Coffee and Tea Station

When we decided it was time to purchase our first home four years ago we had some differing views on what that home should look like. My dear husband hates a weekend project, or at least he did at the time and wanted a house that didn’t need any work. I, on the other hand, love a project and didn’t want to get a house that was already beautiful. In the end we went with a newer home that was already beautiful. I understood my sweet hubby’s desire to have a new roof and HVAC system.

This however left me feeling like I couldn’t make this house truly my own. I didn’t want to destroy or remove all the things that were already in it and nice. The mudroom had cost the original owners quite a bit of cash to have the builder put it in, it was a nice addition. However, we never used it. When the kids come running in and out with all their stuff they come through the front door, not the garage. The beautiful space sat unused for our family. I had a strong desire to turn it into something more functional for our family, but I didn’t want to diminish the home’s resale value for whoever may come next.

Recently I have decided I don’t fully care about the family that will come next. For the foreseeable future, our family lives here and this needs to be a home that makes sense for us. With this firm resolution on my mind, I began some projects that would make this house make sense for us. The transformation of the mudroom to a Coffee/Tea station was high on my list.

I get irritated when there is clutter on the counters in the kitchen. If the entire house if clean but there is stuff on the counters everything feels messy. The tea set-up on the kitchen counter felt like constant visual clutter to me. The drawers didn’t offer proper storage of the teas, and the basket and electric kettle along with my Soda Stream, all made me feel claustrophobic on that counter. I also hated being able to see the trash can, which sat right next to the counter on that side of the kitchen. The mudroom had become a dumping ground for all the recyclables which didn’t properly have a home.

So I came up with a plan. The space would need an electrical outlet, house the trash can, have a drawer for the recyclables, and a big and deep drawer for all the many teas that the Hubs enjoys. This project was NOT the first project that I tackled during covid - it is just the first one I am taking the time to post about. In all honesty, I doubted my ability to make a cabinet and make drawers. I strategically did several other projects first that I felt would test my ability to make a perfectly square box and make exact measurements. Have I said it before? I have fine gross motor skills, my fine motor skills are lacking and my attention to detail (like 3/16 vs ¼) is super - how do I say this - lazy. If you watch me doing a million projects and cooking and cleaning I don’t know if you would really know that I am lazy - but I am. Perhaps I have minimized our stuff and organized our life so that I can be lazy.

So here it is in all its glory.