Large Family Small Mudroom/Laundry Room Farmhouse Style Ideas

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In this post I show you how we took our smallish mudroom/laundry room/pantry storage area from a total wreck to a functional space! I hope this inspires you to rethink a space that gives you grief! This post may contain affiliate links.

The Bane of my Existence

Dramatic? Perhaps, but if you’ve ever had a space in your home that was out of control, you know what I mean! This room has brought me to tears more times than I care to admit…and I’m not really a cryer!

So what was the problem with this mudroom/laundry room? Well, there were a few things. For one, it’s pretty small for a family our size. The shape is also awkward, it is the back entrance to the house, and it kind of bottle necks at the door. It is very narrow at the mudroom area, right where everyone comes in dropping muddy/snowy boots and coats in the winter, and wet swimming suits and towels in the summer.

There is a bathroom right inside the door as well. One that needs to be gutted and redone I might add. So, that’s a lot right there. However, it was also used as a laundry room and overflow pantry area, along with storage for anything and everything that didn’t have a home. This meant all of our sewing supplies, fabric, extra homeschool and craft stuff…you name it, it was probably crammed somewhere in this room!

The dimensions of the room are 8×9 at the widest part and 5×9.5 at the narrow part. So the total length of the mudroom/laundry room is 18.5 which doesn’t sound too bad, but that area from the door to the laundry area is only 5′ wide. That area feels very tight. However, now I think we have it to a place of being quite functional! I am so pleased with it now and it just makes me so doggone happy!!

One thing that helped

One major thing we did was put up our red metal barn. You can read about that here, here, here, and here. This allowed us to have a designated space for our sewing machine and fabric stash. Also, most extra homeschool and craft supplies went into that new space. What a relief that was! However, we were still left with quite a mess, although now, it really is just a mudroom/laundry room, with a little storage!

The Next Help

The next thing that helped was a challenge. I had an opportunity back in November to partner with Wagner Paint Sprayers. The challenge was to do an accent wall in our home, and to post the project on HomeTalk. It hit me that starting with the coat wall in the mudroom would be a great place to start. If I could get that under control, we at least wouldn’t be tripping over boots and shoes and coats that were falling down. Why were they falling down you ask? Well, because the drywall was crumbling of course!! Don’t ask me why, but it was, and all of the coat hooks were falling out of the wall along with the coats and snowpants! It was a MESS!!

So We Begin

We started with that one wall. I came up with the vision, and my amazing husband executed most of the projects. For the wall I chose stripes…mainly because I like to complicate EVERYTHING!

New Drywall

First my husband had to install new drywall. Fun fun! However, it had to be done.

How to make a custom mudroom bench

Next, I designed a boot storage area. This can be used to store boots underneath. My reason for this is that rubber boots ALWAYS fall over. Even if the person carefully places them upright (which never really happens let’s be honest) they always end up knocked over and lying on the floor.

The top can be used as a bench in the summer, but in the winter I have little cubes on top to catch hats, gloves, and scarves. Over the years I have come to realize that if the system is not almost as easy as throwing everything on the floor, my kids will not maintain it! So far, this system has been working! There has had to be a bit of correction…”no, hang up your snow pants, don’t cram them in the cube with your gloves.” The boot storage is great. It is narrow enough that they can fit one pair of boots, two for the smaller kids, it’s easy to kind of kick them off in there, and it keeps them upright and out of the walkway.

The whole thing can be moved away from the wall easily and swept out as well. They are allowed one pair of boots back here, two if they are small. All other shoes go to their rooms. Otherwise, the entire room is overtaken with shoes!

Measurements for the boot storage are as follows 96″long by 17″ tall. The openings are 11″ wide. He made this with 1×4’s joined together. He used 3 and a half 1×4’s for both the sides and top. You can see from the pictures how he notched out the boards to fit together, so that it sits snugly against the wall.

Coat Racks

The coat hooks that we had before were so cool, they were hairpin coathooks. I just loved the way they looked. However, they could not support the weight of heavy Carhart coats, and they just bent…and then fell out of the wall. So, we had to come up with a sturdier solution. Ben built these out of 1×6 pine. The one on the long wall is 8 ft long. The hooks are spaced at 12″ apart, with the first hook starting 7″ in on each side. He used a router to make the edge pretty. The hooks came from Menards. We used the paint sprayer to paint them white. The smaller one is 3 feet long, also with the hooks 12″ apart and the first hook starts only 1″ from the edge. He also made one for ball caps.

