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You’ve met my mudroom here, and you may have seen it on my house tour page. I’ve mentioned before that it isn’t as organized or functional as I wish it was.

Here’s the terrible-quality picture on my house tour page:

…but let’s get real people. This is how it really looks about 99% of the time.

Oh yeah, there it is. Shoes all over the place, the bench covered in so much stuff that no one EVER sits on it, hooks overflowing with jackets… not pretty. The worst part of this room is that it’s where I enter and exit every day, and it STRESSES me out. Not a good way to start or end the day. I totally think that everyone should walk into their home and feel like “ahhhhhhh.” The truth is, I do feel “ahhh” about my home in general, but not right when I walk in. I’ve been brainstorming for a while about what this room’s issues are and how I can fix them, and here’s some of the problems:

• Problem #1: The entry door. It swings toward the bench, which doesn’t sound like a problem but it is. When you open the door, you have to walk all the way around it to get to a space to take your shoes off. The closet is to the right when you walk in, so you really are forced to walk around the door before you can close it. I’m not sure if you can picture this, but trust me. It puts you in the middle of the mud room, and mud comes with you. This means mud ends up pretty much all over the floor — especially when it is snowy or rainy outside. And it’s Upstate NY we’re talking about here, so you do the math! (I know, I know — it’s a mud room! But I hate getting muddy socks when I’m getting shoes, or even when I’m just in there doing laundry!)

• Problem #2: The coat closet doors open right into the entry door. I designed this room and I was just so happy to have a mud room and a coat closet that I didn’t think little details like the doors being so close together would be a problem. Welllll, one year in and let me tell ya…. I avoid that coat closet like the plague. I hung shelves and had it all cutely organized this summer with little spray painted shoe boxes and I thought that would force me to use it, but it didn’t. Well, except to throw stuff in the mountainous pile of crap on the floor, or to dig for missing things and cut my hand on an ice skate. True story. I don’t have any pictures of it when I originally organized it, but here’s what it had looked like for the past several months.

• Problem #3: The bench and mirror. They’re too far apart. This has nothing to do with function. I simply think the gap between the two looks huge and weird. I originally wanted a mirror with hooks on the bottom or a long hook rail hung under the mirror, but Kreig didn’t think that would give us enough room to hang things, so we hung hook rails on either side of the mirror instead. This brings me to the next problem.

Problem #4: The hook rails. They aren’t big enough, and they are up too high for me. Oh, and I didn’t hang them right (I am guessing I didn’t use anchors, and the screws aren’t in studs, but I don’t really remember) so one of them is loose. Oh and see the little in/out box to the right of the door in the pic above? Yeah, we never use it. Probably because we would trip over a thousand shoes if we wanted to.

Problem #5: Not exactly the mud room’s problem, buuuttt I also want to start gating Piper and Axle in there during the day, instead of in our Master Bathroom where they get locked in now. It would just be so easy to take them right out when we get home instead of having to take our shoes off and go get them in the bathroom. Plus there’s an ugly dog bed and their dishes in our bathroom most of the time and I feel like dog stuff is taking it over. Also, it would be nice to move their food and water from the dining area into the mud room. They drip water all over the wood floors and I can constantly see little paw prints on our dining room floor when the sun shines in. Perhaps mopping more than once every six months would probably help this issue as well, but I’m crazy and making over a room seems way easier than mopping more often.

Okay, so those are the main issues with the room. I like other things about it, like the colors, the floor, the fact that the washer and dryer are in there, and merely the fact that the room exists. I know a lot of people would kill for a decent sized mud room, or any mud room for that matter (Mom!), so I’m not complaining or taking it for granted… I’m just going to give it lots of love so I can appreciate it even more.

So here’s my to-do list so far. It could take a completely different turn at any given moment, but here’s my plan as of today.

• Remove the doors from the coat closet. This way we can walk in and step to the right, into the closet and take our shoes off in there.
• Paint the coat closet to match the rest of the room. I originally painted it with a light blue-ish green color that I got by mixing some blues and greens from other spaces, mainly because I thought the navy would make the closets too dark. If I remove the doors, though, I want it to look like part of the room.
• Move the bench into the coat closet and create kind of a little mini-mudroom within a mud room area. Check out this inspiration pic. Mine won’t be as nice and built-in looking, but see what I’m saying?
• Upholster the bench, or create a removable cushion. This will double as a dog bed when we’re not home, so we don’t have to have an actual dog bed on the floor. Does this gross anyone out?
• Buy or make a gate for the hallway, so we can gate the dogs in the mud room when we leave.
• Hang coat hooks in the closet, above the bench along with maybe some shelves and baskets up high.
• Makeover a long dresser (from my childhood bedroom) to go in the bench’s place and provide storage for extra coats, sweatshirts, and maybe even shoes. I think I’ll do better with storing coats if I can fold them instead of hanging them.
• Hang some shelves and/or a rod in the laundry closet. Right now there are no shelves in there so there’s a lot of wasted vertical space going on. I may use the shelves that are in the coat closet now, but I haven’t decided yet.
• Remove the hook rails from the wall and repair the holes left behind.
• Relocate the key hooks and dog leashes closer to the door. Their location now (right next to the hallway archway) causes a lot of mud too, because we have to walk across the mud room with our shoes on when we forget to grab our keys.
• Oh, and this one is so embarrassing… Paint the doors and trim. Because I never did when I was supposed to. You know, before we moved stuff in the house. Before I did a zillion other unnecessary projects. Before I decided I didn’t need closet doors anyway. Well, at least I have two less doors to paint now.

