smartgirlstyle: laundry room

Showing posts with label laundry room. Show all posts

Laundry Room Makeover: Reveal

If you have a huge laundry room, good for you. I may or may not be extremely jealous of you.

I, for one, have a teensy tiny laundry room that also doubles as a mud room, random home improvement products and housewares storage room, garden center, and school stuff dropoff. It hasn't been very attractive for many years (if ever)...here's proof.

Although it's far from the laundry room of my dreams, it's now functional and organized and simple and, dare I say, even a little bit pretty.

Directly to the right of the doorway (barely visible in the photo below), I painted the back of a corner shelves/hooks unit to match the walls and added some grey fabric storage cubes. Each of our children has one to throw their bike helmets and lunch boxes and whatever-else-makes-their-hearts-sing into because, hey, no one can see it!

If you recall, we previously had some lame-length curtains hanging here that were constantly attracting dryer lint and getting in the way of the kids' hooks. No bueno. So I took part of one of the panels from my living room drapes FAIL (read all about it here) to create a laundry room window shade WIN. It only took about an hour one afternoon while I watched a What Not To Wear rerun. I absolutely love the funky coral fabric in this space.

Next up: the floor.

Check it (and more!) out after the break.

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How to Paint a Striped Rug

So I've been working really hard on redoing my laundry room. Which is a totally true statement if you replace the words "really hard" with "not really all that hard." Heh.

Because some makeovers require tons of time and effort. And some require just a little TLC and some new storage containers. Guess which one my laundry room falls into?

Be that as it may (a phrase that instantly ages me by about four decades), I've tried to be pretty creative in this transformation to save a little bit of cash and to focus on reusing what we already have. Because, truly, I'm getting tired of waste. Such a drain on this fine planet of ours!

So, yeah. Recycling. Starting with creating the rug of my dreams(ish) out of a rug from my closet.

I started with this old 3x5 flatweave rug that has literally been folded up in my closet for months if not years.

Wanting to start with the lightest color, I grabbed some old white interior latex paint and eyeballed the chunkiness of my stripes. That's right. Totally guessed on those suckers. I don't think I even get an "A" for effort here. Dah well. "A" for efficiency. So. That's something.

I didn't focus so much on paint thickness here as just getting the stripes laid out. Because my rug is a flatweave, it was actually quite simple to keep the lines straight. What I did try to do was make sure the sides of each stripe (as in, down into the weave lines) were crisp and well-painted. It didn't matter if I went outside of my "stripe zone."

The original woven stripes of my rug did show through for the first 2-3 coats. I probably could've primed the rug first to decrease the amount of absorption, but for some reason that was too much work for me. I kept the coats of paint fairly thin and just worked from one end of the rug to the other, over and over and over again.

I think I ended up doing four(ish) coats of white paint. Then I grabbed some leftover salmon-coral paint (from my ombre painted dresser) and used this for my darker stripes.

I didn't even rinse out my brush, that's how laaazzzzzzzyyyy I went on this project.

Same method as with the white stripes, except this time I was more careful about the stripe sides. Because I had focused on getting the white paint thoroughly into the weave "grooves," I just painted my darker lines along the tops of the weave lines for a crisp result.

This is making no sense, is it. Sighhh...

I think I only had enough paint to do two and a half coats of the coral, and it kind of shows the original woven stripes. Not super noticeable in real life, though. I let the freshly painted rug dry overnight and brought it inside the next day.

Not bad for about an hour of painting and $free$. I love the graphicality that a striped rug adds to a space, especially a cheerful one like a laundry room. Oh, and if you're interested, feel free to check out the complete post on my tiny laundry room makeover.

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Laundry Room: Painted Walls

Hey guys. Around here we've got going on a little something I like to call "Laundry Room Redo on the Cheap." Because we took a bunch of family vacations this summer, not the least of which involved some boogie boarding off the white sandy beaches of Hawaii, it's going to take a little bit to recover.

But I've been wanting to help out my laundry room for a long time now. And I think I can bust out some creativity in here. Or at the very least I could bust out a mop. Because under that washer/dryer situation was some scarrrry stuff. Just sayin'.

Here's where we begin, in all its loveliness:

It's a pretty tiny laundry room. Between the door and the window is this awkward corner. I built these shelves a few years ago, but they're not working as-is.

"Storage" shelf. Yep. Because hucking a million rags up on a shelf where few people can see it totally counts as storing them, right?

Cupboards full of years-old caulk containers and about 14 bottles of mostly-gone plant sprays.

First, I began (side note: coincidentally, this is how I begin all my major re-organization projects) by clearing out the room completely. Emptied the cupboards.

Moved the washer and dryer (one at a time) so I could clean the floors:

Basically, I made my kitchen become the dumping ground, so it looked a little something like this:

I wanted to give the cupboards a facelift, so I peeled off the shelf protector. (So so pretty, I know. It was a hard choice whether or not to let it go.) (Which is totally true if you replace the words "hard choice" with "no-brainer" and "let it go" with "yoink the stuff out as fast as my fingers could pull it.")

I removed the cupboard doors (permanently) and painted the cupboards in some leftover paint, Husky Grey. (The same paint that I used on the walls in this bedroom makeover.)

The shelves actually ended up looking like a warmish white next to the BM Buxton Blue of the walls, which was a nice surprise. (The same blue that I used on my lower kitchen cabinets.) Here's a really blotchy shot of the blue in various stages of drying:

So, that's where we are now. A little more on the cooler end of the spectrum, but I have high hopes it'll come together with some fun touches over the coming week...s...

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Laundry Room Inspiration

If you've ever checked out my house tour, you may have noticed the laundry room is M-I-A. That's because I'm secretly a little scared of my laundry room. Occasionally I'll toss in some dirty clothes and detergent from the doorway with the hopes that that the clothes will wash, dry, and neatly fold themselves so I don't have to set foot in there.

But, for real, the room must be tackled. And, with school starting this week, I think now is as good a time as any for a fresh start.

My laundry room is teensy tiny. I'll post pics soon. I've been trying to come up with small laundry room ideas. Here are some inspiring laundry room designs that are getting the wheels in my brain turning.

White like this is nice and bright when it's clean. (Would I be diligent enough to keep things so sparkly in my own laundry room consistently? That's another story for another day.) Love the chunky butcher block.

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Aqua is always such a cheery color for me. I've been leaning toward a little more blue on the walls in my own space.

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Here's a naturally crazy awkward laundry room space that some creativity, organization, and vision has made delightful. I like the serene, neutral color palette and the bits of décor mixed in.

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Making a drying board like this has been on my to-do list for eons. This would serve double duty for laundry and regular use around here, especially in winter, with a zillion scarves, gloves, snowpants, etc. hanging out in my house (mostly on the floor) all day. Every day.

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I've always secretly loved a checkerboard floor.

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Particularly a B&W checkerboard floor. I'm drawn to serene laundry rooms for some reason (they seem more clean, maybe?), but this room is funky and fun!

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This is about 14 times the size of my laundry room, so it's like comparing potatoes and pineapples, but I like the casual coordination of baskets here. Not super matchy-matchy, but still well thought out.