Our Tiny Efficient Mudroom!

I have the smallest mudroom in the world, but as one of my friends said, "at least you have one!" So true.  In our last house our mudroom was enormous it was an old family room and we didn't need 3 family rooms so we turned that one into a mudroom.  It had more room to make a mess.  This entry can only fit what you need, and all you need in a mudroom is a place to hang coats:

Unfortunately, I do not have a before of this space it was a mustard yellow-gold color.  Now it is Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams.  I love this color it is my new favorite house color.  During the day it is gray and at night it has a blue tone, in the morning it has a green tone.  Light and airy colors are my favorite.  So when I walk in my home I smile.  We found the boards in our 1895 barn and bought the hooks.  When you walk in the door you are greeted with a message wall:

It is fun to write on.  We use it to write holiday greetings,  Bible verses and reminders for the kids schedules.  It's always smudged with love!

My husband took out a super tiny closet.  He made one shelf for each of our 3 kids to store stuff in their baskets.  It is winter now so hats, gloves, socks, goggles, etc. are piled high in each one.  On their shelf they have room for their sports bags & sneakers.  They each have a hook for their backpacks.

The first two pics were taken at around 11am, and the bottom was taken late afternoon around 4:30. ( The door has a window and on the opposite side of the coats there is a window.  See how different the color looks? Fun!

It's been 2 years since I have been on here!!! YIKES

So, we moved...it is a long story, but the condensed version is we had a very traumatic break in to our home one where we could no longer live there and feel safe, too many bad memories :(  WE decided to turn our almost 5,000 square feet home into a two family.  All we really had to do is put up a couple walls add another kitchen and it was ready to rent.  The two beautiful families that live there are friends of ours, and they are so happy to be there.  That makes losing our home a little ok...

Our family is healing, with the help of so many wonderful friends and our family and most importantly we can not even imagine going through all that we went through without the faithful love of God.   We have moved on.  So, with a new beginning I am looking forward to sharing my new adventures, projects and of course my family with you.  I can't wait to post new family pictures under the family tab! They are so much bigger than those pictures.  I am now the shortest in my family. ;)

Here is our new space.  We bought a beautiful old house just right up the street.  Our new home was built in 1890 & is literally half the square footage of our other home.  We decided not to rent out our barn and thank God because we wouldn't have fit in our new place !!! Moving is hard and we had not planned on doing so in a very long, long time, but it was a great opportunity to get rid of A LOT of "stuff" we did not need.

Here is a picture of our new Space ;)

We didn't move in until the fall so we did not do any work to the landscaping yet! And oh, do we have big plans!!  I do want to paint the shutters black this summer, they are a rather bright cranberry color...not my favorite.  I also want to paint the door a nice bright color.  I'm not a big fan of having the shutters the same color as the door! Unfortunately we are knee deep in snow so that post will be far away :(  For now I will just share what I have for you.
In this house, here is my favorite space:

I have the cutest screened in porch, but I only got to enjoy it for two weeks before it got too cold to sit on! check out that spool of rope! We got it behind JCrew in NYC, they were going to throw it away!  We got 3 more! Dumpster diving in NYC is awesome!! Can you believe they were just going to throw them away?

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BATHTASITC!

The hallway kids bathroom is going to be my future laundry room, when we sell our other house.  I thought I could live with it until then, but it was just too ugly, I had to do something!  I did not have a lot of extra money for this before & after so I really wanted to  use what I already had.  I had extra paint from my dining room and I always have white spray paint on hand so I was ready for the job!

I really could have entered this bathroom in "the ugliest bathroom contest" and definitely placed!!

Unfortunately, the 80's bubble light is not in this picture.  I found a new light at Lowe's for $30.

The after:

Isn't amazing what a little paint does for a room?  I would have loved a new mirror.  I don't like mirrors that are not framed, but since I didn't want to spend a lot money on this before and after, I am going to just keep it as is!  My husband said he could frame it for me, so I'll add that photo when he does that.  Also, don't you just love the cabinet painted white?  I also always have high gloss white on hand!  It is my favorite trim color.  It reflects light and always makes any color pop!   I did have to buy new knobs for the cabinet doors because the ones that were there were chipped.  They were only $1.49 also at Lowe's.  So, the total for this B&A was $32.98!

There is a wall radiator unit in this bathroom that was rusted and so dirty!  I had to clean it with a toothbrush.  I was gagging at all of the dirt.  I do not think anyone had ever cleaned it.  Here is what it looked like before:

The after is much better: The can of white spray paint made this paint job easier!

Now this bathroom makes me smile!

My ugly back staircase is transformed!

This is the staircase before.  I forgot to take a picture of it way before =) you can't really tell, but they looked so ugly and were all scuffed up.  I decided to paint the trim and the stairs black.

I got these carpet square samples from Company C tent sale. They were only $1 a piece!  I placed 2 together and stapled them to the stairs.  I brought the squares to the paint store and matched the orange for the rug for the staircase walls and there is a cool green color I used for my "before kitchen".

Here is the after.  I really like the black stairs and the door black too!

Our New Home!

This is the Carriage House attached to the house!

My husband and I had wanted to live in an old house for a long time!  7 years ago we built what we thought was our dream home.  It was beautiful & in a beautiful neighborhood filled with children of all ages for my children to play with.  Actually, it still is a beautiful neighborhood and some of our neighbors have turned into life-long friends!  It was kind of a joke in the neighborhood that we got the "lemon"!
Well, soon after we moved in, things started to fall apart in the structure of the house.  The wood floors needed to be refinished the windows started to not work properly, it was so cold that the pipes froze in our bathroom.  We found out that it was not insulated and it was over the garage!  The list goes on and on and on, but I won't bore you with that!  After 2 years my husband wanted to sell our home.  With 3 small kids at the time, I was not supportive of that endeavor! That was for sure.  But the summer of 2011 was a different story!  We wanted to get out of the huge mortgage that came with our mini-masion and find an older home with Character and good bones!
We found her!  She is a beautiful home built in 1895!  We almost made an offer the day we looked at it!  It had been empty for some time so we got an incredible deal!!  WE had not sold our existing home yet, but we just couldn't wait to live in it, so we started the slow move downtown!! ( I forgot to tell you that I can walk just about everywhere, coffee, lunch, farmer's market, the bank, the park, etc.!!!)  I will be telling you a lot about this house through this blog!  I wanted a place where I could share all of our renovations with family and friends.  The structure of the home is solid most of our projects so far are just paint and stuff!  After we sell our old house, then the fun will begin with a new kitchen, bathrooms and a laundry room...but for now here is what we have been working on.  I hope you have fun looking and please if you have any ideas or comments, I would love to hear from you!!  Thanks for looking.

This is the first picture I took of the house.  It is the side of the house showing my "coffee porch"  I have a "wine porch" too that I will share later!