A Laundry Room Transformed and...

One thing I'm learning is that the more organized I get the more I love being organized!  I know shocker, right!?! Especially after you saw the before pictures of my laundry room.  My husband and I joked that my poor laundry room looked like some of the homes we saw on the reality t.v. show Hoarding.  Yikes!  One could hardly walk in the room let alone do laundry.  It definitely needed to be transformed into a room that was much more functional and while we were at it why not cute too?  After all, I do spend a lot of time in there.  So I purged, sorted, scraped, patched, decided on a paint color and painted.   My husband helped with some of the painting and then along with the help of my father-in-law they put up shelves for me.

Here I am trimming out a wall in one of my husbands old shirts. 

 Are you liking the color I picked? To tell you the truth I was not sure about it at this point.  The contrast between the old and the new was shockingly purple...but when it was all finished I was quite pleased!!!  Picking a color for me is always hard but it was even more challenging this time because you see into the room when standing in the kitchen.  I wanted it to look cheery, but not clash with those other rooms.  Take a look at the photo below and you'll get a better idea of why I was concerned.

Well, what do you think...do you like it?  You are looking into my laundry room (purple) as if you are standing in the kitchen (red), and to the right is the family room wall (camel).  Do you now see why I had to really think about what color and what intensity of color would work best? 

This is as you walk in.  The outside door to the left (which you barely can see) was stained a dark 70's color and is now white.  We don't have a cabinet yet.  We will have to wait on that, but that's o.k. because I have my shelves up!  Check them out...

My husband decided to not use the closet as it originally was.  Instead he used the wall across from the washer and dryer that ran into the original closet (you can still see the header from the closet in this picture).  That way I would have more shelves and no wasted inaccessible spaces.  It also made it so I could use this room for a mud room too!  See the Backpack, pink bag, and my purse on the shelf ...and next picture. 

Underneath where I hang shirts to iron are two baskets and a shelf.  The shelf and floor provide space for some of the family's shoes.  This has not completely resolved the issue of the shoes by the back doorway but has helped.  In the baskets I'm thinking about storing the hats, scarves, mittens etc... that now are taking up needed space in the front hall closet.  Next to the shoes is a hamper (one that I already had) so that the dirty laundry people throw in the room can now be off the floor and out of sight. Phew!

This was the coolest idea!  We were puzzling about what to do with this space when I realized my laundry baskets would fit perfectly in there.  I asked my husband if he thought he could put some shelves in this space that were just tall enough for my laundry baskets.   My Handy husband and his dad who is also very handy went to the hardware store and bought some white laminate boards cut them and spaced them just right!  I love it!  There's no more wondering what to do with the laundry basket full of unfolded clothes until I can get to it.  It's the perfect solution!!!  FYI I do have enough laundry baskets for each shelf, but they have clothes in them that are waiting to be put away...such is the norm in a busy home!

I shared with you that my motivation for redoing the laundry room was because it desperately needed it.  We had another pressing reason...

Meet the newest member of our family: Charley!  He is a two year old Golden Retriever that we adopted from WAAGR Wisconsin Adopt A Golden Retriever.  He is such a Sweetheart!

Awwwe!!!  Isn't he cute!!! 

We needed a place for Charley's dog food and the laundry room seemed to be the logical place.

Don't you just want to pet him and tell him how cute he is!

Charley and two of our girls

Best Friends!!!  Charley and our youngest son

Charley arrived the day we celebrated my birthday.  Isn't my cake just beautiful!  I have the best husband in the world, thank-you honey!!!  All my guys (hubby and three boys) got me real flowers too,  I love you guys!!!

Me and almost all the kiddo's (unfortunately one daughter had to work).  FYI My handsome hubby is taking the picture! 

What a great birthday!  I love my family!  I loved my flowers!  I love my redone laundry room!  And we all love Charley!

Whew! What a whirl wind!  We finished the laundry room just in the nick of time for Charley and with very little money spent!  My motto is work with what you got...you can make anything cute!  Even if the floor is still 70's green, you have to paint the ugly woodwork,  and your appliances are temperamental.   I may not have a whole lot of new in my redone room, but nonetheless I do have a very cute, cheery, and functional laundry room that I love!  Therefore I no longer cringe when I see the door is left open. 

Do you think God cares about laundry rooms?  I don't know for sure...but I do know He wants us to be good stewards of those things He's blessed us with.  Such as our finances, our home, our bodies and even with our creative gifts too!!!  As long as His will and His purposes always remain as our number one priority!!!

Thank-you God for blessing me in so many ways!  Thank-you for your sustaining grace that provides what we need in the moment we need it!  Thank-you for my new laundry room and for Charley!  For my family and friends.  Thank-you for showing me ways that I can make my home more efficient, more beautiful, and more welcoming to everyone who enters it's doors so that they might know Your love in ways they could not otherwise.  Help my sisters to be keepers of their homes too!!!  But in their own way, celebrating the way You have uniquely made them, and with the provisions you have provided for them.  Keep us from comparing ourselves with each other.  Most importantly help us each to be content with what we have and to give generously to those who don't!


"For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." Philippians 2:13

Step 3: Yes, I Googled it!

In case you have missed the previous posts my husband and I are redoing our laundry room because, well honestly, it desperately needed it. If you're courageous enough you could look here to see pics of the room before we started and here to see pics of the demolition process.

Day 3, Step 3

We had a problem that was stalling the whole remodel process.  The problem?  How do we patch the two larger holes in the drywall???  My husband and I discussed all sorts of ways we could patch them and we just did not feel good about anything we were coming up with. Finally I suggested that we google it! Within three minutes of googling I was led to eHow and found a simple solution to our problem. We already had all the materials I needed and so now I can get to work on patching those holes. Woohoo! My room is going to be painted in no time and then my husband can start putting the cabinet and shelves in.

In case you happen to have a hole in drywall that needs patching too you can check out the solution I found here: How to Patch a Hole in Drywall | eHow.com

Steps 1-2: Let the Demolition Begin!

Woohoo!!!  The Laundry room renovations have begun!!!  I spent Friday and all day Saturday clearing it out.  Phew!  Who could have imagined such a little room could hold so much stuff.  I took three large bags of clothing and items to goodwill, gave three smaller bags of clothing away to others, and threw away atleast three bags.  Whew!  That really emptied out the room!!!

My husband took care of the next phase which was to remove the closet doors, the frame and half the cabinet...

My handsome hubby hard at work!

Wait, that's not half the cabinet down, that's the whole cabinet.  Yikes!  My current cabinet was all in one piece and so the choice was remove the whole cabinet or leave it and then not have a place to hang wet clothes.  My wonderful husband said he will be able to get me a new cabinet.  Sounds great to me!  But meanwhile there's more work to do.  Such as I have some patching, priming and painting  to do...

One of the holes left behind after tearing out the cabinet

I've picked out the paint color and have it ready to go.  I don't want to tell you what color I chose.  I rather surprise you with it later.  For now I have to get nail holes and three larger holes patched like the one above that were a result of the cabinet frame being nailed into the wall.  There just was no way to get the cabinet out without prying it out and taking some wall too. 

Yikes!  What we thought was going to be a simple project of cleaning out my laundry room and adding shelves has exponentially grown.  In other words it's grown to be a much much larger project then I had anticipated.  My husband says that's the way it always goes when doing these kinds of projects.  I wish I could feel as calm as he sounds when he says it...I need a cup of coffee!