Here are the answers to your questions about my new mudroom!  Finally.  Something is complete around here.  :)

What are the dimensions of your mudroom?

What is the overall length of your lockers?

What is the size of your bench?
    

What color of stain did you use on your bench and locker seat?  What color of white did you use for your cabinets?  

Sorry I’m not going to be much help on this one!  For the bench and locker seat I gave a sample of my floor to my cabinet guy and he matched it as close as he could.  It ended up a bit lighter than the floor.  I’m not sure what the shade of white is either!  I picked it from a variety of cabinet samples (all of my cabinets throughout the house are that same white).  It was the brightest white I could find.  It’s almost identical to the same white I used for all of my trim and molding which is “Arothane White” 001 by Frazee.

Where did you get the light fixture?

Where did you get the fun nameplates on the lockers?

Where is your locker hardware from?

I used this same hardware in my laundry rooms and in the girls’ bathroom – just a different finish.  Chrome for those rooms…

Where did you get the amazing hooks?  

Where is your door hardware from (dutch door/garage door)?

I decided to mix it up for this door off of the garage because I knew I’d often have my hands full and you can’t open a knob with your elbow when you’re trying to balance four sacks of groceries, your purse, and your four year olds muddy shoes.  A handle works much better for that.  :)

Where did you purchase the cute picnic style baskets?

Those are also from Pottery Barn!  Like I mentioned before, I tried several different sizes and styles of baskets from other stores above my lockers.  These were not what I originally had in mind, but they looked the best and were the perfect width for my cubbies.  These are the Day Trip Lidded Large Basket and are truly made for picnics!  I tried one in the space and loved it so I waited for Pottery Barn’s baskets to go 20% off (they do that from time to time) and then snatched up five of them.  When you love to organize you stay on top of basket sales.  :)

What do you use the baskets at the top for?

Well.  Now I’m hoping to go on a picnic or two with them!  :)  I had always planned to use them for our winter accessories (hats, gloves, scarves) that we only pull out two or three times a year for a trip to ski or to visit family in colder climates.  But currently I have all of our winter/ski gear together in a bin in our attic space.  I don’t know if it makes since to separate the accessories from the snow coats and pants?  So right now there is nothing in the baskets!  But I’m sure that won’t last long.  I’ll let you know what I end up storing in that space.  I still have A LOT of stuff in our extra room upstairs that needs to be purged and organized.  I will most likely be in this house a year before everything has a home.  I’m too busy typing blog posts to get completely unpacked.  ;)

What is the grey paint color called?

The grey paint in our mudroom is the same grey we used in the main living areas in our house – “Seattle” by Frazee.

What color are your hardwood floors?  

I love the lanterns hanging outside.  Where did you get them?  

Did you choose pot lights or can lights?  Where did you get them?  

Aside from pendants and hanging fixtures we have can lights throughout our house.  We chose them all with our electrician.  Sorry that’s not much help!

Do you have additional basement and/or attic storage?  I’m on the east coast where everyone has basements, but I’ve heard that in CA many houses don’t.  

Yes – we have an upstairs attic and also a fun hidden storage space above our garage that has a secret ladder.  :)  I’m sure I’ll share our attic space with you once it’s all organized.  It’s a mess so don’t hold your breath on that one.  ;)  And you are right about California homes not having basements!  I’m from Utah and everyone there has a basement so it was strange to me too when we moved to CA that nobody has one.  There are several reasons why.  Not needed with our mild climate (in colder areas home builders dig a deeper foundation below the frost line), earthquake, water and soil concerns, property here is so expensive and it is usually cheaper to build up than down with our soil, etc. etc. etc.  It’s very rare to find a house with a basement around here!

I’ve always imagined a mudroom and laundry room combined.  Is there any benefit to having separate mud and laundry rooms?  

I think having a combined mudroom/laundry room is a great idea!  I think it really just has to do with how much space you have to work with.  I wanted pull out bins in my laundry room for dirty clothes  and a counter to fold clothes on.  We had the space to work with so that meant two separate rooms for us, but I think combining the two spaces would function great too.

