I have been dreaming of a beautiful, organized mudroom. One where all the shoes in the house can reside and coat hooks abound. A place that can give us order and calm upon walking in the door. And a few weeks ago that dream began to come to fruition. As we near the project finish line, I wanted to break down my Farmhouse Mudroom Makeover and show you the true workhorses I started with, the cabinetry.
Before
Here’s what we were working with.
There was also a closet and had we utilized it better, we might have made this work longer. But it kind of ended up being the black hole of the back portion of the house. Often, after searching high and low for something, I’d find it stashed in that closet with other random stuff. If someone didn’t know where to put things, they stuck it there.
Despite my attempt to use the space for things that made sense, it just wasn’t working out. Often, shoes and bags blocked the door making it hard to access. I knew removing the closet would work better for us in the end.
Demo
Once everything was moved out we took out the closet. With the proper tools, IronFish and I removed it in an evening. Our mudroom was the house’s original laundry room. The previous owners moved the laundry to the basement. While I wasn’t keen on that originally, it turned out to be a wonderful situation for us. Three of our bedrooms are right across from the basement door. With the washer and dryer just at the bottom of the stairs, I really couldn’t get any closer to them. It’s made doing laundry so much easier (IronFish used to have to go down two flights of stairs in the old house). I actually do more laundry now than I ever did in our old house.
Yep, IronFish spoils me, he does my laundry! The girls do their own and we all assist and oversee O-Man’s, but he’ll be doing his own soon enough.
But, since this used to be a laundry room, the water source and drain was still accessible. I can have a sink in my mudroom!
Houston, We Have a Problem
Then, of course, we realized we’d opened a can of worms… or rather ants! Before we knew it, we’d taken the space down to the studs in over half of it. Once we got the drywall dropped, we confirmed that there had been a few different issues at some point in time. As a result, there was a gap in the siding making it perfect for an ant colony to expand under the floating floor. Funny thing was, we had never seen ants in the mudroom before! Thankfully, they were just of the harmless nuisance variety. IronFish took care of everything, inside and out.
Now with the drywall down, it was obvious the R7 insulation wasn’t enough to keep out the chill. I’m sure the fact that several of the stud cavities didn’t have any insulation didn’t help either. Before replacing the insulation we made the water and drain more accessible for a sink instead of a washing machine. (Picture above is with the new insulation installed).
The old electrical, which was no longer active was also removed and new outlets were better positioned. A GFCI was installed since a sink will be within range.
Clean Slate
New drywall installed, taped, and mudded and we were ready for cabinets!
We used the same cabinets we used for our custom built-ins for IronFish’s office. The company (Fabuwood) is based out of New Jersey and I’ve been very pleased with the quality. We ordered everything through our local building supply company. I love the clean, crisp finish of the Galaxy Frost cabinets. It’s the exact same shade of white as the white paint we used on all the trim in the whole house. It doesn’t even need to be matched, it’s the base shade and happens to be exact.
Because storage is a must, I wanted to get as much in the 60 square feet as I could. Fabuwood works in standard cabinet dimensions, they don’t do custom sizes. It’s part of what keeps their prices down. Because I view design as a giant puzzle, this wasn’t a problem for me. Since the closet was in place when I had to measure for my cabinets, I wasn’t 100% sure on exactly how much space I had from the wall to the window. Once the new drywall was in place, it was easy to see I had 45″. I had played it safe and ordered 27″ and 15″ upper cabinets. Two of each, all 30″ tall. This worked perfectly, just enough space for the window trim.
We hung the first row as close to the ceiling as we could and still keep them level. The walls were still a bit wonky, but so much better than before we replaced the drywall! The ceiling also slopes almost a full inch across the span of the room.
Once the top row was in place and joined, we hung a second identical row below it.
Base Cabinets
Finally, we slid in the base cabinets and secured them to the wall and each other. My original plan had been for a 24″ sink base. Fabuwood doesn’t offer that size; 27″ is the smallest. I did have to make up the difference in the drawer base to the right of the sink base. Because the finished room is just shy of 96″, I used a 30″ drawer base and a 36″ drawer base. Filler strip was cut to fill the gap between the sink base and the wall.
The crisp white cabinets brighten up the room so much and are the perfect foundation for the farmhouse feel I am going for.
Storage Galore
I’ll be sharing next how we made the counter tops to look like reclaimed barn wood.
But here’s a sneak peek of the drawers and cabinets in use! Truth is, once we got the counter tops in, we started filling the cabinets and I worked around things for the rest of the project. There is only so much chaos in my living room I can handle.
The dividers came from the old shoe storage, which had been in my closet in our old house. I made a few cuts to make them fit into the cabinets.
What do you think?
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