New Mudroom Area!

I need to start this post with the caveat that while I REALLY love my house, like I can’t imagine moving ever, I have a confession, there isn’t a single actual closet on the whole first floor.  Yes that includes the bedrooms!!  A SAD truth!

 

We have been slowly adding built in cabinets that act as closets, but there still isn’t a linen closet, a coat closet,  a mudroom or an actual laundry room (okay that is in a “closet”).  So, while technically we don’t live in a small house (its 2800 square feet, a good size but not huge) it is very short on storage and organization.  With two school aged kids, not having a coat closet or mudroom is NOT ideal.  My girls tend to enter at the front door, which is basically walking right into our living room.  We don’t even have an entry area, so we’ve had to get creative for a relatively small space.  Which is just a 6 foot wall behind the front door, that is visible from the kitchen, living room, and dining room!  Which means it has to have good hidden storage but I also don’t want a big armoire that competes with the open feeling of the space.

 

We used to have a console table in our entry, that you can see here, but I have to admit it was just a junk catcher, and overall useless with no storage at all.  And, although I still LOVE the table itself we decided that it would have to find a new home.

 

 

 

For this project, I partnered with the Better Homes and Gardens line at Walmart, and would like to thank them for sponsoring me.  I got to scour the website for great products and visited a couple local Walmart stores, and I really found some great things!!

The design inspiration came from an image in my head (sorry its been a few years since I’ve seen it on pinterest- so I can’t show it to you) anyway, the picture had storage bins on casters.   So, when I saw these large galvanized bins for only 12.44!!  I know, the price is amazing!  I decided they would be perfect for cute AND functional storage!  (I’ll have a step by step tutorial for you soon)  Today I am going to reveal the space and what I used.

We already had pictures on the wall.  These are 50 year old frames from my grandpa’s house and I LOVE them, so there is no way I am taking them down.  Funny story, when we were photographing our last house before we moved, I asked my husband to draw something new to put in these frames and I needed them yesterday…   So, at 2:00 in the AM in the morning, he drew these fast sketches from pictures of a family portrait session and I LOVE the looseness and artistic feeling of them.  Bless him, he is a keeper!   Anywho, they are one of my favorite things in my whole house, so I decided not to even touch them.  But the size of the frames did dictate the size of the furniture beneath.   So finding something pre-made was causing some issues. 

Instead of the console table, we realized that we needed a bench for sitting down and putting on shoes or sorting through your bin.  I really love this bench, but it wasn’t quite long enough and too long to have two.   We actually tested out the space (which you can see on our instagram) with some existing benches, but the 4′ foot benches were too short along and too long with 2.  Since we wanted the bench to be wider that the frames above (the console table had been equal and it never quite looked balanced to me) we decided to go ahead and build a bench to the exact size we needed, and we will have building plans for the bench soon the building plan and video tutorial is here.  I feel like having the bench be wider helped the lower portion of the space to feel grounded.   

Once the bench was built and the bins were all decked out, with casters and numbers (so each person has an assigned bin) the fun part was just adding a bit of softness. 

 

We did that with a throw, a few pillows and the rug.  I loved the texture of the neutral diamond pillows and the shine of the gold metallic square pillows (the gold spot are actually sewn on embroidery, and very pretty!) the tribal pillow is one I have kicking around the house that i threw in for color, so if you want something similar they did that this cute southwestern Diamonds pillow that is very similar.  The throw is actually a twin size cotton blanket, in soft silver I like bigger throw blankets when we are hanging out watching movies, so I just went for a bigger blanket since I feel like it will have more uses!  Finally we added a rug, and I REALLY like the cream floral vine rug, it is neutral, really soft and well UNDER $100!