No room mud room

l I have always longed for a mudroom. A place for backpacks and coats and wet snow pants and boots. What I have now is a small laundry room that walks through to a bathroom.  Years ago I put up a rack with 5 wood pegs for coats.  I used to caution the kids not to hang their backpacks on them because I feared the pegs were not strong enough.  The parade of homes got me thinking about a better use of the space.  I loved the board and batten treatment that we did in Laura's room so much and figured it would be an easy thing to do here.  So I painted the wall part way up.  I actually measured it out so that I could make the best use of the 2 inch boards by just cutting them in half. 

We did have a little bit of a struggle getting those original 'pegs on the board' off the wall, and had some repair work to patch.  We put up a 3 inch board across the top and the bottom, and then the slats vertically running between them.    When we finished the basement a few years ago, we bought an air compressor and have a nail gun attachment. It makes short work for this kind of a project. So in just a few hours time for a total of about $80 for the wood, paint and stainless steel hooks I bought, I have a mini mudroom look.

This winter when I have grandchildren visiting I will have a place for them to hang their coats and drop their boots.

I am very happy with how it turned out!

Parade of Homes- snipets

I absolutely love going to the Annual Salt Lake Parade of Homes. I look for easy decorating ideas, see what is trending in home decor and color and I almost always come home and clean and declutter my house because the Parade homes are so perfect (no one is living in them, so yeah!). This year the accent colors in the homes were aqua blues, oranges and yellows. Yellow and gray combinations showed up a bunch too. I discovered succulents are the trending plant accents.

I'm always looking for bathroom ideas, some day we will need to update the master bathroom..so why not a fireplace in the shower?

I have been wanting a cabinet like this one between the sinks for years, I would opt for a big place at the bottom with access to the electrical outlet where I could store a hairdryer and curling iron. (Below) This was an interesting decorating idea for a boys room, but the cars are hot glued on and in the real world, that just wouldn't cut it. I am thinking there must be a cool way to do something like this and be able to use the cars.

I spent a lot of time looking at Mud rooms and garage entry halls... I am actually in the process of updating a wall in my laundry room because of it. (I forgot to take a before picture, but will post about that soon)

I found cozy spots, and rooms that were charming:

I failed to take more pictures of an incredible home that was built from donations for a family with 6 children with special needs.. but the little boys and girls room was fashioned after Rapunzel. This is the boys room:

The girls room was cute too. They had light switches at the floor level, an elevator, a sink in the kitchen that was also floor level for a gal that scoots around. It was awesome. this is the website if you want to see: http://www.utahparade.com/bf/ut/slhba/mem/home.jsp?hid=2900&pid=1140 .. I haven't blogged for a while on purpose. I linked my china hutch redo to a popular blog and have had hundreds of hits. It's a little scary especially when they are coming from all over the US and Canada as well as Japan, Russia, Latvia, Isreal, etc. I don't think I'll do that again but it has been fascinating.