Laundry Room Makeover: The Final Before & After

Hi friends! Hope all of you had a great weekend. We had some weather that was crazier than an episode of Real Housewives, complete with tornadoes, storms, sunshine and then freezing cold temperatures. But other than a night filled with tornado sirens and some scared pups, we're safe and sound with no damage from the storms. I hope that none of you were affected by the tornadoes!

All of you have been so supportive about David and I selling our house. I keep telling everyone: "but all of my readers on my blog seem to think it will sell fast, so maybe it will!" : ) But one resounding comment I got when we announced the big news was "oh no... does that mean no more laundry room makeover?" I guess a lot of you were looking forward to it as much as we were! We definitely had a great to-do list for that space, but of course all plans were halted when we decided to list the house. Wop wop. Cue sad tears from everyone! I promise some great makeovers in our future house to make up for it though, I promise! ; ) 

Now the goal simply became: get the space ready for showing the house. Thank goodness we had just done a massive clean up of the space. That was a big enough move to get it ready for showing. But David and I also decided that a fresh coat of paint might do the tiny space wonders. So we broke out our trusty rollers and brushes and went to work.

It's certainly not the renovated beauty we imagined when beginning this project, but it's amazing what a little fresh paint can do, right? We painted the walls Polished Limestone by Glidden (color matched to Behr's paint + primer in one, which we usually use at our house)- a color we thought would be a nice neutral but wouldn't make the aged floor look too yellowy or dirty (ahem, tough battle since that floor is kind of yellowy and dirty looking, ha!). We also repainted the trim, doors and accent pieces in the space with a nice, fresh off-white (Behr's Ivory Palace, the same color we painted our guest bathroom ceiling). Makes such a huge difference! How about we take a little before and after tour through the room?

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

I think it's looking a lot better, don't you?! We talked about attempting to bleach the linoleum floor (although it looks disgusting, we have scrubbed it beyond belief!), but decided against it. David and I weren't sure if it would discolor the flooring and make it look worse. Have any of you ever tried bleaching a linoleum floor to restain it back to a brighter white? We did add an old bathroom rug we had lying around... a bright, colorful rug would look great down there and if I run into one on the cheap, I'll certainly add it. Any suggestions?

And don't forget that the other part of our laundry room, the cedar closet, is also happy and clean now!

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

So we're sitting pretty in our laundry room now! I think it screams "buy me! buy me!" don't you? ; )

Sharing with: Home Stories A2Z, Thrifty Decor Chick

Laundry Room Makeover Update: It's Clean

Last week, I shared my ideas for our laundry room makeover. Our little basement space is in need of some major attention. Check out the game plan and before pictures here. Well guess what? We've made some progress down there!

Ahem. Did you know that all it takes to make a room go from this...

... to this...

...is a little elbow grease?

Hm. Me neither. And I'm a little embarrassed to say that it took us almost two years of living in this house to get this room cleaned up! But wow, what a difference it makes.

We decided to go ahead and take out that horrible door between the cedar closet and laundry space.

Remember this one?

In addition to making the laundry room a heck of a lot less creepy, the removal of the door really opens up the space and makes it feel more flowy. Is flowy a word? It is now.

See? Kind of flowy, right?

The cedar closet portion of the laundry room looks great decent now too.

Especially when you compare it to what it looked like two weeks ago.

For those of you wondering about where all the junk went... I'd say about 1/3 of it went into the trash. Another 1/3 of it was actually just empty moving boxes, so we simply piled those in David's workshop (ie. the unfinished portion of the basement) for safekeeping. The rest of the stuff has been put away in it's proper place... "work out in the yard shoes" are now in the workshop, luggage is now stored away, winter clothes have been hung. Okay and some of the stuff is still sitting in the big room of our basement, but I promise I'll put it away at some point this week ; )

So there you have it. All it took to get us over a big hurdle was a little bit of cleaning skillz. Even Tucker and Maggie are kind of wondering why we didn't bust out the trashbags sooner in this room.

Yes, I totally just made my dogs talk in a blog post. I'm so cool.

