Renovated Laundry Room: New Flooring and Paint Job

Renovated Laundry Room: 

New Flooring and Paint Job

contributed by The Cellar Door Stories 

Ok, you caught me.  The laundry room still is not 100% complete.  There's still some minor things we need to do and a few things we need to get.  Nonetheless, I'm ready for a reveal.  Just as a reminder, at some point, previous owners had used these two rooms for their dog breeding stuff.  (Check out this previous post for a few "before" pictures).  Obviously not something we were thrilled with, but when we bought the house, we knew someday we could turn it into something useful.  Fast forward 3 1/2 years and we are so pleased with how it turned out!  I just wish I had more "before" pictures for some better comparisons!  

Here's the still-to-do/get list (doesn't include things like fill up the walls with artwork that are more long-term things):
*Putty holes & paint trim!
*Paint doors
*Baskets for shelves
*Shelves for above washer & dryer  (done!  see it here!)
*Doormats!
*Curtains

Now, be prepared for a lot of pictures....sorry for the poor picture quality for some of them....
First, another "before" picture (yes, I was too lazy to scan this so I took a picture of the picture)...it's the view standing in our kitchen looking out to the hallway - the door straight ahead leads to the garage.  Lots of wallpaper.  Lots of blue.  Wallpaper and blue seemed to be the main themes of the house.  And yep, those are ducks on the border.  Or possibly geese.

And the after - new flooring, wallpaper stripped, walls, doors and trim painted - door to garage removed due to the hallway added on to connect the old hallway to the new rooms (along with a peek at my daughter's jammie-covered bum):

Continuing forward:

Turning left around the corner, the laundry room looking into the mud room:

Straight ahead:

I need to find something to sit on it, but I love my little green bench!  It was a great find....in our basement when we moved in!  Here's a close-up - I love that old look that just can't be duplicated - I just wish I knew the story behind it:

Now looking to the right - I want to put baskets on the shelves to hold hats, mittens, etc.  The sliding door on the left leads to a little porch area:

And now, turning around for the backwards walk-through:

The metal bucket is to store "outside stuff":

Just on the other side of the door is the utility sink:

"What is that thing hanging above the sink?" you might ask....and I might tell you - it's a drying rack!  More specifically, a drying rack I saw 2+ years ago at a store going out of business.  I didn't buy it because I didn't have a place for it, but my husband told my mom-in-law about it, and she surprised me with it!  It's been sitting in my closet for a few years, just waiting to be hung up and admired in all it's glory....



And now continuing our backwards walk-through, a view of the laundry room (the wall opposite the washer & dryer)....our freezer and pantry shelves....I also have a great cabinet to put under the window, but I'm using it in another part of the house right now:

On top of the freezer I have these great vintage-y looking grape boxes that I don't know what else to do with (any ideas?):

And on top of the pantry shelves, is this collection of stuff I don't know what else to do with - the Hops bottle is from the (now out of business) restaurant that Jon & I went to on our first date (awww!), the crock and some of the blue mason jars (I loooove blue mason jars) are from my Grandma's house:

And the other wall looks a little something like this (to help put it in perspective, the utility sink is to the right of the dryer):

In the above picture, Jon built the box to stand the washer & dryer on ($200 per pedestal - no thanks).  The rug may or may not still have a Target  price tag, because I may or may not be returning it.

Besides the green bench (and the washer & dryer of course), my favorite thing would have to be this...

I first posted about these letters back here - we found them at an antique/flea market place - they are letters from an out of business movie theater.  At first I was going to spell out "LAUNDRY" but Jon thought that was too typical.  He was right.  When I saw the "&" it all fell into place.  The only problems were that some of the letters were red and some were black - we solved this with a little spraypaint - also, there were no "A's" - we solved this by turning a "V" upside down and adding a little piece of Armaflex (with an insulator for a husband, many household things are fixed with Armaflex).  

And for the last close-up, I have this little dandy - Pottery Barn used to sell something similar as a Christmas card display but I bought this on Etsy from curlywire (again, a few years ago, just waiting to be used).  I'm not sure I love it in this spot, but I think it will look better when I have more pictures and cards to display - in the meantime, it's a cutie picture of our niece & nephew, and a birthday card from a few years ago that still makes me laugh:

Well, there you have it - The Laundry Room Reveal!  I am loving the extra space and not having to trek down to the basement to do laundry!