How many people dream of a mudroom that looks like this?

Mudroom by Country Club Homes via Houzz

Yeah. Me too.

This was not in the cards for our mudroom update.

Some day, I plan on having this mudroom. However, that will involve demoing the current mudroom, building a front porch, relocating the front door, constructing an attached garage and converting part of the pool room to my dream mudroom–complete with heated floor and built-in cabinetry. This is a project that is somewhat, shall we say, down the road.

My current mudroom project was all about the budget challenge: make the room both functional and pretty for minimal money. That meant DIYing, reusing and lipsticking. You know, a makeover, not plastic surgery.

The first decision that I made was exactly what colour of lipstick. It might be an unconventional choice for make-up, but I knew I wanted to go blue–something like the sky outside. The mudroom is a transitional space between inside and out. It seemed appropriate to reference nature. While paint usually intensifies when it’s put on the walls, I was worried that the colour actually might appear lighter in the mudroom, given the number of windows we have. When I saw Wythe Blue on House of Turquoise, I knew I’d found my paint.

Wythe Blue via House of Turquoise

I may be more than a year late to the Wythe Blue party, given that Benjamin Moore named it colour of the year for 2012, but I finally made it.

Inspired by this entryway update from Casa de Lewis, I considered installing paneling, or board and batten, or even just a very simple plate rail.

Board and batten entryway from Casa de Lewis

But then I remembered that with two doors, a window and a large closet, actual wall space was pretty limited, and I decided that extra mill work wasn’t worth the effort (plus, let’s be real here, it would have upped the budget ever so slightly, and I am super cheap).

I also wanted a place to sit down and put on/take off my shoes. By that I mean, a better place than the park bench plopped in front of the closet doors. A simple rustic bench with enough space to tuck boots underneath would do nicely.

Rustic bench from Amy & Eric McVey on Design Sponge

My final inspiration is for a project you’ve already seen: the umbrella stand inspired by Karen’s Country-Living-inspired basket–wow, that’s very inspirational.

Rustic basket inspired by Country Living via The Art of Doing Stuff

My plan was to put it all together, cross my fingers and hope that when it came time for the big reveal, I had a tearjerker What Not To Wear moment and not an Extreme Makeover gone wrong.

And that will be coming up next.

What’s your favourite shade of blue paint? Have you added paneling on your walls? How do you handle seating in your entryway? Are you a What Not To Wear fan? Who remembers Extreme Makeover when it was plastic surgery?

How many of you out there dream of a proper mudroom? [Both hands way up]

I have always wanted a mudroom–a place to put jackets, shoes, bags, mail, keys, boots, gloves, hats, toys, leashes and everything else that seems to live in that in-between space of outside and in.

Since moving to the farm, I’ve learned that a mudroom is a necessity. Because, you see, there’s mud.

A transitional space where the mud (and leaves, grass, gravel, dirt and all of the bits that surround us) can stay is essential. Sure some of mother nature still ends up in the house, but sometimes she stops in the mudroom to look around first.

Fortunately, our house came with a mudroom. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite match up to the vision in my head.

Here are the befores, starting with a not-at-all-weird panoramic image composed of three pictures. At this point, I’d added a mat in front of the door and some boot trays in an attempt to corral some of the dirt. The bench was supposed to give people a place to sit down and take off their shoes. The fact that it was placed in front of the closet was only slightly inconvenient.

The good feature was that it was a big room (9 1/2 feet by 9 feet) with lots of natural light.

There was lots of space in the closet (if only we could access it) although the storage wasn’t as functional as it could have been. At the one end, the shelving was held up with the metal posts people normally use to stake trees. Of course, they were rusted.

The not so good features were that it was all the same flesh tone. And that flesh tone was made up of lots of different textures.

There was the painted anaglypta wallpaper on the closet doors, the pinwheel wallpaper on most of the walls, the painted brick where the addition tied into the original house and to top it all off the popcorn ceiling.

This definitely was not the first impression I wanted to give when people came to my house. And it’s not the first thing I wanted to see when I came home at night.

Stick around, and I’ll show you what I did to fix it.

But first, I want to hear from you. What’s your favourite feature of the original mudroom? What would you do to fix it? Do you have a mudroom? What is absolutely essential in your dream mudroom?