The Mudroom - a work in progress

January's main focus has been the mudroom. Specifically, it's been adding storage to this oft used space. We added hooks to the walls for coats, put an old dresser against the wall for hat, mitten, and shoe storage, and made do for three seasons of snow, mud, and sawdust. The room was constantly overflowing with boots, shoes, coats, and gear. 

So we went to Pinterest for some ideas on storage units, morphed a few of them together, and came up with a plan. Chris got to building and here's where we are at the moment.

Chris built the unit in the workshop and then disassembled it for painting. That also allowed us to more easily move it into the mudroom. There was a brief moment where we considered repurposing it...

Puppet theater

There are going to be upper cabinets added at a later time - we wanted to get the main unit in place before we decided on a final design.

Securing the unit to the wall

The upper shelves will be left open for storage boxes - mittens, hats, etc, etc.  Shelves for the side unit have been completed and will be installed to hold the GPS, tissues, dog treat jar, outgoing mail, and library books waiting to be returned.

Boot bench before the drawers

Drawers were added to the boot bench so we could keep gear close at hand; these mainly hold our daily-wear hats and mittens.  All the pretty wood came from the property - in this case it's spalted maple. The white stuff is just plywood (purchased) or ash (from the property).

With boots and drawers

In the works are the closet doors. The plan is to store seasonal coats in the closet itself but have hooks on the doors for daily use. Personally I hate having to hang coats on a hanger; they always seem to fall off or get wedged tightly together. So the hooks will make it easier to keep everything hung up properly.

This is just one side of the mudroom. The other side will have a boot bench that follows the corner as well as hook storage above. No deep cupboard though. Once that's complete we'll take another look at the upper cabinets and see how we want to tie the two sides together.