Monday, July 26, 2010

Mudroom Redo



I am going to apologize first, This is the wordiest post I have EVER done! Sorry about that but I thought maybe some of you could benefit from my quest for the best storage!!
I have been trying for years to renovate our mudroom. I took better before pictures but can't find them now! bummed! It has gone through many phases and storage ideas. I tried a table that was meant for the kitchen that was bar height to be used to pay bills etc. .. . We ended up using this as a dumping ground. An in-expensive bench found at Lowes ended up have shoes piled in front of it instead of in it. When we renovated our Attic I had an estimate done for built in cabinets and the estimate came back at almost $4000! Really!!! I thought truly I can come up with something that will work for under that!
Well it took me 3 years and it is finally done! Here are two pictures and I will try my best to describe everything. I searched so long to pull everything together and truly one trip to Ikea and another to Target and we are set!
Here is what I purchase and the approximate price:
Ikea Aspelund 3 door Wardrobe $199
2 small chests from Ikea for His & Her shoes, $39/each
2 baskets from Ikea $16.99
From Target, Barrel Planter for $19.99, 3 plastic drawer organizers $6.99/each, 3M Hooks (4 pkgs) 2.99/each, Post It organizers 2 pkgs for total of $12.00
Thirty OneSquare Utility Totes $24.50 each
Now math is so not my strong point but I believe this adds up to around $460. So for less than $500 and a lot of sweat (and blood). I managed to do the mudroom and have great storage and looks to boot! :-) I will have to confess, we did barter out the painting with a friend. We exchanged a 1 year old love seat for his painting services. It was so worth it! I did however thanks to many of you blogging about it do the wainscoting all by myself. It isn't the most perfect job but I am very impressed with the outcome.
Here is a picture of the wardrobe from Ikea!

This room was very hard to take a picture of the whole thing! Along the one wall as you can see, I have the Ikea wardrobe, baskets as mentioned on top for storage, and on either side of the ward robe I have "his" and "her" chests that my kids can sit on if needed and store the adult shoes. The art of the "Big girl panties" I posted before hangs on my side and on the other side is my hubby's art. He is the CTO of his own company so yes I am married to a geek (and love him deeply for it)! I got the idea for the art on another blog that has the "Be Calm and Carry On" link to it. The message board is on the left hand side of the room and it came from my Grandfather's farm window. When I got it the glass was already out if it and I tacked a white erase board on the back and hung it. It keeps phone numbers handy.

The photos below are from the inside of the wardrobe. I tried to maximize as much storage of out this 3 door wardrobe as I could! It has a hanging bar up top behind the two far left doors (one of which is mirrored!). Inside this I have an area for my kids shoes (the thirty one organizers with their names on it) and the pink and blue bins are for mittens/hats. On the inside of these doors I laminated a page with the days of the week, put it on a clipboard and hung this on a 3m hook. I am making one for each child and hope this will help them remember assignments and other activities. Behind the 3rd door of the wardrobe there are shelves, my husband & I each have a storage tote from Thirty One that holds our mail, gloves other "crap":-) The middle and bottom shelf I have put our file with the bills extra paper for our printer that we have downstairs, and used the 3M hooks to hang scissors, keys etc . . On the inside of the third door I found these great pockets from Post It. I was going to make and hang fabric pockets but these were already made and at a total of $12, it was a good bargain. I have one for coupons, another for menus and another for hubby's mail.

2 comments:

  1. Oooh...I love being organized and you have done a great job! It looks great.

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  2. I got sidetracked by the post below =) But wanted to say what a truly great job you did!! I'm impressed with all of those cool organizers. Boy howdy, could I use some tips on *organizing* -Tammy

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