Because this room was originally designed as an outdoor space and I love nature and bringing it inside, my goal was to preserve that indoor-outdoor feeling as much as possible. I wanted it to feel like exactly what it is: an outdoor space that was enclosed.

There are a few “tricks” I use over & over in projects when I’m attempting to blur the lines between the indoors and the out.

The first is the use of GLASS. There are times when I love a perfectly placed picture window to frame a view and create the sense that you’re looking at art but when I want a space to feel continuous with the outside views, I take the glass about as far as I can from wall edge to wall edge. I take it to the floor and up about as far as I can afford to go. (I say this because in most cases there isn’t a budget to ditch the header above the window/door but sometimes there is and I’ll usually take it if I can!) We kept our headers and went with standard sized doors which actually worked out really well for the size of our walls.

The next thing I’ll do is carry the exterior building material onto the walls of the interior room. It feels seamless and creates the sense that the room keeps going past the glass / that the exterior of the building continues inside.

Then, I like to include nods to exterior materials in my selections for things like lighting, tile and objects. In our foyer we have sconces that look and feel like they could be outdoor lighting (I often use actual outdoor lighting inside to achieve this effect.) We keep some of our wood piles in there -something that is typically seen outside. Bringing in potted outdoor plants like boxwood and other shrubs is another nod that gives a good jolt of outdoor-vibing to an indoor space.

The cubbies in our foyer are my friends. I seriously love them. Like I said, the people in this house don’t exactly put everything away but the good part about the cubbies is- at least when I ask for things to get put away, there’s a spot for everything. We generally don’t wear shoes in our house (it happens, we have parties etc. and we’re not hard & fast about it but we usually take them off in the foyer) so having a shoe drawer for everyone has been AWESOME. We’ve had shoe shelves in the past, but I’ll never go back. I don’t have to look at the hot mess of piled shoes and it’s easy for the little ones to drop them in.

You might remember this old RH pine armoire of ours from other houses (where it’s been a media cabinet/ closet etc.) It’s a workhorse and sort of becomes whatever we need it to be in whatever house we’re in. It’s sitting next to a massive antique olive jug that I love most at night when the room is dimly lit by only the wall sconces and it feels a little like a museum piece.

Dave tends to have more/ bigger stuff down here so he’s got the armoire. (We also have a nearby coat closet for Dave & my other coats- he just keeps a daily thrown on coat in here)

We’ve got a shelf for car keys, hats, throw-on coat and pile of quilts for when we need one to take outside to sit on, and a pile of black towels (A MUST!!) for the dogs on wet/ muddy days. (and us on snow days!)

The armoire helps keep the rest of the house organized and it’s a catch-all for things like returns, dog stuff, batteries, flashlights etc and a bin that says “Dave” on it so when I find things like random nuts and bolts or electronics I have no idea what they are but I’m scared to throw out- I put it in there and he can deal with it when he’s got time. (I got tired of saying, “what’s this?” all the time when I find random stuff around so now I can just drop it in there.)

 The original “dogtrot” function of the house is actually perfect for our way of life with three dogs always running in and out and the need for a convenient feeding & watering area.

Our three pups are Fawn (7, the white one) Coal (4, the black one- pictured above- look at his sweet eyes- and left) and Honey Bear (4, the blonde one.) Coal and Honey are littermates but couldn’t look more different… they’re some sort of lab hound- Pyrenees mix but I sometimes think Honey Bear had a different dad… She turned out so much bigger (def the Pyr!!) and lighter in color than the other dogs in the litter. Coal is brindle and looks just like a Plott hound. Fawn is also some sort of lab hound mix and has a fox-houndish look to her. Anyway, all of that to say that we have a lot of craziness in the house They’re all hounds and they run and run though generally, when they’re inside they love to chill and sleep. But when they all get excited about something (like being fed or having a visitor) it’s A LOT. So this foyer is great for that. It’s bulletproof and I never worry about it.

This room is one of those “room of requirement” type spaces for whatever need we have at any given time. On the daily it gets filled with empty boxes, backpacks, etc. but I love it when things get moved around for a specific season. I took the photo to the left this morning because I recently brought some patio plants in. (I still need saucers… watering has been a pain!!) There’s really only a 30-70 chance they’ll make it through winter but I figured I’d give it a shot.

It handled snow days with ease like no other mudroom I’ve had before. I keep a laundry basket at the back door for wet stuff to so into and those black towels are always nearby.