1900 Farmhouse Renovation: Hall and Laundry Before and After

Continuing with the reveals of our old farmhouse remodel I'm sharing the completely reconfigured hallway and laundry before and after! We brought not only function and storage to these spaces where there was none, but also DIY old-house character that they lacked.

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I'm so happy to be able to share with you the functional spaces we created out of wasted space in this hallway and laundry-mudroom before and after reveal!

While a hallway and laundry-mudroom are not quite as exciting to talk about as a living area or a kitchen, they are places we walk through and visit multiple times a day, making them worthy of making them all they can be.

Plus they are often overlooked areas where we can bring a lot of storage and function that can really impact our day-to-day experiences.

And like the other before and afters, the changes for our old farmhouse are dramatic.

I think these two spaces more than anything show the power that bringing in character can do for a space.

Looking at the before of the hallway, you wouldn't know what year the home had been built or what style it was.

After? No doubts at all that you are in a farmhouse built in 1900.

Ah, the power of floors, doors, trim, and paint.

I hope you find something inspiring in this mostly DIY transformation of our hallway and laundry-mudroom!

Hall & Laundry Before and After Video

As usual, there are a lot more details and shots of during the remodel in the video, so do watch it if you can!

Note: I'll provide sources to everything I can at the end of the reveal.

Hall & Laundry-Mudroom Renovation

I finally created a before and after floor plan to help you visualize the changes we made.

It's especially helpful when talking about the hall and laundry since we had to change a lot to create the spaces.

In the renovated floor plan above, you can see how we continued the wall that starts at the bottom of the stairs from the hallway to the outside wall to enclose the new kitchen area in the previous enclosed porch (after removing a load-bearing wall and adding a beam).

On the kitchen side, the wall holds the built-in arched cabinet and on the laundry side, the freezer and water heater (which was moved about a foot to make room for the new laundry room door).

This, and the fact that we bumped out the back of the house eight feet for a larger primary bedroom and closet (much more on that later!), allowed us to add a door from the hallway into the new laundry-mudroom that was created from a section of the porch and the old storage room.

We also moved the back door from where the new kitchen would be to the laundry to make it work as a mudroom, too.

In order to accommodate all the doorways, the hall ended up being bigger than we thought.

I thought this was kind of a waste of space, but there wasn't much we could do about it working in the framework of the old house.

However, as you'll see, we were able to make even this large hall be useful and functional.

To coordinate with the original beadboard we found in the kitchen, we used the same beadboard we sourced on the walls of the hallway, only installing it vertical instead of horizontal like the kitchen.

The ceiling was created from reclaimed wood we pulled off other parts of the house as we were demoing for the addition.

The section of the laundry room you see above was the old storage room. When we pulled off the gross wallboard, we found the original tongue and groove wide board shiplap, which I loved.

We had enough saved from the demo of the bedroom to match the top portion of the walls where it was missing, thankfully, so all the walls in this space are original to the 1900 house.

Ready to see what these spaces looked like when we bought the house and what they look like now?

Farmhouse Hall and Laundry Before and After Photos

I need to start by saying that these before photos are what the house looked like when we purchased it - unfinished spaces, flooring coming up, unpainted, and so much visible spray foam.

I really felt bad for the people who were renting it - the owners should have at least made the house useable and finished without exposed lumber and wiring in some cases.

Anyway...the west side of the hallway between the kitchen and back bedroom before had this little nook that we can't figure out what it was supposed to be. A closet wouldn't need a base like that, and we found no reason for making the top of it a dropped ceiling (no pipes were there).

Just one more curious thing of the many we've found in this house.

Now that same wall looks like this:

We opened up the wall for the door to the new laundry-mudroom and added cabinets to work for kitchen overflow, canning supplies, and linen.

Those cupboards weren't in the original plan, but I'm so glad we had our cabinet people add them after installing the kitchen cabinets - they create needed storage and help the large hall to have some function.

The other thing I wanted to accomplish with the remodel was to have a flat ceiling in the hallway, even if it was lower than the other ceilings, to remove the awkward areas jutting out.

I knew it was for plumbing for the upstairs bathroom, but hoped we'd be able to make it smaller.

Thankfully, the plumber was able to do that, while updating the plumbing and making it ready for our future upstairs bath remodel.

The ceiling is slightly lower than the bathroom, but it's wonderfully flat and helps keep the hall feeling bright and airy.

