Winter months in D.C. means heavy coats, hat, gloves, boots (on top of everything else that you normally need day-to-day) which lead to bulky items that need an extra storage space.  In our new house, we have a huge double-door coat closet in the hall foyer. It’s so much more room than our tiny closet in our last house. Since we have kids under age 5 who cannot reach the hooks to hang up jackets, we decided to make our own mudroom, so here’s How to Turn a Closet Into a Mudroom for Less Than $30!

We also never go through the front door. In fact, I have never used my house key to open the front door (and we have lived there for 6 months). We always come through the garage door and end up walking through the kitchen or dining room, around the corner to put items in the coat closet. Well not anymore! Now when we enter the house from the garage we see this lovely mudroom.

Former pantry turned mudroom

This room used to be a huge pantry that we stored miscellaneous items in – nothing that we couldn’t find a home for somewhere else in our house. Besides, we had another huge pantry in the kitchen so why not turn this one into a mudroom and create a space that is functional for the kids and less work!

Above is a view from the dining room. This is actually just the start of a much bigger project to turn this closet into a mudroom.  We plan to add a built-in bench, a shelf above the hooks and redo the door frame. We just needed something functional and cost effective since we are in the winter months.  So are you ready for the before picture?

This is not the best picture but I took with my phone and my android had issues when I took this photo and I was lucky enough to backup my photos before they were all deleted so this is what the backup file left me. We took the doors off, took the shelves out, patched and painted the walls (we used leftover paint that we had on-hand). The hubby really did all the work, I just gave him instructions.

Supplies

He picked up some wood (in the wood trim section) from Lowe’s for around $4 and attached to the wall to create a wainscoting look. Those black hooks are actually from Ikea, $9.99 for the rack with 5 hooks, which was a steal compared to the cost of hooks the same size at home improvement stores that were around $30/hook. We purchased 2 Ikea racks but only used the hooks. The bench pictured is from Target and used to be brown. I painted it with Annie Sloan chalk paint, Old White to update the entire space. The bench has a cushion on it which is pictured below.

Above is a picture with our coats. The bins at the bottom hold our shoes (for now). So this project cost us around $25 and less than one weekend to complete and our house feels so much more functional.

Above is a picture of the other pantry in our kitchen so you can see that creating another function for the second pantry made sense since we have plenty of pantry space.

How to pick the right paint colors

Have you ever had trouble picking the right paint colors for your home? Choosing the right paint colors for your home can be overwhelming. There are so many different “whites” and “grays” these days, how can anyone know they are making the right paint color choice?

That’s why I put together the best tips on How to Choose Interior Paint Colors in this post.

Every home is different… the entryway in our first home was much different than the entryway in our second home, and both of those were very different from the entryway in our third home! So I chose a different paint color for each entryway in all three of our homes. Not to mention, from the time that we bought our first home, to the time that we bought our third home, home paint color trends changed drastically. The colors that I used back then were no longer a trendy color and well, I just didn’t like the brown-ish tan that was in our first home, haha.

So if you need help choosing paint colors for the rest of your home, head on over to this post to see my paint-picking tips and what has worked for me in all three of our homes 🙂 My post with how to choose paint colors for your home is one of my most popular posts and readers have benefited from reading it before heading to the store to buy paint that ends up not working out.

I also have some ideas for choosing paint color combinations for bedrooms (with themes!)

Paint Versus Peel & Stick Wallpaper

Peel and stick wallpaper has become very popular recently since not everyone has access to tools to build their own Shiplap walls (thanks Chip and Joanna) or wants to tile an entire wall with subway tile. I love tiling but if I could slap up some wallpaper and call it a day, that would make me, the hubby, and my wallet happy!

You can find peel and stick wallpaper online at Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and more! I’ve linked my favorite peel and stick wallpaper and the ones I’ve used personally below.

Cheap Home Hacks that’ll Increase Value

Renovating a home can come with a high price tag if you’re not budgeting and deciding which updates bring the best return on investment. After selling our updated first home in just 4 years, we bought an even bigger house that needed a lot of updating. We sold our second home after 4 years while doing the much-needed work to produce a profit by following the same strategies we did in our first home.

If you enjoy updating your home, want to increase your home value or just want your home to look better, you should check out thee 10 Cheap Home Hacks That’ll Make Your House Look So Much Better.

Tour Our Homes

Tour our First Home here

Tour our Second Home here

Tour our Third Home here

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