More About Our Laundry / Mudroom

As you may already know we decided to make some layout changes to our homes original floor plan read more about those changes here. One of the changes we decided on adding was an indoor laundry room / mudroom room that would be apart of our homes new floor plan.  The idea to create an indoor laundry room space happened while having a conversation with my mom one evening about our homes floor plan changes, we were discussing how it would be great if there was another option to access our backyard without going though a bedroom or garage when we have guests over. Even though there was a sliding glass door in Avery's room after the room officially become 'his room,' we no longer used the door as an access point. The sliding glass door in his room was replaced with a pair of twin windows. Even though we are adding french doors to our bedroom, we didn't like the idea of them being used to go in and out when we have guests over (read: messy bed etc.)

My mom and I our heads together and she mentioned her childhood house in Arkansas had a laundry room that they used to access their backyard. Then a light bulb went off in my head. My dads current home has an indoor laundry room with access that has access to his backyard patio. My mom's laundry room is inside her home in a hallway between her her kitchen entrance. I loathe isn't even a strong even word for how much I despised doing laundry in our old poorly lit garage. Most garages in homes after 1990 have nice garages that are dry-walled with plenty of light. Our laundry room in our garage was poorly lit and felt crowded when trying to complete laundry while my vehicle was inside. 

We played around with a few laundry room location ideas, and decided the best fit for our home was creating an indoor laundry space in the garage. We worked it out so the new space is additional square feet to our home. We didn't want to loose ability to fit a full size vehicle in our garage, so my dad suggested bumping our garage forward five feet to 'make it work' as Tim Gunn would say. 

I'm super excited about creating a functional and pretty laundry room and mudroom space for our home. I did a quick sketch of how we are picturing our laundry room space. We will have one dedicated wall to for our laundry, we plan on buying a front loading washer & dryer. I like that with this style it will allow us counter-top space above for folding laundry, clothes pins and baskets etc. We plan on installing a simple affordable counter top of the space. Ikea sells affordable butcher block counters that we could DIY ourselves, I also like the idea of stainless counter tops, if there are affordable. 

For the back splash we are thinking DIYing a tile back splash or using a fun stencil pattern for the entire room. We plan on using in-stock cabinets for our storage space and painting them a color, we also want to install a clothes rod between the pair to hang wet clothes on to dry on. Here are a few laundry rooms I've 'pinned' over the past few months, so many great ideas. 

via Pinterest

via Pinterest

Fun playful art will also be a must for this space. I adore this printable art from Caravan Shoppe, can't wait to add it to our new space. 

via CaravanShoppe.com   

Who needs boring old wood clothes pins, when these darling bird clothes pins are much cuter, so tempted lol. 

via Crate & Barrel

For the mudroom portion of our small space I'm hoping to create a little room for seating a spot to hang our coats. It's going to be tricky to create this since this little room has three doors: garage door, patio door and kitchen door, we configured the doors so none of them bump into each other. We are very happy we will now be able to access our patio and backyard so easily, thanks to this additional space. I'm sure this area of our home will get plenty of use, since its the first and last space my family and I will enter / leave during our daily routine. The mudroom space below is a great (larger scale) example of the space I want to create for our home. Comfortable bench seating, a spot for bags and backpacks and upper concealed storage space.

via Pinterest

I can picture a pair of these hooks attached to painted board above a bench. I'm hoping to find the perfect small bench for a spot on Craigslist for our mudroom area of our new space. 

via Target

Our new laundry room / mudroom is shaping up nicely, I'll pictures of our new space once there's drywall up. Do you have a laundry room our mudroom area in your home? How do you keep your area organized?