I’ve actually seen a few rooms that function as a laundry room, mudroom, AND craft room.  I think you’d have to be pretty organized to make that work or that room would constantly look like a bomb went off.  :)

Could you share a picture of how there are two under the stairs storage units?  And how you chose to break it up rather than just have one door that lead to the whole staircase?  

Yes!  I will absolutely share our storage spaces under the stairs.  But that is a post all its own for another day.  :)

I hope this helped some of you!  I’m so ready for the weekend.  Crossing my fingers I can find time to finish a few of my half started projects around here!  Happy Friday everyone!

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SO excited to share my new mudroom with you today!  This is such a beloved space for me that I can’t believe we’ve been in the new house six months and I haven’t posted pictures of it yet!  Must be because of the post traumatic stress from moving my family of five.  ;)  I took way too many pics so I’m warning you that this post is a novel.  You might want to grab a snack.  I’d suggest pretzels.  Or yogurt.  Or both.  That’s what I’m snacking on right now.  Ok!  Enough rambling.  Time to talk mudroom.  Most of you know that in our previous house my garage worked as my mudroom… 

And it worked great.  But I always had dreams of a real mudroom.  With lockers and drawers and hooks.  A place for our family to dump all of the shoes, jackets, and backpacks that wasn’t next to the garden tools.  :)  So after much planning and thought this is what I came up with:

When we were designing this space I told my architect to extend the drawers a bit so that I could add a small mini bench above them just in case my kids ever wanted to stand up on it to get to the top of the lockers.  Then I had it stained figuring white would show marks from the kids standing on it.  Guess what?  My kids don’t stand on it.  Sometimes I over think things.  :)  But I like the way it breaks up all of the white regardless and I love the deeper drawers.

Here is a view of my mudroom from the other side of the room.  On the other side of the door I added additional locker style cabinets to the ceiling with drawers below them for extra storage.  (Extra storage!  It’s so strange to have extra storage.  Wonderful strange.)  :)  Then I had a small bench made for the space under the window.

Here it is finished!  You also might remember an older post when I talked about my decision to add the dutch door back into the plans.  So glad I did!  It was in the plans in the beginning, then I took it out of the mudroom and added another window and a longer bench.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about my dutch door (I have loved them for so long) so back in the plans it went.

I decided to paint it black.  We have three doors that are visible from the front of our house (front door and two side doors off the porch) and they are all painted black to match our shutters.

A view of the porch with my hanging lanterns.  I love to leave the top half of this door open to let in our coastal breeze.  Someday I might be courageous enough to paint all of the doors and shutters a fun bright color, but for now I love the classic contrast the black makes with our grey paint.

The little white door (which I lovingly call my hobbit door) is a small closet.  We had so much room under our stairs that I made two little walk in spaces out of them for storage.  I keep our luggage in this one off of the mudroom.

Ok.  Are you ready to see what’s happening inside of the lockers?

Are the heavens opening and angels singing!?  :)  Oh the joy of organization and having a place for all things!  A few close ups…

My kids backpacks are usually heavy with books so I just have the kids set them on the cabinet bottom vs. hanging them.  Or they unload their books on the bottom and then hang the backpack.  Lately I’ve been emptying their lunch boxes and keeping them on the shelf on top.  I also thought this shelf could hold a tray for school work.

This way when the kids are older and have cell phones they can also use these shelves as a charging station.  So many options!  Optionality.  One of my favorite words.  :)

Ad’s scarf makes me laugh because it’s never really cold enough here to need a heavy scarf, but she wears it anyway because it’s “sparkly and fashionable.”  :)

I did a massive shoe clean-out when we moved in so this is all my girls have right now.  I love that everything fits in their drawers so we don’t have to keep any shoes in their closets.  Easy access!

I have some ideas for how I’m going to use the extra storage cabinets, but haven’t organized everything yet.

I was torn about what to put in this corner of the room but when I first spotted this chair, I knew.  Suddenly everything was clear.  I can honestly say it is my most favorite piece of furniture I’ve bought for the house this far.

