Our Mudroom

Hello friends!

I hope you all are well.

It's good to be back at my computer, 'visiting' with you.

At the end of my last post I showed you this picture of our mudroom...

As I've written here before, one of my goals for this blog is to record the house projects we work on.

We've been in our farmhouse for nine years, and we're starting to see some of the projects we completed early on now needing to be touched up.

Like our mudroom for example.

Recently we noticed it needed a little attention.

Not a complete overhaul, since we did that already. 

Just a touch-up.

To start at the beginning, here are a few photos of the mudroom right after we moved in...

It's hard to take photos of this room because it's a super tiny space.

Basically when entering through the back door, there are a few stairs that go down into the basement, next to a few stairs that take you up into the kitchen.

That's it.

Not much at all for storage or anything else.

As you can see, the trim and the stairs were painted this orangey-tan color.

And the floor was carpeted...

We re-did this room seven years ago, so I hardly remember it ever looking like this.

Micah ripped up the carpet and installed slate tile...

It has proved to have been a good choice for our mudroom over the past seven years.

I would pick this tile again.

As for the stairs, I had a vision of a faux 'runner', so I measured and taped off, and painted a runner down the center in this light aqua blue color...

I can remember really loving it at the time.

But seven years and four kids later, my paint job was really showing its age.

Earlier this summer there were even complete gouges taken out of it...

We decided to sand it all down and paint it again.

A seven-year run isn't too bad, we thought!

And while we were at it, we wanted to re-do the basement steps, too.

They look dirty, but it's actually the paint worn and chipped off...

Micah scraped it all down...

And now here it is repainted...

It feels great to have this fresh again!

And as for the kitchen stairs, I still liked my faux runner and wanted to do it again.

 Only this time in a darker color because I thought it'd be more practical for us.

So I measured and taped off...

(I tried to remember how I did it seven years ago!)

And here we are today...

Because I had been so used to the lighter paint color, this new dark color is a bit jarring to me.

I hope I will adjust!

I picked it because I thought it would help disguise the dirt that gets tracked in through the back door.

So today our mudroom looks like this...

Behind the door is a small cubby that Micah built when we re-did this room initially.

 I still like it...

We slipped plastic boot trays into it to help keep the kids shoes tidy and up off the floor.

But of course, anybody who has kids knows that this doesn't mean shoes won't still be randomly kicked off and piled up all over the floor. 

*eye roll

It's just such a small space, we had to be creative with what we had.

I'd love to have a mudroom like you see in modern homes today... Spacious with tons of storage. But we chose a very old home, therefore we've had to learn to make do with tiny bathrooms, tiny closets, and this tiny mudroom.

(Homes were built so differently years ago! But I suppose that's a topic for another post.)

So if you ever come to visit me, you're welcome to come around the back and enter through our mudroom!

I'll keep a hook empty for you to hang your coat.

See you soon...

xo,

~ Courtney ~