Show and Tell: Laundry Room

It's done, I'm so happy!  Now only if I can keep it clean and organized!  That may actually be a bigger challenge than finishing the room.

My laundry room has been a mess for the last year.  When we moved into the house, hardly anything was finished.  None of the cabinets were stained or painted, the only plumbing that was finished was the kitchen and one full bathroom.  No back splashes anywhere, nothing was grouted except the one bath that was finished.  No counetertops in the laundry room.  Only about one quarter of the trim in the house had been caulked and painted.  And the whole house had to be repainted.  There was over-spray everywhere and Lowe's could not re-match the paint they sold us.  (They blame it on an old paint mixer that they have now replaced.)  We are still slowly working on the painting and caulking.

Since I had to repaint anyway, I went ahead and chose a new color.  The original color was just too dark, especially since this room doesn't have any windows.  The new paint is an Olympic brand, something new that has paint and primer in one.  It did work, we only had to apply one coat to cover the old color.  The new color is called Flemish Sky.

I have a nice new counter top for folding laundry.  Of course, it hardly ever looks this nice as it is usually covered with... wait for it...    Laundry!

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I have been sending my husband photos of all the laundry storage cabinets people have been making from the plans off of Ana-white.com.  I think he got tired of it, because out of the blue one day, he brought me home this chrome shelf from Lowes.  It certainly helps.  Everyone has a basket and I am able to sort clothing as it comes out of the dryer for folding later.  In the past, I have been doing all the laundry at one time, about every 7 to 10 days.  That is a lot of laundry coming out of the dryer in a short amount of time.  So it is nice to have a place to put it out of the way until I am ready to fold it, as this is a very high traffic area.  

The white shelf hanging on the wall was just one of those unfinished shelves you find at the craft stores.  I got this one from Hobby Lobby and was able to use my 40% off coupon on it.  I just painted it with leftover trim paint.  I had the white framed flower pictures put away in a closet.  I used to have them in an extra bedroom (pre-children.) I am glad to have a place to put them, because I have always thought they were so cute!

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Tucked around the corner, across from the white shelf is a laundry chute.  Or as the kids call it, "the dirty clothes hole."   I didn't get around to painting that and probably never will.  (At least not until it is time to sell the house.)

I love my washer and dryer.  I have had them for almost 2 years now.  They are one of the new 4.0 capacity HE washers.  We had to scrimp for quite a while to be able to buy these.  After doing a little research, I opted for a top load instead of the front load.  I do wish I had done a little more research on steam dryers.  I feel like I wasted my money on that feature.  The steam dryer doesn't work any better than throwing in a damp cloth.

The door on the left, leads out to the driveway and the door on the right, leads to one of the garages.  I do want to get an exterior glass door with mini-blinds built into the glass.  I would love to have some natural light in this room.  We have a contact that re-sells all of the doors that have been returned to the construction supply places.  We have gotten almost all our doors from him and they are deeply discounted.

Yep, this is a picture of the dirty laundry sorter.  My new goal is to actually put the dirty laundry in here, instead of on the floor.  Then when a basket gets full, I will throw it into the wash.  I am going to really try hard to keep up with this...  Keeping up with the laundry is my weakness.

The two little pictures on the wall next to the laundry sorter are more pictures I had put away in a closet.  Their frames were bright gold, I just painted them with some white primer and rubbed brown glaze over them to make the detail on the frames stand out a little more.  (As I am typing this, I just remembered two other pictures that might look better here, they were also in that spare bedroom. I will hunt them down later today and see how they look...)

My husband has bought a new shorter attachment for the back of my dryer.  Once he hooks it up, I will be able to push the washer and dryer back several more inches.  

We also have a friend who owns a liquor store.  He has promised me a bunch of his leftover wine crates.  I have several places in mind to put them.  (A couple of spots on top of the upper cabinets and on top of the fridge.)

I picked up the little brown baskets at Target.  They are really more decorative than anything else as I have plenty of storage in this room.  

See the little colored glass jars on the shelf?  I tried to color them myself using a tutorial I found online using food coloring and Mod Podge.  Well, don't waste your time on this one, they look terrible.  I am slightly annoyed I messed up a couple of my prettiest jars on this project.  I did find another tutorial to do the same thing, using Crystal Gloss Enamel.  I want to try this again once I am able to recycle a few more jars.

This photo is the view from the laundry room to the mud room.  I have more pictures of the mud room in my kitchen tour post that I will link up to the Roomspiration kitchen party on Friday.

Here are a few pictures I found of the laundry room in progress.  I never thought to take a true before picture.  We have been working on everything in stages and I wish I had done a better job documenting how unfinished everything that was when we moved in.

 
See the overspray?  It is everywhere!  Very noticeable here...


I will be linking up to some of the fabulous linky parties found here and here: .

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