Ta daaaaaaa!!!!

I am in love with my handy husband and I am in love with this new space in our house. I've always talked about wanting a house with a mud room for storage but knew this house didn't have that kind of room. However, Jared was smart and made it work! Here is the space before, it is just off the garage entry door going into the dining room. Yes, the dining room is currently home to lots of kid toys.

Here's we go!

I hope this works! The baseboards are off so there's no going back now!

Bench installed. We designed it with smaller cubbies on top for shoes and larger spaces on the bottom for some specific boxes at IKEA. My hope is to toss things of the girls in their boxes and then them take the box upstairs to put their things away. I am probably kidding myself but maybe one day they'll do it!

I wanted to stain the top of the bench so J added the right kind of wood on top to make it happen!

Partially painted bench, painted wall and new baseboards. Starting to look promising!

More shelf space. Jared needs to go through the house and count how many shelves I've had him build in the last year. There are a lot!

Adding corbels - everything looks better when it is pretty!

And adding hooks.

Finishing caulk and getting ready to paint it again.

Finally! A place for coats and bag. I was just playing with things but am planning on keeping mail, etc on the top shelf and I've got to find just the right things to make it pretty on top.

Look at those shoes NOT in a pile on the floor.

A view coming down the stairs. I still have to sand and paint the outside/hall side again but I wasn't about to not start hanging things.

And Ta Da!!!! Almost finished. There are white boxes in the bottom but the ones we planning on using when we designed the size are now discontinued. So frustrating! I don't want white so I'm on the hunt for the right spray paint. And you can be sure there will be some kind of pretty laminated name tags somewhere on there. And a cute pillow for the bench....time to go to HomeGoods!

I am so thankful for a husband who will work hard to know what I want and will spend his time away from work building in the garage. I think we did a great job and I am in LOVE with my new space!