The mud room plan

Hello errrrybody! How are you? It’s been a HOT one this week – I’m not complaining (yet) because it’s the first 90+ temps we’ve had all summer. And tomorrow it’s supposed to cool down again. It’s really been an amazing summer!

So I’m busy working on our bedroom right now, but my mind easily wanders when it comes to projects and decorating around here. If you haven’t noticed I’ll start one thing and get an idea and then move on to something else because I have a great idea I just have to do. It’s very much “Oh look, a butterfly!” Or in this case…a mudroom.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about a ton lately. Ours has been sitting half way done for years. It started when I replaced the floor, and then last year we moved the the laundry down to the basement (best decision ever). It used to be a combined mud/laundry room and it drove. me. nuts. The picture tells it all:

It looks much better now (well, it’s still bright yellow, which is making me itch) – but the clutter (shoes!!) is creeping back in. I have an idea to address some of that till we finish the room but otherwise it’s just going to be slightly messy until we get some storage up in here.

I know I’ve said it a million times, but it takes me a while before I know exactly what I want to do with a room. I’ve sat on this one long enough that the plan and ideas are finally coming together in my head. Like other spaces though, the updates need to be made in a certain order, which slows me down a bit.

The big decision I’m struggling with now is whether or not to keep the flooring as is or do hardwoods. I don’t want tile in here because it flows into our family room and I want a nice transition that you don’t really notice. The vinyl tile that’s in there looks great because it’s a similar color to our floors. A few years ago I would NEVER have considered hardwoods, but now that I’ve lived with them for awhile I love them and how they hold up – even to the occasional water.

These vinyl tiles are holding up great, it’s the grouted spots between them that’s not looking the best. So I need to make that decision quick, because I want to move on this space. Here’s my plan, told through inspiration pics, of course. :)

First up, the lighting – you can’t tell in that picture above, but our lighting in here is a long fluorescent light. GREAT light, but I’d love something prettier. We got the fluorescent for a reason – we wanted good light because we knew the laundry would be in there. We wanted to see the stains well I guess? :)

But now that’s not needed, and I’d like to do some regular lighting, maybe two of something? It’s a decent sized room so I think we’ll need more than one. This mud room is one of my all time favorites:

For MANY reasons, but I do love LOVE that light fixture. I think the round shape is fun.

I love the idea of adding color in the lights too, like this room:

Speaking of the ceiling – I know I want to do something fun. I’ve always loved the look of a planked ceiling – I just can’t decide if I want to go with color, like this one:

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Or natural wood, like this one I’ve loved forevah:

(source)

I am leaning towards the natural wood, but it will depend on the lighting situation. We don’t get any natural light in that room, so I don’t want the ceiling to feel too heavy. Isn’t that beautiful though?

Next up – storage. This is what has taken me the longest to figure out. We have about five feet of space where the washer and dryer used to be – plenty of space but not a ton, so I want to use it well.

I know I want to go all the way to the ceiling with the built ins:

But I’m not sure if it will be closed like that one or open shelves like this:

Isn’t that room ADORABLE??

We have a shelf in there now that just ends up full of clutter (stuff I mean to take out to the garage/my car and hardly do) so I don’t know if I want it open. I know I need closed storage in there somewhere. And if we go all the way to the ceiling (nine feet), that area won’t be accessed regularly anyway since it will be so high. So it will probably be closed. Thanks for helping me decide. ;)

The biggie for me is the shoe storage. ARGH. The shoes!! (Shakes fists in air!) At first I thought I’d be OK with open storage for them underneath:

I figured I could use baskets and such. But the more I’ve thought over it, the more I know I want them put AWAY. Will they stay put away? That’s yet to be determined. We have a million shoes and wear the same ones over and over, so I think most of them will stay out of sight.

We have them in baskets now and it’s not working great. One, we have too many shoes. Working on that. Two, you have to dig through to find the ones you need and it makes a mess. Not great.

I love the idea of the bench opening up and hiding them all, like at my girl Traci’s old house: 

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I think that would be the easiest solution.

But I’ve been crushing on this secret door idea since I saw it years ago:

Like hard core…CRUSH. I know I can’t do this on my own though, so we’ll see. I heard from a friend after I posted this pic the first time years back that this is actually nearby in central Indiana – I need to do some investigating! :)

So there’s the biggies – the beadboard has already been up in most of the room but I need to wait on built in dimensions of the built ins before I finish that up. Paint will be easy – in my head I’ve been planning something a little different though. I may go with a color on the beadboard and white (or light) on the walls. I think it would look awesome!

Do you have a mud room? I consider myself lucky that we even have a space like this! It’s going to be SO fun to work on, I can’t wait! I’ll try to anyway. :) What would your dream mud room look like?

Have a great weekend!!

**I can’t find original sources for some of these pics – if you know of them let me know!