SUNDAY SNEAK PEEK: MUDROOM

As you are aware, I am involved in a slightly desperate effort to transform our "playroom," in which the kids do very little playing, into a back entrance/mudroom. So far all that's been done is changing out the floor. Not that it didn't make a huge difference, what with the nasty linoleum with a giant hole in it that used to grace the room. It did. Now the beautiful new engineered-wood floors gleam up at me:

But lately, the gleam has a bit of reproach in it: "Is this it? The floor? That's all you had in you? You're just going to quit on the whole thing? Nice. Really nice. Quitter. QUITTER!" I understand where the floor is coming from. I haven't done a single thing since it was installed, but I have valid reasons lame excuses! I believe I MAY have mentioned before that Ted is just a TAD touchy about spending money we don't technically have. What with Bonus Time being the end of February, this is a tough few weeks for us. Ted is in even less of a mood than usual to go spending money on mudroom furniture, or anything else for that matter. Which forced me to put my plans on hold. But having to wait actually turned out to be a good thing.

In usual circumstances, I would have gone right ahead with my plans, started with the area to the right of the door from the garage, gone and bought these items from Target:

and been done with it. I also would have been out more than $300 and had to put it all together myself which would have been a total bitch. But given a few weeks to think it over, I realized that this isn't what I want at all. The words by which I try and live, and which I use to guide my interior design work with clients, are these:

EVERYTHING IN YOUR HOUSE SHOULD BE EITHER BEAUTIFUL, USEFUL, OR VERY MUCH LOVED

Now, I'm not saying that the stuff from Target wouldn't have been useful, but really - do I want MORE tacky, cheaply-made furniture in my house? I'm trying to get RID of all the particleboard and MDF crap that we have, not ADD to it. And at about the same time that I had this epiphany, I realized we already owned a chest that might work as a bench. We got it from Matt's parents (Matt is Ted's best friend from college and is also married to Adriana and his parents are basically an extra set of parents to Ted and me) when they moved out of their house into an apartment. It's currently in Andrew's room, being remarkably NOT useful as it's not child-safe and we had to nail it closed so neither of the boys got swallowed by it but we thought it would still work as a bedside table:

Except  since we added the top bunk it doesn't even fit next to the bed. And never you mind about the disaster that is the rest of Andrew's room; that's a makeover for another post.

So I measured it. And lo and behold, it's EXACTLY the right size. And then I thought about the hooks. I don't need all those fancy shelves and cubbies and whatnot that come with the Target thing. I just need hooks on the wall, maybe two rows of them. Like this:

So once it was clear that the Texans were not going to win and that we could make it back before the Giants game, we ran to Home Depot and picked up an 8' long 1x2 board and nine hooks. And then we came home and watched the Giants kick some Packer ass. But tomorrow we are (Ted is) going to cut that 8' board in half and attach both pieces to the wall. We will screw in the coat hooks and bring down the wooden chest and try to un-nail it shut, and then we will have a storage bench and a coat rack. And all for about $50. I. Can't. Wait.

XOXOXO

ABC