Laundry Room Reveal

I have never really enjoyed doing laundry.  I don't mind it, but I don't love it either.  I do love the fresh scent of clean clothes and I LOVE the feeling of finished laundry- where everything is clean, folded and in its proper place.  Even though that only lasts usually less than thirty minutes, I savor those moments all the same.

When we moved into our new home, I didn't realize how much I liked my old laundry room until I began to try and "use" my new one.  Granted this is a total first world problem.  I have to say that before I go any further, because I get it.  However, I'm going to show you what I'm talking about anyways.

In our old laundry room we had shelving, storage, cabinets...just an overall smart use of space.  I did not realize how much I had stored in there until we got here and there were no cabinets. only one awkwardly high shelf and a small set of hooks.  I knew after only living here for a few weeks that updating this room was on our short list of projects that had to be done ASAP.  Our new next door neighbor is a contractor and is super nice, so we hired him to help us install a new deeper kitchen sink and faucet and to help us upgrade this room.

Here is what it looked like when we moved in...(we took out the bar in this photo, but there was a drying bar normally below the shelf)

I'm tall and this shelf was very high and awkward to reach even for me!  The room was painted a dark blue, green color which made the small space seem even darker, kind of gloomy and closed in.  When I think about laundry, I think about bright, clean, fresh and airy...and this room was kind of the opposite.   When we got all of our stuff in there,- the stuff that used to be in our old laundry room- where now there was no storage for it anywhere, well...the small room quickly became a dumping zone and a complete mess all the time.  

Here is what it looked like after we moved in.... (warning- raw, real and messy photos here!)

Sometimes our dryer was piled so high with stuff that we could not even see what we were turning the dials to when we turned it on! But there was no place to put any of that stuff- even the floor was full!

Seriously- it looked like this 24/7 and it was a nightmare to not just do laundry but you did not even want to think about doing laundry when it involved spending time in this crazy small, cramped, unhappy space...

Lily did not seem to mind though...she loves to help me with whatever I'm doing...  What a cutie!

Here is our laundry room today! 

After hours of researching online photos of laundry rooms, I decided that the ones I was constantly drawn toward were the ones with Tiffany blue walls and black and white accents.  I knew we were not getting rid of our washer and dryer, so the color scheme had to work around them, which was fine with me.  I have long loved the color palate of Tiffany blue, black and white, so once Joe was on board, we set about to make it happen!  Again, our budget was small, so we got our upper cabinets from Lowe's, for about $80 a piece.  Joe purchased the shelf over the washer and dryer from Home Depot for a few dollars, the little upper shelf was left over from another project and cut to size.  We took off the old metal Levolour (sp?) blinds that seemed a bit corporate and dated for our taste.  Letting all of that natural light into the room really gave it some life.

The black and white artwork was all stuff we already had, I just gathered it all together and added it to this room to give it a happy home.  I purchased the 'laundry' sign for over the window at Hobby Lobby on sale (at the top of the post).  My mom made our curtains out of material she used for a table cloth for my dad's retirement party and I painted the walls.  We had a real box from Tiffany's, so I took that in and Home Depot color matched it to the exact color of the box (which was awesome, I did not know they could do this!) so that saved us a bunch of money as well.  We obviously had to prime and paint which took the better part of a weekend, but the results were worth it.  All of our ceilings are 10 feet high, so it took some reaching and stretching to get into the corners, but it all worked out.  Someday I'd love to add a black and white checkerboard floor, but for now, that is not in the budget.  Overall, I LOVE how it turned out.  LOVELOVELOVE it.

Some might say it is really bright, which it is- but it is also super cheerful, bright, clean and happy now compared with how it used to be.  I love being in there and it makes me so happy when I walk by on my way to the garage. It's amazing what a little paint, some cabinets and some organizational elbow grease can do! Laundry room = happy place to be!