A few shots of it in the room.  You can choose from lots of fabric choices for this chair.  Easy decision for me because I have always loved stripes.  And I know even though this chair has stripes, it’s white and grey and technically another neutral item.  But here’s the thing with my thus far “neutral” purchases.  I know me.  This room will never really be decorated.  None of my rooms will.  I get tired of things quickly and like to switch them up.  So I wanted all of my larger, more expensive purchases to be neutral.  Then I can mix up the less expensive accessories with the seasons.  Picture this room with blues/greens/yellows in the spring, pops of red at Christmas, and warm colors in the fall.  Options are endless!  Even with my striped chair.  Did I mention I adore the stripes on this chair!?

This is a pic I snapped of it at the store with my phone the day I fell in love.  It looks good with this grey blanket and beige pillow, but I am going to look for a pillow with a little more personality.

Because the blue patterns weren’t working for me I went to Restoration and Pottery Barn and pulled some neutral patterns that might work.

Because I was worried about the room being too busy once other patterns are introduced I decided to try a more neutral rug in this space.  This is Pottery Barn’s chunky wool and jute rug.  While it isn’t what I originally pictured for this room, I think it looks really good.  It’s a combination of the color of my couch and my table.  Plus it’s SO soft.  It doesn’t look like it would be, but it really is!  Nice and thick and comfortable.  It will hide everything my kids dish out.  (* Post Update!  You can see how this space is decorated now here and read more about my rug in this post.  It’s my favorite and I now have it in two rooms!)

I was going to put a jute rug similar to this in my dining nook under the table, but if I keep this in the family room I think I’ll add a colored/patterned rug in the nook instead.

Here are my pillow fabrics.  (I crossed out the one on the far right because we were considering that for a rug for a while – ordered a sample and didn’t like the look of it at all).

In my last family room post I mentioned finally deciding what to do with the left corner of the room.
I ordered a chair!  And I love it and it comes on Thursday.  So I will share it soon!

Whew!  That was a long post.  With decor posts this long, don’t be surprised if I change my mind on furniture/accessory selections by the time I’m done typing.

{*You can see how my family room is decorated today and all sources HERE}

Last month when we were visiting family in Utah after our ski trip I decided to shop my mom’s house a bit for decor.  Do you ever do that?  Shop your mom’s house for items she’s dying to get rid of and just doesn’t know it yet?  And you’re graciously there to take those items off of her hands?  Well.  I’m a pro at it.  :)  Started in college when I used to shop her pantry for food and her bathroom cupboards for Paul Mitchell hair spray.  Good times.

(Love you mom.)

Anyway, I was peeking around in one of her storage closets and came across part of her vintage book collection.  My mom has collected old children’s books for years and seriously has enough to fill a bedroom.  She is an educator and lover of children’s books (we have a lot in common!) but she especially adores books from her childhood and her parents’ childhood.  Growing up I always thought her book collection was so strange.  What in the world would she ever DO with all of those books?  They were so tattered and OLD looking.  But I suddenly saw that old book collection with new eyes.  They are so tattered and OLD looking.  How incredibly cool!  And vintage!  And stylish!  Suddenly I knew exactly what she needed to do with all of those books.  Loan them to me!  :)

So I rounded some up and after telling my mom how cutting edge she was without even knowing it, I convinced her to let me take them home.  Back at my place I spread them out on my coffee table and knew they would be perfect to add to my media cabinet shelves.  (p.s. – in this picture you can see a peek of a rug I tried in this space, but it’s already returned and back to the store.  Rug update post coming soon!)

So I turned them around.  And I love the look!  The tan, worn pages add the exact character and cohesiveness I was looking for.

And while these shelves are still bare and nowhere near styled (just playing around for now with things I already have) I do think the vintage books add such a nice touch and are here to stay.

Moral of this story is to:

A)  Try turning books around to style bookshelves (it keeps things simple and cohesive and less cluttered).

B)  Shop your mom’s house for decor.  You never know what treasures are lurking in her closets.

C)  Decorate with things that mean something to you.  Now I feel like I have a piece of my mom in my family room with me all the time.

Answer?  

D)  All of the above.