First: A Very Ugly Before

Don’t you just love a really bad before shot? I know I do, it always makes me feel better about myself! This room has often been referred to as the bane of my existence! It is a long narrow room and we have a lot going on here. It is the laundry room, the mudroom and we have some shelves in here for extra pantry storage.  

The wall we will be working on is where the coats hang. My husband had to cut out part of the wall and put in new sheetrock. The old sheetrock was crumbly and no longer holding the coat hooks. So, they were falling down and as a result the coats were all over the floor! Something had to be done! Here’s what we did!

Step 1: New sheet rock and a primed wall

Step 2: Tape off the ceiling and the floor for spraying the wall. Wagner suggests taping off 24” of ceiling and floor surrounding the area to be sprayed. This was a bit time consuming, but necessary to prevent overspray. Initially I was concerned with painting an interior wall with a sprayer, however, I was pleasantly surprised with how little mess there was!

Step 3: Spray the base coat of paint. We used this sprayer. Our plan was to do white stripes on a grey wall. In order to achieve this, we painted the white first. We used Glidden White on White. Then we taped off where we wanted the stripes and painted grey over it. This was Glidden Light Pelican Grey. This base coat should dry for 24 hours before you tape the stripes, otherwise the paint will stick to the tape. We waited almost exactly 24 hours and didn't have any problems.

A tip: Wagner does not say you have to thin the paint, but that it may be needed with some products. We found that the paint went on more evenly with the paint slightly thinned. This was about ¼ cup of water to the paint in the spray container.  

Step 4: Tape off your stripes. For this we decided where we wanted the stripes and how far apart we wanted them to be. I went with 10” in between each group of stripes and each stripe is ½” from each other. This look was achieved using 2” wide blue tape 

for the center stripe and 1” blue tape for the thinner stripes. We also used a Laser level for the lines, this is much easier than using a plumb line and drawing pencil marks on the wall. You can see the laser line on the wall and my head!  This is the one we used.

Step 5: Next, spray the grey thinned paint over the entire wall. With the sprayer it only took one coat for the base, and one coat for the second color. This significantly cuts back on time!

Step 6: Pull the tape off. 

Tip: We have found that if you pull the tape off while the paint is still wet, there is less bleeding under the tape, and less chance of pulling off any of the paint. Our lines turned out very nicely using this method. Your hands will get paint on them, but just wash them off quickly and you will be fine!

Step 7: Add Coat rack and Boot Storage

My husband also built a new coat rack out of an 8 foot long pine board. We also used the Wagner Paint sprayer for this, and it was done in a matter of minutes!

For the boots, I needed a solution to keep them from falling over and being in the walkway. I thought that little slots just big enough for the kids to kick their boots into would work. My husband also built this out of inexpensive pine and we painted it white with the sprayer. This was my favorite thing to paint with the Wagner Paint Sprayer. Jobs like this are way easier to spray than they are to do with a brush. It gets into all the nooks and crannies with ease. The boot storage can also be slid away from the wall to sweep under it. 

Step 8: Add some baskets for hats, gloves and scarves

I have seen some really beautiful mudrooms on pinterest. However, I know my children, and if the storage solution is not almost as easy as throwing everything on the floor, then they will not do it consistently. I at first thought that a shelf over the coat hooks with baskets would be a good idea. Then after I thought about it, I realized they would never climb up there to put their stuff away. So, I decided right there above the boots might just work. Everyone has their own basket, so hopefully this will eliminate some of the digging to find matching mittens!

I purchased these baskets from Amazon. There are little slots on the front for names. They seem pretty sturdy and they were affordable.

Step 9: Enjoy your new functional space

Now, enjoy your new system that should work flawlessly! Wink wink! Hopefully my children’s enthusiasm about this new space will last through the winter months!