the location seems to work okay, since it is off of the garage, so the likely entrance on a regular basis? the dimensions are 5.5 by 11 or 12? feet? You might find this a little small in width after the cubbies/bench are built in. will someone be able to pass another when trying to access their hook/cubby or will the aisle be too tight a squeeze? how many family members will be using the space? if kids are involved I would want the space as large as possible (maybe cheat a foot from the guest bedroom?). Our mudroom is approx 9x9 and it gets crowded with all of us entering at the same time. I am happy that we arranged things to also have an exterior door to the mudroom - we tend to use that on a regular basis as well. I would also want the ability to close the door off from the rest of the house because right now, you would have direct visual from your kitchen and family room.

Since the garage is so deep, would it work better to have a room walled off at the back of the garage you could walk through and use as a mudroom? It seems small to me, you apparently won't be using it as an entrance/exit from/to yard, and it seems strange to have the guest room stuck back there. If you move the mudroom *into* the garage you could make the guest room and breakfast room bigger, maybe with a pantry between for noise isolation.

The "mudroom" part of my laundry (between the garage and kitchen doors) is roughly 4.5 x 6.5 with another 2x3 area off to the side where we have a bench. I'm not counting the 3ft in front of the kitchen door. The 4 of us are always piling up there, and often DH or I have to step into the laundry area off to the other side while the kids are putting on/taking off shoes. B/c of where the coat/broom closet is, we can't step around to get into the kitchen if someone's in front of the bench. I want to wall off part of the back of the (28ft deep) garage where the back door is, but it's unheated and people wouldn't linger there n the winter. You might be able to heat part of your garage since you're just in the planning stages.

I agree that the mud room isn't well thought out.

I'm assuming you want to stay within the same footprint and are just looking for a tweak to fix the issues with the mudroom. As such, I don't see many options for redesign. This is the best I can think of and I'm not all all sure you have room to do it and still have room to get around a car in the stall closest to the mudroom entry to reach cars parked in the other two stalls. At best, you would have to be very careful not to run into the corner of the wall. But, if you think something like this might work, I would the utility sink down into the "gap" near the dining room. (oh, I didn't bother to move windows, just shifted walls around to show a possible revision.

The garage entrance will be our primary entrance. We only have one kid now but plan to have more. There will only be benches/cubbies on the back and right side of the mudroom so that should leave decent room to walk by if someone else is in there. I'm thinking maybe 18" for the benches/cubbies, which leaves ~4' of walkthrough space? Or will the cubbies be bigger than I'm thinking.

I also considered moving the door/hallway to the guest suite to the back instead of where it is now. So, you would walk in from the garage into the mudroom, then at the back of the mudroom you can take a right to go to the guest suite or left to go to the breakfast nook kitchen area. The only thing is that it may be kind of odd coming out at the back of the breakfast nook? So not sure if that would work unless we use a small breakfast table. The nook is 15' wide so we could get a smaller table and still have room to walk through I guess.

What do you guys think?

Bevangel, that is a great sketch. Looks pretty professional! It may make the mudroom too open, though. My wife would like to hide most of it.

Wei Yan Chan

Look for katieob's "mudroom" (just a wall of cubbies). It's right off the kitchen, no door, and it's really cute!

Our "mudroom" is 6 ft wide where the bench is (just lose 2 ft for ductwork right by the garage door), but then narrows to 3ft (just enough to open the kitchen door) at the end of the bench b/c of the closet. Even with 4ft+ in front of the (18" deep) bench, we get jammed up b/c of people standing in front of the bench - even sitting on the bench knees take up more room than you think. What's that old car commercial? "Wider is better!"?

ajsmama, I just checked out katieob's mudroom and it looks great (along with the rest of the house). That is actually all I am looking for, just a place to hang our coats and put stuff down as we walk in. We definitely want to try to make this space better since it will be used daily.