Faux mud room
Updated: Feb 15, 2021
We bought our house a few years ago and there have been endless projects, not because they "needed" to be done, but because we wanted the house to function better for our family and because working on stuff helps me personally decompress from my job. One of those projects was our garage, there is a giant support beam that is pretty low so we cannot fit a newer model SUV inside of it which leaves it so that we only use it for storage, laundry and now our faux mud room.
Our washer and dryer are housed in the garage so we made a cozy little space for that, even though no one can actually see it, we do a ridiculous amount of laundry so we are in there all the time and it makes me happy to see that little space spruced up. Check out this post to see what we did. We also had this unused space that had some old uppers and we needed a space to house all of our shoes, coats, backpacks, etc. Thus started the idea of making a faux mudroom inside of our garage.
We cleaned up the area, scraped off the remaining old vinyl flooring that was there and started framing out the board and batten wall and the giant bench.


Once everything was framed out, all of the nail holes and seams had to be filled and sanded, this honestly is the longest part because you want everything to be smooth and as seamless as possible. We decided to go with an all in one paint and primer and chose a dark forest green color. I love color, while I like to look at everyone's pretty bright white houses, I love having color in our home and that does not exclude the garage that only we see.

Before we started painting, we removed all of the cabinet doors and sanded everything down. They were old and it is easier for us to actually SEE what we have without there being any guesses. We also use this space as our pantry for canned and dry goods since we do not have a pantry indoors. While we do not like to stock pile food and only buy what we need, we do go through kid snacks quickly so we tend to purchase double when we go to the store.

We laid down this faux wood floor that is actually vinyl sheets that stick easily to the floor and are easy to cut with a box cutter. This made for easy clean up and to be honest, we just use out shop vac and do quick vacuum sessions when leaves or other debris get inside.
To add more storage space, we got a 1x10 board and cut down shelves to size and added them to the uppers. Now we have a cute little spot that functions so well for our family. This is the drop zone and all shoes and everything get left here before we enter the house to help with germs and bringing in unwanted tree debris. It's not perfect but man has it worked so well for us. Just because there isn't a designated space in your home, you can make one. I am all about making our home function for us and this has been so helpful to have.
XXO,
Cass