T H E    T O  D O   L I S T :

1. Clean the room out.

 2. Take down shelving in the cedar closet.

3. Potentially take down cedar walls or paint over.

4. Potentially knock down the wall that separates laundry space and cedar closet.

5. Replace all doors in the room. 

6. Add new flooring.

7. Create an organized workspace over the washer and dryer.

8. Replace the fluorescent lighting.

9. Fix bad spots in ceiling tiles.

10. Add a laundry folding/ project space where the cedar closet is.
11. Spruce up my grandmother's vintage sewing machine table. 

Oh and don't forget to check out my laundry room inspiration board on Pinterest! You should be able to get a good idea of how I want this room to evolve.

Laundry Room Makeover

In case you haven't noticed, I've left a few rooms in my house off the ol' blog. Mostly, that means that I simply haven't updated that room in the almost two years we've lived in our little casa. But sometimes, it means that I've just been too embarrassed to show you any pictures.

Our laundry room falls in the latter category.

It's a disaster. And that's being nice. 

Our laundry room sits in the finished part of our basement. The previous owners used the finished space as the master bedroom for the house (there's an adjacent full bath, so it's not a bad idea). There's a small rectangular space off of the basement bathroom that was converted into an "L" shaped cedar closet and a small, square laundry room. On the other side of the closet/laundry space is the entry into the unfinished portion of our basement... aka David's workshop.

But my oh my is this closet/laundry space in bad shape. Like, kind of disgusting.

Unfortunately, we inherited most of the mess. But in the almost two years of living in the house, we honestly haven't done much to aid in the room's beauty except for purchasing a new washer and dryer. We did lay (like, literally set on top, nothing fancy) a sheet of new linoleum in front of the washer and dryer so I didn't feel too sketched out when I was doing laundry. Except that said washer and dryer recently broke down (thank goodness for warranties!) and we had to move the fake flooring for the repairman. So I just left it out in these pictures for extra skeeziness. You can actually see the linoleum piled up in the corner of some of the pictures. We're classy like that.

But other than that, the space has become junk storage and a dirty entryway between the backyard and the unfinished part of the basement (even though there's a door outside from the unfinished part, not sure why we trek through the closet/laundry space). It's one of those "I-don't-know-where-else-to-throw-it-so-I'll-just-throw-it-in-the-laundry-room" spaces. But now it's time to makeover this little room. It needs it. Bad. So it's finally getting the attention it deserves!

Anyways, that's a whole lot of chatter and no pictures. So here goes nothing.

Just a note: these pictures are horrendous.  But you know me and I like to keep it real. And yes this is where I do my laundry. I promise clean clothes can come out of this disaster zone. Please don't judge me?

 

I know. It's totally a hot mess. I thought about straightening up for the pictures... and clearly decided against it. Keeping it way too real. You have a space like this in your house too, right? Oh. You really don't? I'm the only one with a sketchy, messy, disgusting basement laundry room? Well dang.

Ok fine. You can judge me. It's really disgusting, right? But I guess some stained carpet, stained linoleum, a dog chewed doorway and some really bad fluorescent lighting is what you inherit when you decide to purchase and makeover a 1952 casa. At least it's better than a laundromat, right? Yeah probably not.

Let me redeem myself with my list of plans for the room. It worked great to have the list public with my living room redo, so I thought it would help with this ol' laundry room as well.

 T H E    T O  D O   L I S T :

1. Clean the room out.

 2. Take down shelving in the cedar closet.

3. Potentially take down cedar walls or paint over.

4. Potentially knock down the wall that separates laundry space and cedar closet.

5. Replace all doors in the room. 

6. Add new flooring.

7. Create an organized workspace over the washer and dryer.

8. Replace the fluorescent lighting.

9. Fix bad spots in ceiling tiles.

10. Add a laundry folding/ project space where the cedar closet is.
11. Spruce up my grandmother's vintage sewing machine table.

Pretty good list, right? I'm excited! It will probably make worlds of difference in my laundry folding skillz... at least that's what I keep telling David ; ) I can't wait to get started on this project, slowly but surely of course! Needless to say, there will be some pretty sweet before/after shots with this mess!

What room in your house are you too ashamed to put out in the ol' blog world? Come on, don't make me feel like the only one out there with a sketchy room!