Mudroom Doors and Drawers.

I’m so excited to kick off the new year with a new project and this one is a good one that I think will resonate with a lot of you!

We have a small mudroom that’s essentially a hallway connecting our garage and powder room to the rest of the main floor. Our builder had originally built a bench and a few upper shelves with cubbies and hooks that I initially thought were pretty great (coming from an apartment, this was a huge upgrade!).

Fast forward six years and another child later, our little mudroom seemed to be bursting at the seams with shoes, hats and gloves, coats, backpacks, etc. Given the layout of our home, I knew that it wasn’t an option to make this space any larger but that didn’t mean it couldn’t work smarter for us.

We had been using baskets under the bench to corral shoes but they didn’t quite fit the cubbies perfectly and so there were always shoes falling out. On the upper shelves, we had some more baskets that were also overflowing with spare hats, socks, lunchboxes, etc.

If we were to add drawers to the bottom of the bench, we could hold more shoes and the whole space would look much cleaner. And if we could simply extend the upper cabinet doors to cover the lower cubby portion as well, wouldn’t that look a whole lot nicer?!

Of course this was a project that I’ve had in my head for years but there was always something more important to tackle first. When we kicked off the new year, I wanted to dive right into projects to keep myself busy and thought this might be the perfect first project to take on: Nothing too complicated but with a huge impact!

I asked my contractor to come by (this job was hired out!) and had him measure everything and then I showed him a few sketches and inspo picks that I had saved and he got to work! The larger upper cabinet doors were the first to be added and just them alone made a HUGE difference!

Larger upper cabinet doors built and installed!

Next, we fitted sliding drawers into the cubbies at the bottom of the bench and added a matching face. I opted for soft close drawers, which I absolutely recommend (you can only imagine how often these drawers would be slammed shut by the kids each day!!). So they close perfectly and quietly and even unpainted, they looked so good!!!

Next came a little surprise. I had always planned to paint the doors and drawers white to match the rest of the built-in unit but as soon as I saw them unfinished, I knew that I wanted a little bit of contrast with a color. Nothing too crazy, but something that would really warm up the space and make it pop. I very quickly settled on Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter and opted to paint everything this color (doors, drawers, bench, beadboard, everything. I left the trim and the garage and bathroom doors white (which is Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace). And I LOVE it!!!

Instead of painting everything white again, I opted to paint the built-in and walls Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter.

After a day of letting the paint dry, I moved the cushion and throw pillows back in and laid down the rug (i’m including sources to everything at the very bottom of this post). The next step was to choose hardware and because I’m the most indecisive person ever when it comes to my own home, I ordered all of the hardware in both brass and polished nickel because I needed to see it all together in person to make the final decision.

Once the hardware arrived, I knew that brass was the clear winner and installed it immediately. And yep, it works. The mudroom isn’t entirely complete yet but less than a week diving into this project, it’s almost there. My next step is to swap out the black coat hooks with coordinating brass hooks and to update the wallpaper with something fun but for now, I’m really content. The very space that used to stress me out if now a happy little corner that I don’t mind passing by!

Here are a few more photos of the space: