Hello friends!
I wanted to share with you one of my favorite recent makeovers…my laundry room! As you know, women spend a lot of their time in both the kitchen and laundry room. When either of these rooms are unorganized, it makes the whole house seem chaotic. Well, chaos was ruling my world because my laundry room was off the charts!
My laundry room doubles as storage and a catch-all for my gardening and craft supplies. On bad weather days, you may find a few bags of garbage piled up near the back door that need to be taken out. On good weather days, you’ll definitely see garden shoes and gloves thrown around as well as various cans of paint and spray paint along with drop cloths.
Let me warn you–the photos you’re about to see may be graphic in content and parental discretion is advised. Here are my laundry room BEFORE photos:
As you can see, I had a bold red and country motif going on. You can’t see it in the photos, but there was a lot of bird houses sitting around for decoration. The decor was basically fun things I had gathered throughout the years but they didn’t match the traditional style of my house.
I took an old oil cloth tablecloth and cut it to make curtains to hide the things stored on the shelf above the washer and dryer.
The red bench in the entry way was my attempt at a mudroom…but it was too wide to get around when coming in and out of the back door. This bench seemed to always be full of things I didn’t know what to do with such as half-dead plants that I failed to water, laundry baskets, garden tools and my radio.
The last photo is of my closet. When we bought the house, I purposefully took one door down because I thought it would be a great area to decorate and display some of my things. Nope. About every six months the shelves would need to be cleaned because they had filled up with “stuff”.
I wanted a change. I needed a change. I longed for a calm and peaceful area where I didn’t dread spending time.
My inspiration? A beautiful picture I got at a yard sale for fifty cents.
The picture is originally from Hobby Lobby. I love the colors and how they work together…the white of the cotton, the blue of the sky and the brown of the stems. I bought a quart of Zero Gravity (N450-2) Behr Ultra paint in satin (it’s a very small room) because it seemed to match the grey/blue of the picture and painted the walls.
Donnie removed the back of the red bench for me and I painted it. I tried several colors and ended up just giving it a distressed look using a dry brush of white paint over a dark grey base. I spray painted the hooks from a shiny silver to a bronze-tone.
I was looking for some type of photos or artwork to go on the walls. After going through some of my favorite blogs and then searching Pinterest, I found these awesome laundry photos from Lauren at her blog Bless’er House. They worked perfectly! The dark wood-colored frames came from Michaels. These are lovely photos of laundry lines.
I bought this stool at a yard sale for $1 years ago and it’s been sitting in the basement needing a home.
Here’s what it looked like before. I left the $1 sticker on it to remind me of the price. I originally planned to sand and stain the entire stool but there were so many layers of paint and my palm sander just couldn’t get the legs and spindles well. My solution was to sand and stain the top and just spray paint the legs white. I used Minwax Wood Finish stain Dark Walnut (2716) for the top of the stool as well as the shelf over the washer and dryer.
Doggo alert!!! I had to insert a photo of Lucy posing in the updated laundry room.
Here’s a photo of Kaytlen’s dog, Chubb. I snapped this picture on my cell phone one afternoon as he sat in the doorway of the laundry room. The sun was shining on him just right and I couldn’t resist taking a photo. Chubb is a sweetie and our family always enjoys Chubb and Molly (Kaytlen’s other dog) visiting.
Here’s a few more photos of how the laundry room turned out.
The clothes hanger is a towel hanger I got from Walmart and Donnie hung it from the bottom end of the shelf. Clock and jars with copper tops are from T J Maxx.
The wooden basket is from Michaels. It came in a natural wood and I dry brushed it with the grey paint that was used on the walls.
I found this light fixture at Walmart for under $25. The Laundry sign came from Hobby Lobby. Most of the other items were gathered from my stash in the basement. Lots of dried hydrangeas were used because I can’t bear to throw out hydrangea blooms. I’m a hydrangea hoarder.
More photos from Bless’er House were used on the wall that used to hold a bulletin board with a calendar. I like this much better. And the calendar…it was from 2016!
And the closet? I pulled the original door out of one of our storage buildings and painted it. Now, I can have clutter but you don’t have to know because it’s hidden behind the doors! The new knobs came from Hobby Lobby.
The laundry room update was truly a labor of love. I enjoyed taking this small space and transforming it to a clean, calming area that I actually enjoy being in. I hope that in some way I have inspired you to take that project you’ve been putting off for so long and jumping into it head-first. You will love the results.
Thank you for stopping in today! I appreciate you visiting!
**Thank you so much to my daughter, Mary. She took many of these photos for me. **
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