The Neverending Story

  Did anybody start singing the song after they read the title?  The Neverending Story was one of favorite movies as a kid.  Yes, I still am a geek and like geeky movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
    I took a hiatus from blogging about the house.  Two events played a role in my sabbatical.  The first was all of the company and fun we had this summer with various visits from family and friends and fitting in fun adventures like trips to Long Beach Island on the Jersey Shore (with a pit stop at Ikea), summer camp for the girls, and just all around summer fun.  The second obstacle to a productive blog was my own unproductivity (spell check is telling me that this is not a word, but I like it anyway).  We haven't really done anything and when we did, I didn't have the energy or time to blog.  We are now in the middle of a busy fall.  The girls are back at school.  My oldest is homeschooling and we started back with ballet, Irish Dance, Youth Group, Bible Study and various other normal life events. Dan and I are also working on some rental homes and we are trying to get our lives in general back in order.  With all of that in mind I figured the best way to manage my time would be to ignore the important issues and get back to the blog that has too long been neglected.  Play along with me and pretend that my reasoning makes total sense.
  Now, on the the Title of this post.  Almost a year ago I posted About Erika and her fabulous team at Urban Grace  designing a mudroom plan for us.  The mudroom was one of the first rooms we got in order, but I never posted about it.  Well here are some snap shots of the progress and the BIG REVEAL!

Our contractor extraordinaire built this using plans from Ana White.  We modified them sightly and added bead board to back of the locker.  

The molding and brackets underneath the cubbies really made it feel more substantial and added a lot character to the piece.

We debated putting drawers or shelves on the bottom of the locker.  When we considered how we live (kinda messy), we decided it would be best to get baskets the kids could just throw their shoes in.  Eventually, we would like to build some big wooden boxes with little wheels on the bottom, but for now these woven baskets from Land of Nod work well.

   Now onto the big machinery in the room. We chose the  Samsung VRT PowerFoam Steam for its value.  It cost less than the Whirlpool and had many features.  From our minimal research we found that it performed well and required fewer repairs than other models.

The corner cabinet is our laundry shoot from the upstairs hall.  This is by far one of the favorite things we put into the house.

Entry door and closet to hide all of the messy stuff.

  The ongoing saga of the mudroom is almost complete.  I'd like to add a few accessories and a nicer rug.  All in all it is a useful room and accomplishes what we want it to.  It hides our shoes, cleans our clothes, and keeps the mud contained.
  Hopefully, I'll be back with more updates.  Progress would require us to actually finish projects so don't hold your breath.  How did your summer projects go or did you spend all summer playing like we did?