Laundry Room - Progress Report

Last we left off we had mitigated the insane yellow and were moving on to better things...like cabinets and curtains. What fun!

Clutter and untidyness (new word) drives me bananas, so a driving idea behind this laundry room makeover was to create more usable storage space and hide the rest of it. The first problem we had was the water heater and furnace - every home needs them, but they ain't pretty to look at. Case in point...

So gross. The annoying part is that these units need air to circulate so I couldn't really put permanent doors on this little nook. The solution? Curtains obviously! We can pull them closed when I don't want to look at ugliness and open them in the winter when we use the furnace more. Once again I looked to Tonic Living and found this beautiful fabric called 'Joy, Pearl' which went great with my ironing board fabric 'Tempo, Mambo'.

It was a pretty easy sewing job; a little heming, a little pocket for the DIGNITET curtain wire we picked up at IKEA.

And voila! No more gross utility nook...

You can also see the awesome new cabinets we installed. Lowe's was having a 20% off sale which made them cheaper than IKEA cabinets. Bonus! And just to prove how awesome we are, this is how we hang cabinets...seriously.

There's still some work to be done, like figuring out a countertop solution that won't cost a million dollars, but we're so close! Also, just because I want this blog to be as truthful as possible, I should mention that while we've been working on our laundry room our basement den looks like this...it's an obstacle course and no one is the winner.

Dirty Little Secret

Ok, here we go. Confession time. Even I make mistakes *gasp!* Shocking right?

I have a terrible time choosing paint colours. I pick one. Second guess myself. Pick another colour. Second (or third?) guess myself. Then I pick a completely random colour and slap some paint on the walls (while crossing my fingers and hoping for the best). Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I was inspired by these gorgeous, sunshiney laundry rooms...

{from Real Simple}

{from BP4}

We went through our whole 'paint choosing' process which involves grabbing a bunch of samples and taping them to the walls. We immediately eliminate the ones that we don't like and then check out the remaining contenders at different times of day. I wanted a happy yellow, but not too crazy. A cheerful and energetic yellow, without being too bright.

{such a sweet, innocent colour}

I ended up choosing Bicycle Yellow. Sounds fun, right? The paintchip was a warm, buttery yellow - and it looked like a pretty good match from my inspiration rooms. Let's just remember where we started - the laundry room as we saw it when we first viewed the house. The green carpet and disorganization drove me bananas.

While I bookclubbed with some lovely ladies upstairs, Jeff put 2 coats on the laundry room walls. And then I went down to see...

OH GOD WHAT DID I DO???

And that was as far as I wanted to go into that room. You had to squint it was so bright. And I felt terrible. That paint colour was totally my call and dutifully the Hubs painted 2 coats of it. So it was my job to fix it. But first I needed to lie down because looking at that crazy yellow made me a little dizzy. Oy!

The next morning I made a cup of tea and sat down with Devil Yellow Bicycle Yellow and a can of plain white and started mixing. I added yellow, one cup at a time, to the white paint until I reached a colour that didn't make your eyeballs bleed when you walked into the room. Success! Here's a quick snap we took just after I finished 2 coats of the softer yellow and Jeff laid down our new flooring.

And here's our new washer dryer in their new home!

Sorry for the crappy picture! Trust me, it looks great!