Here’s the “Laundry List” of Everything Else We Did to Our Small Mudroom/Laundry Room

The Ceiling

We live in the country which means one thing…flies. If you have ever lived near cattle, you know that cattle=flies. The ceiling in our mudroom was nasty! We tried scrubbing with bleach, but in the end we just had to paint it. It looks so nice…for now. Until the flies return in the Spring!

The Cabinets and Trim

Ben took down all of the cabinets and trim. They went out to the barn and got a fresh coat of white paint. We used Valspar Glossy white Paint plus Primer. We used the Wagner Flexio 5000 paint sprayer. It is really great for trim, shelves and cabinets.

Why stop with an accent wall of stripes?

Remember I like to complicate things? Yep, well if one wall of stripes looks good…wouldn’t a whole room look even better? Sure it would! So, the whole room got stripes!! We really love the way it looks. The colors are Glidden White on White and Glidden Light Pelican Grey.

For the stripes, the wall was first painted white. This base coat needs to dry for about 24 hours. Next, we measured where we wanted the stripes to go and made a tiny pencil mark. Ours are spaced 10″ apart, then a 1″ piece of painters tape, then 1/2″ space, then a 2″ piece of painters tape, then 1/2″ space then another piece of 1″ tape. This gave kind of a grain sack stripe look.

We used a self leveling laser, you can kind of see it on the wall and on my head in the picture below. This is the handiest little tool, we find ourselves using it all the time! We would just line up the laser on the little pencil mark and then tape over the laser line. This saved so much time, because we didn’t have to draw a pencil line down the entire wall. We just moved the laser for each line. It was time consuming, but not difficult.

Next, Ben used the paint sprayer to go over the whole wall with the grey. It only took one coat, and you don’t have to cut in. However, you need to do a good deal of prep to protect the ceiling and the floor from over spray. So, while the painting itself is quite effortless and goes super fast, understand that you will spend the time on prep.

New Cabinet Pulls

I had some leftover pulls from another project, so I replaced the shiny gold pulls with some that matched the coat hooks better. Gold and brass have been making a comeback I know, but I just can’t get on board! I have never liked it for my own home, but I can appreciate it in others.

A Bit of Rearranging

We moved the pantry storage area back to the laundry area, rather than right off the kitchen. This adds a few more steps to dinner prep, but moving the shelf opened up another small wall for the older boys coats. This really helped with the flow of the room. This is just extra pantry storage, we have a pantry in the kitchen, but when you buy everything in bulk, you need lots of storage.

Tubs for Gloves

These are the cubes I chose for the top of the boot storage. I really wanted something plastic or woven, but chose these because they were so affordable. They have gotten mud on them, but surprisingly it wiped right off. I like that they have a place for names, kids seem more inclined to use it if it has their own name on it! We will see how they hold up in the long run…I have my doubts that they will look nice for years and years.

Farmhouse Mudroom Ideas

Numbers

I just think numbers make everything cuter, so I added some chipboard numbers from Hobby Lobby over the coat hooks. I really wanted vinyl numbers, but had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted and decided to go with something a little more substantial. These are just spray painted black.

Hats Off

After we hung the hat rack, I couldn’t help but think it needed a little lettering above it too!

Butcher Block

On top of the washer and dryer we have a piece of butcher block with the edges routed. I know some people like their front loaders raised up off the floor. The appeal of that is there for me right now at 9 mos pregnant. However, I really like having a place to fold clothes. Also, I can leave the pods sitting on the top and the kids can easily reach them to do their laundry. Yes, my children do their own laundry! You can read about that here, it was my very first post!

Farmhouse mudroom accessories

I got this little sign at Hobby Lobby on Clearance years ago for around $4. It is super cute, but I decided that I would like to make one to share with you all. Which led me to make a couple more….

I hung the display on vintage hangers that I picked up at a yard sale a long long time ago. If you are a subscriber, you already have the password to my printable library. These free printables are there for you already! If you have not yet joined my mailing list, it’s easy, and I only e-mail you with new posts, no junk mail!

A Quick Video Tour

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