No Mudroom-No Problem-Turn An Old Hutch Into A Dropzone
I will show you how I turned an old hutch into a mudroom area that is better than I thought!
When we bought this house, I always assumed that I would use part of the laundry room as a mudroom. But once all of the cabinets, sink, washer and dryer were in place, it became evident that it just wasn’t going to work out that way. Enter sad face. A really sad one.
Inspiration struck though, in the form of an old wooden hutch that we inherited.
Before I tell you about the transformation of the hutch, take a look at how it started out. Here she is sitting on our screen porch outside, before the porch makeover.
The top half of the hutch is what became my dropzone. The only thing holding the top half to bottom half were two pieces of metal attached to the back. All I had to do was to remove the screws from the metal to get the two pieces apart. The doors were removed, the holes from the hinges were filled in with wood putty and the entire piece was sanded and spray painted white.
After reinforcing the back with a couple of 1 x 4 boards, I attached two D rings to hang it from the wall with.
This thing will get yanked on a lot as it is where my granddaughters will hang their coats and backpacks along with Pookie and I using it for coats, my pocketbook and the dog leashes. I made sure to insert the screws for the D rings into wall studs. It is further reinforced by using long screws to attach the hooks that are running across the bottom. The screws go all the way through the bottom of the hutch, into the wall. You can find the hooks HERE.
I looked everywhere for some affordable enamel numbers, but none were to be found. I finally ran across these outdoor house numbers at Lowes. At $1.48 each, they are the perfect finishing touch for the dropzone!
Fabric bins and a galvanized bucket from HomeGoods will work well to hold winter gloves and hats and other little items this winter. All of the other decorations are from my stash. As a nod to summer, I filled one of the glass canisters with driftwood pieces and placed a faux bird’s nest in the other.
Talk about an area that’s hard to photograph! The dropzone is located in an L shaped hallway that is off of the kitchen and runs between the entrance from the garage and the doors to the laundry room, back porch and powder room. Whew! I had to stand on my head, hold my breath and wiggle my nose to get these pictures. Ha!
The next two photos were taken from the doorway of the powder room and gives you a good view of the dropzone from the other side.
This shot, taken from the kitchen, gives you an idea of just what an awkward area it is. Because of the lighting coming in from the breakfast area windows, the walls in the two spaces appear to be two different colors, but they aren’t.
Oh – would you like to see where I used the other half of the buffet? Why, it’s on the back porch! It looks absolutely perfect there!
Don’t forget to pin it!
So how about you – do you have any pieces of furniture that you’ve repurposed into something else?
What a wonderful idea, so clever! I love it!
Thank you – so glad you like it!
Wow what a great idea! Would be cute in my daughter’s bathroom to hang robe and such with pretty jars for toiletries and perfume bottles…thanks for the inspiration!
That’s a really great idea, Amy! I bet it would work well in a bathroom too for holding towels, etc.
LOVE it! and those house numbers are perfect too!
Thank you, Anne. I was really tickled when I found them!
Love your drop zone Suzy! Don’t you love it when you feel organized! So brilliant how you repurposed this one piece into 2 great storage solutions!
What a clever solution – especially breaking up the two pieces! It looks charming and will be so functional. And isn’t it great when you solve something like this and your house starts to feel like your home?!
love and blessings~
Lynda @ Gates of Crystal
What an awesome idea, I love how you repurposed this into two pretty new pieces!
What a great repurpose of the hutch! Very well done!
I love it! You have inspired me!
Thank you, Gina.
I love this! We don’t have a mud room either. Unfortunately, we don’t have the space for something like this either. It still is inspiring and gives me some new ideas for what I can do with our house.
(visiting from Mom 2 Mom Monday)
great job! thanks for sharing your cool project
Wow, that looks great! I’ll have to remember those house numbers, they look really good on your project!
Tania
Hi Tania. I’m so glad that you like my project! I was pretty pumped when I discovered those house numbers and for such a great price too.
Love this creative idea and we are featuring you this week on Sunday Features! Happy 4th. 🙂
-Andrea@TablerPartyOfTwo
This is beautiful! We don’t have a mudroom so this would be so perfect for our little place!!! Would love to see you link-up some of your ideas at my weekly #ConfessionsLinkUp
Love this!! Such a great idea – and much better than the shove-everything-in-the-closet-by-the-door routine. 😉
Hi Heather. Glad you like my idea. I’m hoping this will solve the problem of my granddaughters coats and backpacks winding up all over the floor in the family room!
We love your repurposed hutch. Gloria chose this as her feature for Snickerdoodle Sunday from Across the Boulevard. Thanks so much for sharing!
This is really cool – I love giving old things a new purpose. Thanks for the inspiration.
I love this. Pinned and tweeted. Thank you for bringing this to our party and we hope to see you on Monday at 7 pm. Lou Lou Girls
This is so functional and stylish. I love how it looks peeking in from the next room.
By the way, I would love to have you post on my new blog hop—the Weekend Blog Hop at My Flagstaff Home (www.myflagstaffhome.com). It begins on Thursday evenings and lasts through the weekend, if you’re interested.
Jennifer
Great transformation, Suzy! It looks great in your back hallway! Thank you for sharing! You are one of the features tonight at the Make it Pretty Monday party at The Dedicated House! Here is the link for this week’s party. http://www.thededicatedhouse.com/2015/07/make-it-pretty-monday-week-142.html Hope to see you again at the bash! Toodles, Kathryn @TheDedicatedHouse
Thank you so much for the feature, Kathryn!
This is such a great idea – love that it can actually be placed anywhere it is needed. Thank you for sharing at Share It One More Time. Pinned. Cathy