Managing a busy household can be a chore. But it doesn’t have to be. The editors of Country Home designed three rooms as part of the National Kitchen and Bath Industries Show Design Idea Center with an eye on everyday solutions and materials that can make your life easier. Within 580 square feet, we tackled the hardest-working rooms (and often messiest!) of every house: a kitchen with integrated office, a back-door mudroom, and a combined laundry and crafts room. Our strategy included choosing materials that look vintage but benefit from new long-wearing technology, such as a laminate floor that mimics reclaimed wood. Solid-surface kitchen countertops look like marble but may be more affordable; in the laundry, the countertops look like soapstone. A collected-over-time feel comes from pairing stock pewter-gray cabinets with an island boasting an antique-furniture look. Open cabinets provide display space for vintage dishware.
The kitchen opens to a built-in banquette constructed from some custom and some affordable stock cabinetry components. Finally, we packed in storage solutions, including cupboards below the banquette, a space-smart roll-out cleaning closet and a pop-out ironing board. 
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