See that mess up there? This is the area between the garage and the breakfast nook, the "walkway" past the laundry room, and the one place random stuff piles up. You know how if you put a chair in your room all it will do is hold clothes? Well, if you put a bench next to where the coats reside, you'll end up with a bench that has stuff thrown all over it. And for people who live in Texas we have a ridiculous amount of coats.
After going to my sister's house for Christmas and seeing the changes she made in her house, I came away with the feeling that I could change my house too to make it more me. The hub and I have done very little to change this house other than paint. Oh, and the yard doesn't count since I always change the yard with my overgrown (bad pun!) amount of gardening and planting.
When we moved in we thought we'd do something like this:
But for $1389 (Pottery Barn, of course) it seemed high. And too close to a mortgage payment. So we went to IKEA and got a bench and coat rack.
But I looked at our sad little cut-out of space and knew it could be better. I love beadboard mudrooms. LOVE them. Even better if they are part of a laundry room and spacious and have a stupid amount of labeled bins. And slate floors. I know you've seen them before:
BUT - we don't have a huge budget, and we're not remodeling for a place to put shoes and coats. And frankly, we don't live in New England. These types of mudrooms are for people who get MUD and SNOW on their boots. Not some dust on flip flops. So, reigning it in a little, with a best-gestimate of $50 total for the project, the hub and I went to Home Depot to scout.
We got our beadboard panels, screws, caulk, and just to throw the budget out of whack we got an air nailer and a saw. So, the $50 was out the window, but the tools (as I am assured by the hub) will be used in future projects. I used the paint left by the builders for our trim, though it ended up being much whiter than our trim. I've checked the house and I have no idea what was painted bright white in here, so why do we have a touch-up kit with that color? Oh well, I wasn't going to make a FOURTH trip to the home store, so we used it.
That is how it looked for a couple of days since the hub went out of town. But I figured that I could finish it up. How hard is it to drill in some hooks? As it turns out, not hard at all.
I couldn't put the same beach picture back, since it would be too high up to actually see the picture. And I had bought this "Texas star" for the outside of our house, but the hub worried that the cheap craftsmanship metal would rust all over the brick. True, as the thing only cost $15 at the local Hobby Lobby. So it was sitting in the garage waiting for a spot, and it kept getting moved because the circle is fake barbed wire and I didn't want Britton to play with it. So now it has found its new home. And the fish picture on the side wall is from the hallway, so I just put the beach picture where the fish picture was.
In use! Britton actually noticed it when she got home from daycare. She looked at the wall and said, "Mommy has a new coat rack!"
Love it!! Look at you go!
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