Oh wow... What a week!
After many a moon, we have come near the end of our mudroom renovation journey. This has been a huge project. I'm not going to lie to the bloggisphere that it was "so easy" or "only took a few hours."
However... by phasing out our remodeling, we were able to be easier on our budget, energy and our time. It's frustrating at times because we wanted to just get the project done. But we have small children who we love dearly and they come first.
A little flashback: We started back in January with a former galley laundry room. We moved the laundry room into an upstairs closet directly above its former location.
Here's the room before we did much to it:
We put in a slate tile floor. We bought the stocked slate at Home Depot.
And then for many months, we used a store bought bench we had on hand to be a placeholder for where our custom mudroom bench was going to be. Even though I knew that this room was going to be under construction all these months, I couldn't leave this room in "contruction zone" condition for the sake of the wee ones.
We dreamed a lot. We labeled places where we thought things should be.
And then we waited until we had another opportunity to work on it.
Five months later (*yawn*), we awoke from our parental stupor and decided to finish the mudroom before school starts.
We needed a bench and a back wall with hooks.
Dan began the task of building a bench. I'd like to give you step-by-step instructions as to how he did this, but I can't. Here's what I can tell you: He did a lot of measuring, cutting and sweating. A great big, fun puzzle.
Eve liked to help him:
After many days of taking his time and building something that looked like a mudroom bench, we saw this:
Can it be? Pinch me. It's here. We opted to keep one side taller for boots and the other side shelved to put our flats there. We also wanted to have room to put our tushes on the bench and not be squished by coats hanging BEHIND the bench. We made the bench an ample 24" deep.
We also wanted the kids to be able to climb onto it, so we kept it about 20" tall.
Did I mention that the kids were sick? Poor things were crying at night and weary during the day. I let them watch TV to keep their mind off their sickness.
I wish, wish, wish I had more pics of Dan building the back of the mudroom bench.
Basically, we installed a 4' piece of plywood behind the bench.
Then we screwed 1 x 2s every foot or so to give it a finished look. I think it looks Cape Cod-ish but Dan says Craftsman.
It was so thrilling to see him install the hooks:
At the end of the week, we had a mudroom bench and the hook wall. Eve tested out their strength.
What can I say? She liked it.
Next project? Sew a cushion for the bench and add a few finishing touches.
