This is a much easier, less dramatic post, but still a good one.

I loved the location of the laundry room in this house when I first saw it because you could enter it through either the outside porch or the garage. Because of this, I knew it could also double as a mudroom with some small tweaks.

Here are the few pictures that I have of the room before we moved in. I don’t have a great before picture of it, so you’ll just have to imagine the door to the left inside the room that leads to the outside porch and the door to the right that leads to the garage.It was pretty straight forward- a spot for the washer and dryer on one side and a large sink with a couple of drawers and a few sets of cabinets on the other side.  I was excited about the sink because I knew it would be perfect for washing dirty shoes, cleaning out paint brushes, soaking soiled laundry, etc. 

The previous owners were kind enough to let us get in the house the week before we closed, so I was able to get a jump start on some painting in a few rooms, including this one.  It was really helpful to be able to get in here before we moved the washer and dryer in! I sanded down the walls (they were sort of a sponge painted look) and primed and painted them.
The day that we closed on the house, we removed all the flooring on the first floor and installed hardwoods, even into the laundry room. The room stayed like this for about about 8 months.  Fresh, clean, and waiting for some inspiration!

All of the cabinets in the entire house were oak.  This room, the kitchen, every bathroom, the butler’s pantry, etc. Fortunately they were all in great condition- solid wood and pretty much new inside.  When I redid the cabinets in the kitchen the next fall, (here’s a post on that!), I also added on the task of sanding, priming, and painting these cabinets. Then I added knobs and drawer pulls.  The paint makes the room look so much cleaner and lighter!Because I wanted this to be a mudroom too, I knew there needed to be a place for the kids’ shoes and our coats and jackets.

To take care of the shoes (and socks!), I  installed shelves in 3 of the 4 cabinets- one for each kid.  It works GREAT!  I use the other cabinet to store things like kids’ paint, stamps, craft stuff, and play dough- things that we use often, but like to be able to put away.  The other thing I knew we needed was somewhere to hang coats. Lots of coats. These people in this house have a ridiculous number of them (I won’t say who is the worst, but his name is Jason).

I grabbed a few sheets of bead board from Home Depot and cut them to size, hung them and added a simple trim piece on top. Then added coat hooks.  An easy and EXCELLENT solution! There are 24 hooks and they are almost always full.  We also hang rain jackets, hats, and purses here when it’s not wintertime. Another great update in this room was removing the cabinets above the washer and dryer to install some open shelves.  The wall cabinets were pretty shallow and I found that nothing really fit great in them. So I took them down, purchased some Ekby Bjarnum brackets from Ikea and cut down and stained some pieces of wood to fit in them.I’m kind of a basket girl, so baskets on an open shelf are much more useful for me.  I’ve got a basket with laundry supplies. A basket with light bulbs and other household items. And a miscellaneous basket. We also have dryer pods out. And then there are a few decorative items because let’s be honest, you can’t have an open shelf without at least a little something decorative on it!So, here’s the Laundry and Mudroom today. Clean, open, simple, and now a room that is super functional for our family!   Check out before and afters of the entire house.
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