The next item on my list of a million things to get done before the baby gets here is to organize the “mud room” off of the back kitchen entry way. We’ve been pretty much using this area of the house {before picture} as a drop everything space, and as a room to store all our empty beer bottles (at least Jeff has as of recently.) In our old place we had a chalk board wall, and I had been missing having one in our new house.

Originally my thought was to paint the far wall off the back entry in chalk board paint and then frame it our with some white molding, but was veered in a different direction after I saw these wood framed “LUNS” chalk boards at Ikea on our last trip. I figured this might make my life a whole lot easier to hang these then to custom make my own chalk board wall, plus they come with built in storage, yay.

So I embark on my first ever Ikea hack! I wasn’t impressed by the piney wood look that I purchased the $14.99 frames for so I head to the basement to dig through some old paint cans and find something that looks like the molding color used in the kitchen. I go to town painting these a creamy white, which is no easy task when trying to simultaneously entertain an almost 3 year old. They instantly looked a lot better, and they matched my kitchen. Next step, salvage some wallpaper scraps from my friend Colz who has recently wallpapered her dining room. I cut them to size, whipped out my handy dandy glue stick (sorry too much Blues Clues) and inserted them into the back of the mail cubby. Instant awesome!

To finish off the tour I will leave you with a few close ups. Here you can see the black and cream floral wallpaper and the built-in mail storage, as well as the galvanized metal trays used for holding chalk, nails, bobby pins, wallet, gum, you name it.

I purchased this yellow vintage hook off of etsy as a way to incorporate some yellow into the mud room, as it is becoming a prominent color in my kitchen. If you take a look in the background you can see that this chalk board is magnetic, so I can now use it to hang all the junk I would normally hang on my fridge and never throw away.

And maybe the best feature of it all, a place to hang my keys. We are a family of constant key losers, mainly because we don’t have a proper place to hang our keys when we get home. There is at least one morning a week where I frantically tear apart every laundry bin and go through every pants pocket in the entire house until I find my car keys. Please oh please, let me have the strength to remember to hang my keys in the same spot every day.