Mighty Mudroom with Pet Spa: 2020 Pasadena Showcase House
A Backdoor Oasis Lightens A Family’s Physical and Emotional Load
At one of our kick-off meetings with a client years ago, I asked a simple question, “Where do you enter your house?” Her response reminded me just how complicated that answer could be. “From the garage”, she said, “with the kids, their stuff, the dog, the groceries and my frazzled state of mind”. Imagining my own balancing act with my brood at our backdoor, I thought about how it really is the true entrance of the house.
Fast forward to our first walk-thru of the 2020 Showcase House and this space:
Beyond the kitchen and across from the door to the garage, it was likely part of the home’s original “maid’s quarters” and had been designated by the showcase committee as a potential craft room. I thought back to that initial conversation with our client, and wondered if this space couldn’t find a new chapter in supporting a family’s busy life with varying and vast needs as mudroom that provides a collective sigh when seeing it.
Mudrooms are an often overlooked and underappreciated space in CA homes. We think of them as East Coast elements that our warm weather doesn’t require us to have. I, however, cannot support their inclusion in CA design fast enough. For today’s busy family with kids in multiple extracurriculars and parents re-locating never-ending bags of “gear”, this space is a clutter containing godsend. I think that the important trend towards these “lifestyle spaces” is only heightened today by Covid…when we’re at home/in home/around home pretty much all the time. So spaces like a mudroom that also handle laundry, dry cleaning and pet care, while combining beauty and function are exactly where the trends are taking place. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the innovative ideas in our space:
Touches of Beauty:
Wallpaper:
A mudroom can be beautiful. It should function first, but it can be beautiful. As the first room of the house to greet you, I wanted ours to be an oasis from the day and its demands, a destination for decluttering not just our hands, but our heads, giving us the ability to move into the rest of the home physically and mentally lighter.
For more details on our space and to meet some of the amazing vendors who supported us, follow us on IG @courtneythomasdesign and check out our IG live videos OR to tour the whole Pasadena Showcase House 2020 virtually in October, buy a ticket here: https://pasadenashowcase.org/
Courtney Thomas, ASID
Principal & Lead Designer
My job is to make spaces functional in their layout, comfortable in their use, inspirational in their style and luxurious in their appointment. In that order. For that one moment after installation, the pictures are perfect.
