The kitchen is usually the hardest working room in the house, but Bess and James Mitchell say the combination mudroom/pantry in their Falls Church residence just might be theirs. This wasn’t always the case.
Built in 2020, the Mitchells’ Craftsman-style home had plenty of positives, but it lacked an efficient flow from the garage to the interior, with little space allocated for the odds and ends of an active family with sporty kids. The door from the garage “entered directly into the kitchen,” says Matt Lee, principal of Lee Design Studio, creating an abrupt transition.
The couple’s initial conversations with the architecture firm revolved around practical concerns. The home “had no dedicated mudroom or sufficient pantry storage,” Bess says, “so we needed to add both. When it came to design, we wanted to use natural materials for warmth and [to] create interest.”
Lee Design Studio addressed the family’s need for functionality by reconfiguring the entry sequence in tandem with Vienna-based BOLT Builders. Rather than spilling into the kitchen, the garage now connects to a mudroom and pantry with open cubbies for sports equipment, hooks for coats and hats, and storage cabinets for food and small appliances such as coffeemaker, mixer and blender. As a bonus, each cabinet contains an outlet. Walnut countertops provide a durable work surface.
Luckily, the home’s preexisting layout was ideal for carving out this double-duty solution, says design coordinator Marie Payne. Now, “you walk straight into that area with all of that counter space. You can drop groceries, organize things in there and then move yourself into the living space.”
The checkerboard ceramic tile floor—the Mitchells’ very first design choice—served as a launching point for other materials and selections, including a subway tile wall and striking blue cabinetry with black hardware.
Good looks aside, Bess describes their new utility area as a game-changer: “We don’t know how we lived without it,” she says. “Finally having a dedicated space for coats, bags and sports gear has greatly improved how the rest of our home functions, too. Our living room is no longer a cluttered mess!”