Laundry Room & Mud Room Remodel: Problems and Solutions - Part 1

As pretty much all of our Facebook friends know, we started a laundry room & mudroom remodel last July. I had been dreaming, designing, pinning on Pinterest, talking, and trying to convince the parties I would need to get involved about it since shortly after we moved in back in 2013. Finally, Adam decided that he had heard enough, and decided to rip down a wall for my birthday present.

There were several problems with the way in which these two rooms were designed back in 1996 when our house was built.

Problem: When you walked in from the garage you walked into the laundry room, then walked through the laundry room to get to the mud room to hang up you jacket and kick off your shoes or boots (we do live in Minnesota, so there's a lot of boot-wearing!). Now, add four kids into that mix. The kids stopped right at the door, sat down on the floor, and took off their shoes, which were then left in the middle of the walkway for us to trip over when we tried to make it to the correct room to put our things away.

Solution: The rooms needed to be switched. This was the biggest challenge and I needed my dad on board with the idea. He would be able to move all the plumbing and the gas line around in order for the washing machine, gas dryer, and laundry tub to be relocated. Once Adam decided to start ripping down walls, he didn't have much of a choice.


Problem: The only place to hang up jackets was on a closet rod (those wire shelf ones with the rod underneath). This problem is two-fold. The rod was too high for the kids and the kids (and Adam most days!) don't know how to use hangers.

Pinterest

Solution: We needed hooks for jackets, and enough of them for six people's worth of jackets. I loved the Pinterest pictures of the lockers for each person in the family, but I didn't think the locker style was quite right for us.


Problem: With six people living in a house, comes six people's worth of shoes, and other than the floor or a box, we didn't have any place to put them. The usually ended up all over the floor.

Pinterest

Solution: We needed a shoe shelf with several shelves.

Problem: The kids love playing outside in the winter, which means hats, mittens, and scarves were always laying around on the floor. There was no good place for them to put them where they could reach them when they wanted to go outside.

Pinterest

Solution: We needed cubbies that the kids could reach to put their stuff in. In all honesty, when we started this, I wasn't sure how that would look. I had several different ideas, and it took me a while to settle on one.

Problem: I almost always use the awesome drying rack that my Godmother gave us when we got married, and seldom use the gas dryer. With the way the laundry room and mud room were built, there wasn't enough space for it to be in there. When it was nice out in the summer, I put it out on the deck to catch that fresh breeze. But, as I said earlier, we're in Minnesota, there's a long stretch of cold, snowy winter that doesn't mix well with drying clothes outside, so it ended up in my living room for a good part of each year. With small children playing nearby, wet clothes were often pulled down and thrown on the floor.

Solution: We needed to configure the new laundry room in such a way that there was floor space for the drying rack to be set up. Since there isn't any breeze like there is outside to help dry clothes, I also wanted a ceiling fan to help move the air to dry the clothes quicker. I also wanted an exhaust fan to suck all the moist air out of the room on those rainy days in the summer that I can't set it up outside.


More Posts About Our Remodel
Find out how we paid $235 for a brand new washer and dryer set!