually found 2 layouts that I liked, and since I had a ton of pictures, I decided to do both of them, on 2 different walls of my bedroom.  Then, we went to the dollar store and found a bunch of frames - because, hey, I'm cheap like that. I found 2 different frames that I liked, one size was an 8x10 and the other was 8x8. There weren't enough of the 8x8 frames, but we have several dollar stores in town so I went to each one looking for the exact same frames. They had plenty in brown but the black ones were like finding a needle in a haystack. When I finally got enough for my project, wouldn't you know it, ended up stepping on one and breaking the glass! After another rush to the dollar store, I was ready to hang my photos. I decided to hang the larger gallery picture display above my headboard and the smaller display next to my mirror on the wall by the door. I had my father come over and help me hang the pictures because it's a two-person job. We used command strips (which are a total life-saver and I cannot recommend enough if you're going to do a similar project) to hang all the frames on the wall. One person would hold the picture and the other person would hold the ruler and level so that we could get everything perfectly done. I really like the final result. They turned out better than I thought. The command strips made it so easy to hang in the right spot and they made it so they don't swing or move and get off-kilter like they would if we would have used just nails.

Breaking Walls and Building Dreams

As I mentioned in my previous post, we bought Sarah in July last year. We have done a lot of remodeling to the home since it was purchased. Here is a list of all the things that we've done so far, hopefully, I will be able to put pictures in another post for your viewing pleasure.

• Took down wallpaper - ugly 1970's wallpaper.
• With the help of a contractor, we tore down a wall between the laundry room and "third bedroom". I write it with quotes because it was just a small craft room off of the laundry room that had a cabinet taken out of the laundry room and put into the small yellow room so that the realtor could call it a third bedroom. The house is actually a 2 bedroom house. We combined the craft room with the laundry room to make a larger room which we call the "command center". It's part office, laundry room, and kids play area.
• Took out a broken window in the back of the house and installed a 6' sliding-glass door in it's place. This door looks AWESOME in our command center and it makes the backyard so much easier for my children to access. Before, we would have to go in the driveway and around to fence to get to the gate to get into the backyard.
• Took the siding from off the back of the house to install glass door. then used excess siding from where the door went to patch a random door on the side of the house that went to nowhere from the previous home-owners' remodel. Took the door off and patched the siding. The door went onto our front door as a screen door.
• Painted the interior. Lots and lots of painting. Every room in the house and every closet (except for the bathroom which we will update in the future). We painted every ceiling and all the trim as well as patched holes in the walls.
• Installed fencing along the back of the house, which is against a field. In this field there is a cell tower, a gravel quarry, and an active train track line.
• Removed the old clunky, red-flagged by the gas company for being outdated and dangerous, furnace. Replaced said furnace with a brand-spanking-new 95% efficiency gas furnace. Apparently, it will pay for itself in the energy savings within 10 years of owning it. Plus, it keeps our house oh-so-warm in the cold winter months.
• Removed all the old STINKY carpet.
• Replaced said carpet with new laminate wood flooring for every room in the house (except the bathroom). It took a log time but was well worth the effort. Installing the wood flooring really helped to recapture the farmhouse feel that we were going for.
• We had to do a lot of electrical work to replace the knob and tube wiring. Plus move some light sockets to better locations, add electrical outlets to rooms that needed more than 1 socket in the room. We added a cadet heater and thermostat in the "command center" because of the remodel. It had horribly inefficient wall heaters before that needed to be replaced.
• We switched out a lot of the lighting for new and updated lighting. We installed LED lights and a ceiling fan in the command center. We changed out the light for a modern lamp in the mud room. We put in a pendant light above the sink in the kitchen, and we added flood lights in the back yard next to the sliding door.

This house has been a labor of love over the past 10 months that we've been home owners. We've done a lot of work to make it livable, but we want to do more that just live here. We want to excel here.

A Farmhouse named Sarah

In June of 2015 we put in several unsuccessful offers in our attempt to buy our first home. In July 2015, we finally had an offer accepted and closed on a small 3 bedroom, 1 bath farmhouse built in 1904! The house was a foreclosure that had been on the market since January of the same year. Here is the original listing, if you're curious. The farmhouse quickly became a favorite place for our two young sons (D is five, and Z is four). D told me that our house was a girl and needed a name. I asked him what we should name our new home and he instantly said Sarah and we all agreed that was a good name for our new place (random fact: Sarah in Hebrew means princess). Once the farmhouse was no longer just a farmhouse, our children felt ownership, pride, and responsibility for Sarah. They felt that Sarah was part of the family and they needed to help make Sarah pretty and treat Sarah nicely. Sarah took on a personality all her own. Our children believed that if they made a mess, Sarah was sad. If they were good helpers, Sarah was happy. When they would drive past the house they would wave out the window, shouting, "Hi Sarah!" 

Naming your house is a fun tradition. If you haven't named your house and would like to I would suggest visiting this website or this one to get some history and ideas. It's common in the UK and among the rich and famous, so why not give it a go. I know it's been a great experience for my family.