The Mudway Makeover

We rarely use our front door.  In fact, there is usually something large and obnoxious right in front of the door in the ‘formal’ entrance cove which makes it impossible to open.  Like my keyboard…the acoustics in that little nook are spectacular!

The most used entrances to our house are through our back deck door and through the garage – and these doors are directly across from each other in our family room.  Our carpeted family room.  As you can imagine, in the middle of a snowy Winter and a muddy Spring, this room is a soggy disaster.  Dripping boots and soaked gloves lay strewn across the carpet, reinforcing the obvious…we need a mudroom.  A tiled mudroom!

Sadly, due to my impulsive makeover habits, I have no ‘before’ shots of the family room and entrance, but to help you get your bearings…it’s the room beyond this happily decorated kitchen & dining area, compliments of Bean’s birthday this summer.

The living room and kitchen used to be a heinous shade of glossy burgundy, sponged with pepto-bismol pink, with a little rooster wallpaper thrown in for good measure…but we promptly remedied that.

Add to the chaos of the family room the fact that my little office space sat right inside the garage entrance door.  Yup, that little desk below – which is actually the top of our entertainment center that we removed when we moved 3 years ago…and never put back on.  It was slim and small, so fitted perfectly against the wall…but wasn’t nearly enough room to contain my creative prowess and mad clutter-spreading skills (ahem).  So as soon as I had a chance, we moved my “office” out into its very own space in the man cave…the bloom room.

Last year we moved the sectional to the other side of the wall and laid ceramic tile in the space between the {garage and deck} doors, leaving the seating & TV portion of the living room carpeted.  We then attempted to contain all our shoes, hats and scarves in a few bins in a small console table behind the couch.

People, it was hopeless.  Apart from the visual assault of the heap of shoes and the overflowing mittens when you walked through the door, was the fact that when we needed to get somewhere fast, no one could find their shoes.  Or at least a matching pair.

Enter the IKEA Expedit.  We already owned – and loved – the large version (you can see it in the photo above…it has since relocated to the living room), but figured the smaller one – with 8 compartments – would be perfect in providing each family member a space for shoes, and a separate space for coats, hats & mittens.  We had initially wanted to have compartments low enough to provide a seating area on top of the storage unit, but loved this enough to boycott that idea.

A little turquoise bench that could sit behind the couch and provide shoe-removal assistance may be in our near future.

We also picked up an old cabinet door we found in the clearance section at IKEA and a pack of 4 hooks, which we simply attached to the door and mounted on the wall as a coat rack.  I love it!  I plan to cut some vinyl lettering for the upper part of the cabinet door, but have yet to decide what I want it to say.

Then we had to figure out how to best fill those cubes, but I refuse to pay 15+ dollars on a single basket (because when you’re talking 8 baskets…you’re talking a LOT of moolah spent on wicker).  So I researched and hunted until I found the perfect one, online at Walmart, none the less.  It is rectangular and fits in the space absolutely perfectly – while most square baskets waste a good 3-5 inches of depth.  If you buy them individually, they’re just under $15.  But if you buy them in packs of two, they’re only $11 each, and they shipped to my door for free.

Utter perfection!

As a side note, notice that little plant pot on the left up there?  You can tell our sectional and Television are beyond that to the left due to the handy stashing of remote controls therein.  Cute and convenient!

The kids love having their own space to stash their goods, and getting ready to go in the morning has become a breeze!

They’re pretty, sturdy and easy to clean (which is so important when you’re storing shoes), and I even get a surface to decorate with seasonal goodies.

I’ll be sharing this new Thanksgiving print on the blog on Friday, so be sure to check back to download your free printable.

It’s ah-mazing, people!  We are finally organized in our entranceway and makeshift mudroom…only, it’s not really a room in and of itself…so does that make it a “mudway”?