One of our first home projects was converting our back entrance into a mudroom/larger entryway. When we bought the house, there were 3 doors in an approximately 3×4′ area (the back door, a closet door and a door to the basement). It was very claustrophobic and would cause even the most patient person to lose their cool whilst hauling groceries into the kitchen. The basement door was removed shortly after moving in, but the closet served as our kitchen appliance, shoes, random decor, etc. dumping ground. This entrance was a constant thorn in my side…every. day. It was our main entrance in & out of the house and was constantly littered with an abundance of shoes and a lack of hooks to hang anything (which, during a MN winter, that’s a huge problem).
Luckily for me, one of my friends from work is a seasoned home renovator and serial DIYer. She was over for a play date with our kiddos and I said…give me some ideas! One of the first things she mentioned was removing the closet wall and turning the space into a mudroom. A lightbulb went off in my head – DUH! Why didn’t we think to do this earlier?! Unluckily for my husband, I was about 6 months pregnant at the time and I wanted it done before the baby arrived. The thought of having to haul a baby carseat in and out of that door in it’s current state made we want to contact our realtor & move. The demo began the week after her visit!
The demo of the walls went pretty quick. Even in its rawest state, it was a million times better than it was! The old linoleum flooring was probably the biggest pain to rip out. Once we got that out, we went back and forth on what to replace with.
Originally we were just going to do some vinyl flooring, but eventually we plan to renovate the kitchen and will likely continue our hardwoods into the kitchen, so wanted to make sure whatever we choose wouldn’t clash. After much Pinteresting, we decided to go with hex tile! One of our friends does tiling work, so we had him come out for a bid and the rest was history. We decided to hire that piece out since we were on a pretty tight timeline and it’s such a high traffic/visible area, that we didn’t want our first dabble in tiling to be there. I went with a larger, classic black hex tile from The Tile Shop.
The project quickly snowballed…as projects do, into replacing the back door & storm door. We went with this one from Menards and in all honesty, wouldn’t recommend. It was a big pain to install and we’ve had ongoing issues with it. It works OK, but probably wouldn’t purchase from them again in the future.
For the walls, we decided to cover up the existing plaster with MDF board for a cleaner look. We made a board & batten wall and added a bench with stained wood. The existing closet had shelving, so we kept the top shelf (let’s not re-invent the wheel here, eh?). We painted the walls & shelving white & accented with black hooks.
On the future to-do list…add built in shelving to the left where we can keep baskets. Mainly needed for all the winter gear storage! I also still need to paint the door. Will likely do black on the exterior and white for the interior.
While it’s still not 100% finished, it was fully functional by the time Baby #2 arrived! We’ve slowly been chipping away at finishing the trim, painting, etc. This fairly easy and affordable update has definitely increased the length of our stay in our home.