This last before shot of the hallway helps to show the state of the place better - and all the spray foam, lol. (Oh, and a sneak peek of what the bathroom looked like!)

We were SO curious about that spray foam shut door - what on earth could it be to? Why would it need to be a door if then it was made to not be opened?

Can you guess what was there?

The opening was a bit anticlimactic - it was just a duct pipe for the kitchen stove hood vent and the bathrooms drain pipe. I'm not sure why they decided on a door for that, as these are usually hidden of walls anyway.

Again, I'm so thankful we could remove this odd triangle door thing from the corner of the hall - the stove was moving completely and we expanded the bathroom a bit to be able to enclose the drain pipe into the wall.

It's so clean and open now, and just makes a lot more sense.

(Plus you're getting a sneak peek into our new bathroom - the subject of the next before and after reveal!)

As for the laundry room, I'm showing this photo again (it's featured in the kitchen reveal, too) because that door leads to the storage room that we turned into the laundry.

The other half of the new laundry-mudroom was created when we added a wall just on the other side of the interior window on the left, in front of the water heater here in the old enclosed porch. (This is where you may need to refer to the floor plan to see what I'm talking about!).

The view of the laundry room now looking from the new back door. This area was previously the storage room.

We discovered a window opening when the wallboard came off and decided to make it into a niche that will eventually hold a fold out drying rack.

The narrow storage floor cabinet was an unused upper kitchen cabinet that Brian built in with reclaimed wood shelves on the side sized to fit baskets. I filled and painted it all and then we topped it with leftover butcher block from the kitchen counters.

I had looked and looked for both a new and used cabinet to fit this space and this ended up costing nothing. So nice when that happens!

The vintage hanging cabinet came from Brian's mom's house and the coat rack was made from salvaged siding from the farmhouse and vintage wire hooks.

The flooring is the same we used throughout the whole main floor.

We actually don't have a full before of the previous storage area, other than the door to it I showed above, so here's another during photo taken after we added the windows but before we added the reclaimed wood to finish the top of the walls.

Fun little side note: that far right corner was the worst part of the house with it's dirt-and-boulder foundation. It dropped off a couple of inches - the stick-on baseboard was on the wall above the corner so it was easy to see. When the foundation got installed and the corner lifted out of the dirt, the door to the storage room was then crooked! (I know I took a picture, but I can't find it anywhere...)

In this view of the ceiling and lighting, you can also see the trimmed out double windows we added - I love how bright this space is now.

The light fixtures all have metal white shades and we used beadboard panels over the top of the existing plywood ceiling, covering the seams with small pieces of trim.

On the other side of the room is the storage area we built for the freezer and water heater.

I made the curtain to hide the water heater and also to be a small area for hanging clothes to dry (I show this off in the video). I loved having an area to hang clothes to dry out of sight in our last laundry room, so I was determined to find a space here, even though it's only half the size.

This space does double duty as our laundry room and mudroom as well as hold additional storage (freezer, etc.) in a small footprint. Thinking through built-ins and how to use the space to it's maximum for our needs was crucial.

I just love how it turned out - it's functional, bright and cheery, and does what we need it to. Mission accomplished.

Hall & Laundry-Mudroom Sources

Paint for Walls, Trim, Cabinets: Simply White, Benjamin Moore (matched at Home Depot with Behr Premium).

Window & Door Trim, Hall: 1x6" primed finger jointed pine boards (applied like this tutorial for simple farmhouse trim).

Window & Door Trim, Laundry: 1x4" primed finger jointed pine boards.

Flooring: 3/4" Viking Hardwood Essence Oak 5" Wide 3/4" Thick Solid Hardwood (no longer available). Similar on this page at FloorsToYourHome.com (Awesome service, really recommend looking there to see if you can find something).

Hall Cabinets: Legacy Door and Millwork

Hall Ceiling Light Fixture: Schoolhouse Oil Rubbed Bronze Ceiling Mount Light

Laundry Light Fixtures:

• Ceiling light - White Farmhouse Metal Flush Mount Barn Light
• Window Sconces - Black Sconce with Metal White Shade 

Copper Boot Tray

White/Black Laundry Sign

Round Jute Hallway Rug

MORE ABOUT THE 1900 FARMHOUSE

• Our New Farmhouse Fixer - The Before Tour
• Exterior Farmhouse Fixer Before Tour
• Farmhouse Fixer Yard Tour Before
• Farmhouse Fixer Year 2 Review + Video
• Farmhouse Progress Year 3 (+ Tour)

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