Storage!

One of the greatest things about our new house is the mudroom, a big room filled with laundry vessels and ample room for storage. It was hard to tell *what* exactly the mudroom was when we were looking at the advertisement for this house, as there was a bed right next to the washer and dryer... but once it was cleared out, the mudroom became wonderfully unambiguous.  :)

Apparently I only took 1 picture of the mudroom before moving in, and its only one side of the L-shaped room.

Aside from the pergo floors, the room is actually quite pleasant. There's a side door to the backyard (convenient for the doggy door for that biz biz), and there's a lot of light thanks to 3 windows and a windowed door.  The room is also nicely fitted with Bosch washer + dryer.  SUPER QUIET.  amazing.

As soon as I saw the mudroom, I knew it would make for some excellent extra pantry space!  SALE SHOPPING + EXTREME COUPONING here I come!!!  After looking around all over for suitable modular storage systems, we finally decided on a set from Ikea. 

(I'll be honest, I told myself once I "grew up" and "bought a house" I would stop buying stuff from Ikea.  Well, I lied to myself.  I bought a modular entertainment center/storage system for the condo, and now we have one for the farmhouse.  What can I say, Ikea rocks modular storage!)

This is the only "in progress" picture.  Despite a power outage in the middle of assembly, set up was going smoothly until we had to try to figure out how to attach the drawer fronts.  Normally, this would be a simple task.  However, (I could be wrong), as far as I could tell, Ikea didn't sell drawer fronts that were full size - only short drawer fronts, as seen below. I had these short drawers in the entertainment center in my old condo - they were convenient because you could just shove a shelf in there, have a closed drawer and then have an open front for accessories such as cable boxes/PS3s/wii's/original nintendos/routers/etc.  

short drawers convenient in an entertainment, as seen in my bmore condo.

However, the short drawers were not suitable for a closed, we-want-it-to-look-pretty storage system, so we bought the regular sized doors (like in the above TV cabinets on the entertainment center), and had to find a way to attach them to the drawers.  It was our best attempt at ikeahacking.  (Really, we just used 4 L=shaped brackets per drawer).  We bought the handle hardware at Lowes - this handle design was just so much cuter than the ones available at Ikea.

In the end, I think it turned out really well.  I am pleased with the way the storage looks and frames the window.  Unfortunately the room was a bit small to get a full picture of the storage system.

More importantly, however, the storage system has become an excellent new kitty condo with large windows for their entertainment.  

I may or may not have doused the top of the entertainment center in
catnip spray to get all of the cats up there at once...

All in all, storage system mission = SUCCESS!

Oh yeah - to further improve our storage capabilities, we also bought a huge freezer.  So far, it is really quiet and keeps everything really cold!  I can't wait to stock up on meats and make a bunch of frozen meals (and frozen crock pot meals) for us.

I also don't mind the giant ice cream we have sitting in there. I think its like 5 gallons of orange/vanilla swirl.  :)  Woot!