The Blind Thistle

After nearly two years of trying to make our mudroom work, it finally got what it needed. . A makeover! I love me a makeover.

Never having had a mudroom before, I clearly underestimated just how much it would be used. This room actually serves as the primary entrance to our house- it wasn’t meant to be that way but here we are. The house told me this is the way it would be. If I had to guess I would say that this room is used probably 20+ times a day- between doing chores, letting the dogs out to the yard, feeding the dogs, taking garbage out and doing yard work, It all happens here.

As you can imagine with all the goings on in here the walls and floor take a lot of abuse. I originally opted for white walls because I had envisioned a bright, sunny space but the white got so damaged and dirt covered it just wasn’t practical. It was looking dirty and worn. This room gets a lot of light all day long so my choice to partially paint the walls in a dark, dark grey didn’t concern me. Keeping the upper walls in white helps to keep the room bright as it reflects the light. The contrast between the light and dark also helps me with my low-vision needs.

The exterior of our house is a dark grey board an batten and I wanted to mimic that in here so we bought 2 inch wide MDF strips and topped it off with a plain 4″ wide top panel. It was so easy to install and cost was minimal.

When we were still in the designing stages of the house, I opted to not have a wall of closets built along the length of one wall as it would have made the somewhat small space feel even smaller. You might cringe at the thought of losing storage space but we really don’t need it. (We have been paring back on “stuff” before we moved and even more since)

Now I knew we would need someplace to hang our jackets so I got a bank of lockers that would take only a small footprint in the room, in my humble opinion it has so much more character than a bit of drywall and doors. We added hooks around the perimeter of the room for hanging items as well.

So finally we have a space that is practical and looks good. It took only two days for the Beard to complete this room and one day for me to faff about in there. There is space for everything and it reflects the countryside that we live in.