After living in our home for about three years, I decided it was finally time for me to add some personality and pizzaz to our place. We purchased our house from flippers who made it look nice, but basically everything was tan and brown. So, meh.
When we first got married, I had my hands full being a new mom of two step-sons, a wife, a homeowner, I had a new job, and we adopted a dog. So, yeah, I had a lot on my plate and I didn’t have the time or energy to do anything to our home other than hang some curtains, arrange the furniture we had, and frame a few pieces of art.
Fast forward three years later, and I couldn’t take it anymore; I HAD to do something creative in our space to make it feel less like a flipped home and more like OUR home.
I decided that it would be best to tackle smaller projects first, so I started with one of the smallest rooms in our house, and the room I HATED!
The laundry room.
I have never had a laundry room before, so I was grateful for the space, but it was filled to the brim with stuff. STUFF. Paper towels, toilet paper, towels, sheets, rags, random chords, speakers, a massage table, and fans. You name it, and it was in there. We had plastic bins filled with stuff just sitting on top of the washer and dryer. The washer and dryer weren’t actually installed in their proper location, the dryer was on the left and the washer was on the right. So when you took the clothes out of the washer to put them in the dryer, both doors hit each other and clothes would get caught on the hinges… so annoying.
Before I started designing the space, I needed to figure out what I didn’t like about the space AND what I needed from the space. I came up with a long list and got to work.
LAUNDRY ROOM DESIGN GOALS:
* Make it a space that makes me happy to be in
* Make it easy to wash clothes
* Make it functional and organized
* Make it easy to keep it clean (especially for my teen boys)
* New floors
* Raised washer and dryer
* Add art/personality
* Hide ugly water heater & hose attachments
* Do everything for less than $200
I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I was up for the challenge!
You might have seen the feature photo (above) and thought to yourself, that laundry room looks amazing! And well, it’s because it does, but that was more of what I wanted my laundry room to look like, not what it actually looked like… So, without further ado, here are some before photos so you can see what I was dealing with…
I am being totally transparent here, so no judging! 🙂
When you first walked into the laundry room, this is what you saw… You can tell that I tried to create some organization when we moved in, right? 🙂 We had mismatched blankets, sheets, pillows, towels. We just bought this home so we didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars to make everything perfect right away, so we took longer and budgeted for our renovations. I told my hubby that I could give this laundry room a makeover for less than $200, and I am pretty sure he thought I was crazy. You should have seen his face when I told him I wanted to paint our linoleum floors!? But I will save that story for my article where I show you what I did with the floors!
This is the wall area, a little left of the white cubby with sheets (previous picture). The walls were tan, the linoleum floors were a tan/cream marble pattern.
This photo is what you see when your turn left into the laundry room.
As you see, I had A LOT of work to do. I needed to clean up the space, move everything out of the laundry room that we didn’t need in the laundry room, and find places to store those items. I did get rid of a few things, but I ended up utilizing my closet space in our guest bedroom for the toilet paper, paper towels, and extra sheets and blankets. I still need to get rid of more items, I am convinced we have way too much stuff, but one step at a time, right?!
Stay tuned to see the next stage of my Laundry Room Makeover!
Click here to see the pretty rooms that inspired my laundry room makeover.
What do you think? Can you relate to how my laundry room looks in these pictures? Have you ever tried tackling your laundry room?