It's been a great holiday, a needed 2 weeks off from work, and a lot of family time in between!

I had one other objective this holiday, and that was to make a proper mudroom in the back entrance of our house.

Both Ritchie and I have always wanted a proper mudroom. Not only is it useful when your home has a detached garage, it's a great place to contain and organize messes, but also a great take-off point in the home. Earlier in the month, I had picked up a House and Home Magazine from Safeway during a grocery run, and in one of the articles it contained a mudroom reno from a couple in Ontario. The pictures in that article got the gears rolling in my head.

Our home had an existing closet in the back entrance. We thought it was a great place for it at first, but after a few months of living in the new place, the closet became a hiding place for old jackets and stuff that we didn't know what to do with. Also, the rear landing area was smallish, being only about 6' x 6'. Having the closet there made the area looked a little bit cramped and the worse part was that we didn't really have a place to sit down and put our shoes on, and there was no room for any kind of bench. Opening the closet doors was also an inconvenience of sorts, as there was no place to put anything down but the floor, when taking jackets on and off. This lead to our keys and phones being placed on any available counter space in the kitchen, bags being placed under the desk area and coats and jackets being hung on dining room chairs.

So off the internet I went, to look for more inspiration. At first, I came across a site from Google Images, that had a lady who converted an existing single closet into a small sitting/mini-mudroom. I thought this was a great idea, she didn't have to knock out any walls. All she did was remove the doors, and built in a bench, added hooks and some paint and there it was. I thought I could do that on a larger scale and be done with it.

But after countless drawings, and 3-D renderings using Google Sketchup, all the designs still would make it feel like we were sitting inside a closet. This was due to the closet being about 2' deep and having "wing" walls on each side of the doorway. Also, having a 9' ceiling, but having the closet opening being about 6.6' high also really made the cavity feel very diminutive.

So I drew up plans and asked a few handy co-workers their opinions, and using pictures I took during the framing stage, they gave me some good insight on how to best proceed with a demo. I also enlisted the help of my dad, and with a few hours of planning, we had drew up a new design for the area and started thinking about how much material we would need to get the job done.

We started the tear down on the 28th of December, and finished on January 2nd. The whole project cost under $300 for materials and I spoiled myself with a new air compressor and brad nailer, which brought the costs up a little bit.

But in the end, and after a few days of use, we no longer have jackets hung on dining room chairs, and keys/cellphones on kitchen counters. Ritchie, Rowan and I all have our own "lockers" for our jackets, bags and outerwear, and there are hooks for house keys, and baskets for extra stuff like phones, hats and mitts. A few more additions , like storage baskets, shoe trays for the lower cubbies, and perhaps a seating cushion and the room will be totally complete! Next up, Laundry Room Project!

Photos to follow in the gallery very soon!