We’re remodeling our downstairs, and one of the largest problems we’ve had in our house is the lack of space to put coats, shoes, and backpacks when entering through the garage. The entrance space is wholly separate from the front entry which had a closet. It was a narrow hallway that lead into a tiny kitchen with a bathroom coming off it.

We have a new kitchen design and have been working with a designer who was the first one to mention that we have wasted space in the bathroom and, if designed right, we can make it a small functioning mudroom.

We’ve run into some prohibitive issues to the original design now that we demoed (electrical and plumbing not worth moving). So we’re tweaking the design, and I’d like some thoughts on it.

In the initial design the bathroom entrance was coming off a odd alcove within the living room (also entrance to the basement)- so while not exactly “in” the living room, it was kind of in the living room. I contemplated flopping that to open through the mudroom but it meant that we lost the wall space for the door and guests would have to walk through the likely messy mudroom to get to the bathroom. Since we can’t move the interior wall like we initially anticipated, we’re loosing some space that had me thinking maybe we make the sink part of the mudroom and just wall off the toilet? Designer advised against this. She came up with recessing the wall where we could (after the problematic plumbing and electrical work) and making it a built in bench, keeping the bathroom entrance off the living room.

I’ve attached markups of the original design and the (hand drawn) original layout. Any thoughts/opinions/ideas? Also attached photo of the type of sink I had in mind when I pictured the sink as part of the mudroom

Side note: the kitchen cabinet design isn’t 100% as it is shown, but it’s close. Cabinets are about to be ordered so I’m not really looking for feedback there.