You better wipe your shoes before coming in this mud room!

While the mudroom was a bit of an after thought for me...just get rid of that bright blue paint!,

Brent was thinking about how we could maximize the usability of that space - all the shoes pile up...there are too many coats...you can never find your mittens on the top shelf...and in the winter it's freezing in there.

Brent proposed radiant floor heating early on in our planning process.  I was skeptical - it's a postage stamp of floor!  Do we REALLY need it heated...it didn't seem to go with our very budget-conscious approach...can you even buy a mat that small?

But, since I got my decorative light, Brent got his radiant floor heating.  Marriage is all about compromise, right?  Plus...I'm sure I'll be loving him for this when my boots are roasty toasty in February.  For material, we went with a heated-floor-friendly ceramic tile as our flooring choice - cheap and durable for all of those muddy feet.  Plus, the slate-look compliments the adjacent kitchen nicely.

The plan is to build a custom built in with bench, shoe, recycling, mail, and hat/scarf/mitt storage...but until that happens, it's all ready!

Here is what Brent did:

Step 1 was to prepare the floor surface - here he is scoring the cement backer board.

Dry fit of the backerboard

Mixing up the thin set.  The backerboard was set into a bed of thinset over the subfloor. This evens out any uneven surfaces and makes for good contact between the backerboard and subfloor.

Troweling out the thinset with a 1/4" x 1/4" square notch trowel

Backerboard in place with seams taped, mudded, and screwed to the floor.

Dry fit of tiles

Cutting tiles to size with the wet saw

Brent had to notch the backerboard to imbed the radiant floor heating mat 's factory splice

Mat laid out with the temperature sensor.
* Note - to the right will be the built in - you don't put radiant heating under any sort of cabinetry.

My feet feel warmer already.

More thinset to set the tiles...looks like peanut butter consistency to me!

Tiles have all been placed and are secured with the thinset.
Now we wait a day.

New taupe grout. 

Making sure all of the joints are filled with grout

After 20 minutes, Brent wiped down the tile to remove the excess grout, being careful not to pull it out of the joints.

Trimming the doorway to the mudroom.
There is a glass panelled door
that will find its way here at some point.

The little window was finished off
with a simple frame of trim.

Windows have been trimmed, doorways in the mudroom trimmed, and baseboard applied.

Welcome!