Finally! Our laundry room is done!
I know that I am probably going to go into way more detail than you would like to know
about our laundry room, but this room is important to us. Between our cloth diaper laundry
and laundry for two adults and one little person, we use our laundry room a lot!
With that being said, I was very specific about what I wanted.
It needed to be 100% functional, and of course, cute too.

Moving into the house, this is what the laundry room looked like.
If you would have seen the before-before pictures of the house, you would have
seen a washer and dryer in there… somehow in the process of the bank fixing up the house,
those did not make it. We think someone just took them… along with the fridge,
which we were way more bummed about, but I digress.
We were so excited that there was already a sink and cabinet in there, which saved us some moolah.

Things that needed updating in the original laundry room:

1. Open wire shelf. From our last laundry room, I already knew that I wasn’t a fan,
so when my mom and I painted the room over Christmas break, I didn’t let them put the shelf back up.
I thought this would force us to actually do something with the room, but here we are 5 months later…
We had to replace it with something and tossed around the idea of getting cabinets, but opted for
a shelving unit we found in the As Is section at IKEA for a whopping $25!

2. The fluorescent light. No further explanation needed.

3. Our $10 stand up, folding drying rack that I have had since college. It sat right in the
narrow laundry room, making it hard to open and close the front loading machines.
It was a royal pain in my arse and I swear I hear angels singing the day we installed our new drying racks.

4. Color! Fun fact: this was the first can of paint we bought for the house.
The laundry room… I told you I was excited about it.

5. Paint the cabinets. I originally wanted to do them in white, but I didn’t want to buy the
entire kit for two little cabinets, so I was going to settle with the Espresso that we had purchased already.
But, then it dawned on my to ask Sally to borrow some of her extra grey from when she painted her kitchen cabinets.
It worked out perfectly, and I love the grey!

6. Decor. We really liked the decal we had in our old laundry room so we decided to get another one.
We actually purchased it before we were officially house hunting, due to an expiring Groupon,
but the decal works perfect in the space. I also looked on Pinterest for some fun artwork,
and found the awesome laundry cheat sheet that I printed for free.

7. Store the detergent in style. We already had one large glass jar that served as a gin bucket,
so I got a matching one so we have one jar for diaper detergent and one for laundry detergent.
I made the chalkboard labels from our leftover chalkboard contact paper on the pantry door.

What we still need to do:

1. Get a matching washer to the dryer. Here’s the story.
Somehow during the moving process, the dryer was damaged beyond repair.
After a costly service call, we had to get a new one. It’s sad that the washer and dryer
do not match at this point, but I don’t care enough to go buy a new washer.
We opted not to go with the front loaders this time around, which was kind of a
spur of the moment decision, but we aren’t in love with our washer now,
so I am still very happy with that decision. I would love to get the new washer soon,
but we will use this one until it dies…and that may not be too far away.

2. We would love to eventually paint the counter top too.
I have no idea what color, but something other than what it is now.
It works for now, but I certainly don’t love it.
Updated: Project complete!

Source List:

Paint – Valspar Araucana Teal
GRUNDTAL Drying Racks
PRESSA Drying Rack
Shelf Unit – HEMNES Wall/bridging shelf (AS IS section for $25!)
Storage Baskets – Threshold Global Small Milk Crate
Detergent Jars – Target
Laundry Cheat Sheet – Print / Frame
The Laundry Room decal – Dali Decal (purchased with Groupon)
Pendant light – MINUT pendant downlight
Cabinet Paint – Rustoleum Cabinet Restoration Kit in Winter Fog
Cabinet Hardware – Handles / Knobs