I’m sure this list will grow and change forty times, but here it is right now, so hopefully that gives you an idea of where I’m going with this room. And if you’re saying “Wait, did she ever finish her office? Or the living room/kitchen makeover?” then just diagnose me with ADD right now. I’ll understand. The office is almost done, and the living room is done except I can’t make a decision about what to recover my pallet ottoman with, so I’m kind of dragging my feet on revealing that. So, I guess you could say I work best when I bounce around from room to room? Please leave me stories of your own decorating ADD in the comments… I know someone must feel the same way, right? …right?

You might remember that before I started transforming our spare room into an office, there was a white and gray striped mirror hanging above the bed.  I got it for some ridiculously small price at a yard sale.  It was originally wood, then I painted it lime green and hated it, so then I painted it white and added gray stripes.  Ahh, there it is — off center and way too small for that wall.

Bbbuuut when I started turning that room into an office, I put a different mirror on the wall and this guy was homeless.  And I was sad.  Because I love it and its unique shape…. so I waited for inspiration to strike.  Well, guess where it struck?  Yup, in the bathroom.  I didn’t hate the mirror in there, but it was kind of blending in with the tan walls.

I really loved the stripes on the mirror, but they just weren’t going to work with the tan walls.  So I brought her outside and sanded her down until I couldn’t feel the ridges of the stripes anymore.

After sanding, it actually looked really cool… note to self.

Then I just gave the whole frame a few coats of white glossy spray paint and hung it up above the sink in the spare bathroom.

And there it is… so much more of a statement!

And here’s an attempt at the view from the hallway…

I love how a little update like this can really make a room feel like new!

Oh and speaking of this bathroom, I was so excited when I saw my wall-mounted baskets featured on iHeart Organizing, hands down one of my favorite blogs in the world… check it out here!!! And while you’re there check out Jen’s house tour and be ready to wipe the drool from your mouth… the woman is a genious.  I pretty much want to be her when I grow up.

Did you think I forgot that I even started this office makeover? Although I was temporarily a bit distracted by the kitchen/living room, this office has certainly been on my mind. The last part I showed you was our desk all attached to the wall.

I still need to add some sort of skirting to hide the wall cleats, but other than that, the actual desk part is ready to be used. I knew right from the start that I wanted some floating shelves a over the desk, and I loved the idea of a big mirror in the middle. It just so happened that I had a big round mirror in the perfect wood tone hanging kind of pointlessly in the yellow room. I originally had this guy in the hallway and didn’t like it, so I threw him up in the yellow room just to kind of fill some wall space in there… Plus I figured it would be better hanging on a wall somewhere than sitting in a closet. So I stole the big guy from the yellow room and hung him centered over the desk. This immediately gave the space some vertical interest that it had been lacking.  Of course I didn’t get an in-progress pic with just the mirror, but here it is in the yellow room… right above the chairs that I also stole.

Next up were some shelves. I picked up four 24″ white shelves at Lowe’s for a few bucks a piece, but I could decide on brackets. Lowe’s sells a variety of metal brackets, but I kind of wanted more of a statement. I looked at wood corbels that you traditionally see on other pieces of furniture, like supporting countertops on an island, but they are seriously expensive! So I was kind of stuck for a whole trying to figure out what I wanted.

And then I went to IKEA on our little anniversary mini-vacation. Yes, a day spent in Heaven IKEA is my idea of a romantic getaway. They had loottttts of brackets for me to choose from. I immediately loves the shape of these ones. I originally thought I wanted to paint them white, but then I thought staining them would be a cool contrast, and of course tie in withe all that other wood. Whenever I start with raw wood and can’t decide between paint and stain, I go with the stain because its easy to paint over stain, but not so easy to stain after painting.  So I spread them out on garbage bags on our island, and went to town.

I used this stuff… Cabot’s “Red Oak” … it’s pretty close to our cabinets (and the desk), as well as the bamboo blinds in the office and throughout our kitchen and living room.

Then they stayed there to dry for ohhh, about a week.  I’m kind of crazy about keeping my island clean and bare so I can use every inch for food prep, but at the same time I am totally willing to let half-done projects take over the counter on a regular basis…. total nut job, right?

Once the stain was dry (It took a few days! Ughhh, I hate waiting!) I was ready to hang the shelves.  To visualize the position of the shelves, I used painter’s tape to  temporarily attach them to the walls.  Then I could step back and make adjustments.  Once I was happy, I marked the bottom right corner of each one to use as a guide. We still had to measure and make sure everything was level, but I felt more confident seeing the general location first.

We marked and drilled holes, hammered in some drywall anchors (since the bracket locations aren’t lined up with studs), and screwed the brackets to the wall and popped the shelves on top.  So here we are with all of them hung… starting to look like an office, right?!

Now the only thing that’s bothering me like crazy is the curtains… I know, I know, I said they were perfect, but in person the white with cream stripes reads overall as off-white, and it looks totally clashy with the bright white shelves and bright white chairs… see what I mean above and below?

So there may be another change in store for the window, but my wheels are still turning on that as well…. You know I’ll keep you posted!

Next up, aside from actually putting some stuff on my shelves,  I seriously need to clean the big pile of crap directly across from the desk… I almost broke a bone trying to take these pictures!

We left off on our little board & batten adventure when I finally got my chunky board attached to the wall. With my hole-filler drying and the bottom section of the wall painted with a coat of semi-gloss white, I started with my smaller boards, to go below the chunky top piece.

I had a few options for these lower boards. I lot of people use wood or MDF in the same dimensions as their top piece, but this creates an issue with most baseboards. If I had used more 1×6 boards, (or 1x anythings, really) the boards would have stuck out further than our baseboards. Some people replace their baseboards to deal with this, and others cut a 45-degree angle at the bottom of the boards to create sort of a visual illusion and avoid replacing baseboards. I definitely wasn’t ready to tackle something that required a table saw and no way was I replacing my baseboards, so I decided to use lattice strips like John and Sherry used. I found them in with all the other lattice at Lowe’s, near the other lumber. I found white pieces that are made out of some sort of composite material… It almost seems like really really dense styrofoam, if that makes any sense.

Not only did using these lattice pieces allow me to avoid baseboard issues, but they are also super lightweight so they’re easier to work with, and this stuff is much cheaper than wood or MDF. I got 8′ strips for something like $4 a pop.

I started out by measuring the distance between the bottom of my horizontal piece of MDF and the top of my baseboards. Then, I cut three pieces of lattice to the correct length. I used a handsaw that I got with a miter box at Lowes… It was something rediculously cheap, like $6 or $7… definitely worth it. Because the lattice is that weird plasticy composite material, it’s tough to cut a clean edge.

Nothing a little sandpaper couldn’t grind off… I smoothed the edges of all my vertical pieces and I was ready to hang them on the wall. I let my inner math geek out and did what I thought would be a super fun word problem…. I measured the width of the wall, subtracted the width of all three lattice pieces, and divided that by four. I came out with 12 and 3/4″ for the spacing in between each piece of lattice. I used a pencil and a level to mark a spot for each piece of lattice. Then I just used some liquid nail to attach them to the wall. If you have a nail gun, I would just throw some nails in there, but I was so done with nailing/screwing that I was ready to put my faith in some strong glue. Thankfully the strips are so light that it holds them up perfectly.

So here we are with my three vertical pieces all glued to the wall.

Then I cut four horizontal pieces to go in between each vertical piece. I used the same process to cut and glue those to the wall.

I sort of freaked a little when I saw how wonky the seams looked. YIKES!

Normal people would have used caulk to deal with it, but I’m seriously not good at caulking, so I turned to my BFF once again.

Yup, I slathered some nail hole filler over the seams, and sanded it off once it was dry. I probably broke some carpentry rule or something, but I was happy with the results. After that was dry and sanded smooth, I painted two more coats of semi-gloss white paint (same as all of our trim) on everything. I was worried that I should have painted the wall with enough coats before I started attaching my lattice, but in the end I was glad I only did one coat first, because there were so many pencil marks all over the wall, and plus, the paint over everything at once kind of his some gaps and really made everything look seamless and finished. Once that was dry, we attached hooks for coats, dog leashes, etc… and here we are!

Every blog post I have read about board and batten says that pictures don’t do it justice, and I always thought it was weird because it looks pretty darn good in pictures, but seriously it is sooo pretty and dimensional and interesting in person. I may or may not pet it every time I walk by it… You’ll just have to come over to see what I’m saying! You can even come in the front door and I’ll have a place for your coat.

So there you have it…. my almost-done-completely-by-myself board and batten project. The only thing Kreig did was hang the hooks, and that was just because I was feeling lazy.

I still have another project planned to really define the front entry area, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, do you love the board and batten? Tell me you want to pet it too!

Linking up at Home Stories A to Z, Bower Power Blog Young House Love, Sparkle Meets Pop and RedBirdBlue.