Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Favorite Project of 2009? Laundry Room Re-Do

Collages1

Rhoda over at Southern Hospitality is hosting a Top Projects of 2009 as a showcase of all of our best projects over this past year. Hands down my favorite project has to be the Laundry Room that my husband and I redid. It is really one of the first projects that I blogged about and really helped renew my interest in improving our house. And it is so fitting that Rhoda is hosting this Showcase because she is the of writer of the blog Southern Hospitality that inspired me enough to take action! And she inspired me with this photo of her own Laundry Room.

Southern Hospitality Laundry Room

This is the photo that started it all! This is Rhoda’s Laundry Room.

I was stunned at how “pretty” her laundry room was and if you click here: Rhoda’s Southern Hospitality Laundry Room, you can see more of it. What was so wonderful to me was how kind and encouraging Rhoda was. She told her readers how she did it and she even gave us the name of the color of paint she used! “Grass Cloth” by Behr! How could I forget. I was at Home Depot later the same day getting myself a gallon.

Here is where we started:

After 8 years of living here our laundry room was still the same “builder beige” it was the day we moved it. It was the catch all room. The dumping ground. David's Wedding 066

There was so much clutter and stuff you could barely get in it to do the the actual laundry. It was beyond UGLY!!

David's Wedding 067

The best thing we did was remove the center doors of the cabinets and we turned it into a book shelf for my cookbooks. After removing the doors we needed to borrow a reciprocating saw to remove a vertical wood bar in the center that the cabinet doors met up against. First time for using that tool!

Laundry room 008

Then we got ourselves a Mitre Box (very inexpensive…I think we paid around $7.00 for it.) and some decorative trim molding that we painted black and we framed the center section with it. It is my favorite part of the room. We also used the Mitre Box to cut the skinnier trim molding and painted it white to frame each of the cabinet doors. We used “Liquid Nails” to attach all the molding to the cabinets. New door knobs as well to finish them off.

Laundry room 004

I found a piece of decorative trim that I painted black and we used “Liquid Nails” to attach it to the front of the sink.

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I was able to decorate the top of the cabinets completely with items from my storage room that I loved but couldn’t find a home for until the laundry room re-do presented itself!

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And finally a place for my basket of red geraniums.

Laundry Room Paris Art 2

And all those sports schedules that I use to tape to the cabinets…I now tape them to the inside of the cabinet doors…accessible but out of sight.

Laundry room 006

Of course the fun part of any room is when it starts to come together with the decorating and accessorizing. A new valence for the window, and I made some art collages for the walls, and I found a beautiful hand painted floor cloth with the black and white checks that I love saving us, at least for now, from re-tiling the floor with black and white tiles. (That is another project for another day perhaps. :)) A little bit of shopping at TJ Maxx and Hobby Lobby for the bulletin board and plate holder and I was in business!

Collage Trio

Now I still can’t say doing the laundry is a “pleasure” but it is certainly much less painful in our finally new and improved Laundry Room.

image Thanks Rhoda for hosting such a great event. It was fun to organize my many Laundry Room posts and photos all into one post. Looking forward to seeing what everyone else posts as their best for 2009.

39 comments:

MsAnnieBelle said...

Love that green background color! Wonderful choice Lisa.

RNSANE said...

What an amazing job you did...such a beautiful transformation - and inspiration!

Pat@Back Porch Musings said...

Beautiful laundry room!

You did a fabulous job!

Cathy~Mille Fleur said...

Wow...you have done a beautiful job updating your laundry room!!! I love it!!! All fo the color is wonderful!!!

Enjoy!!!
XOXO
Cathy

Anne Lorys said...

Wow, what a fantastic transformation! I love it all, but one of my fave things was probably the easiest, the painted trim on the sink.

You should be proud! :-)
Anne

www.thewhitefarmhouse2.blogspot.com said...

Can I come and do my laundry at your house? My laundry room could be voted the ugliest in America. It's a corner of the snake infested den of dispair. You did a beautiful job! I don't even like the color green but I do like it here.

Stacey said...

That is one awesome laundry room!

Malisa said...

Wow! I am so impressed! Isn't it wonderful how our blogs give us the opportunity to inspire and motivation each other?

Alberta said...

Beautiful! I especially love how your trio of wall plaques pop against that gorgeous wall colour...did you make those yourself? Stunning.

Anonymous said...

It looks so fresh and clean -- just like laundry should be. I love it!

Kathy @ Creative Home Expressions said...

Great project, Lisa! I remember your posting this because I remember those plaques you made with the scrapbook paper and the harlequin design in your rug. Love 'em! You and hubby really did a nice job!

René said...

My word...I would LOVE to be out of the "dungeon" doing laundry in a room like this any day. I'm jealous. Congrats on the outcome!

Sedona @ MyDivineDelights said...

Love it!! Very fresh and homey.

Brenda Pruitt said...

Oh, it's so pretty! I'm jealous, you see, because I don't even have that big a laundry room. Mine is just a hall to the garage big enough for the washer/dryer and a wall across from it. I've tried to think of something to do with it. But just can't come up with anything that will work. I love what you did! What is the black and white just over the appliances? A set of collages?
Brenda

Lisa@Pickles and Cheese said...

Thanks for all the wonderful comments! The set of three black and white pieces at the end of my post are a set of collages that I did using scrapbook paper and decoupage. Here is a link to the post I did showing how I made them.
http://picklesandcheeseblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Collage%20Trio

Kammy said...

I love this color combination !
You did a fantastic job !
Kammy

Melanie said...

I have always loved her laundry room and her office. I love the green that she uses. You did a great job. I love the cookbooks (as you know I have quite a set myself) and I liked how you 'shopped your house' and found a place for the things you love. Great job. If I could learn how to use the linky thing, I could show some before and afters:)

Melissa Miller said...

~WOW!!!! Lisa this is sooo gorgeous! Stunning job! :)

Karen said...

Your before looks exactly like my laundry room. I've never really thought about sprucing it up. Thanks for the inspiration.

Rhoda @ Southern Hospitality said...

Lisa, you took those ideas & ran with them! I just adore your LR & I know you are loving it. Mine was a huge white box when I started too & isn't is fun to have a pretty space to do laundry in?? Great job, girl!!

Marianne said...

A laundry room in itself sounds like heaven, but yours truly looks very nice. Good job on taking the inspiration and run with it.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many laundry rooms Rhoda has inspired? Mine as well, and my son-in-law even laid my black and white floor. I don't have a blog so I can't post a photo, but we love it! Thank you Rhoda. You're my muse!

CarolC

Anonymous said...

Your laundry room looks wonderful What a transformation.

Rue said...

I remember when Rhoda did that! Yours turned out beautiful as well :)

I need both of you to come and do something with my basement laundry room LOL

rue

Richella Parham said...

Your laundry room looks absolutely beautiful! I love all the details. You did a wonderful job. Congratulations!

Heidi said...

Your laundry room looks terrific. I love all the changes, you guys sure did a heck of a great job! I especially like the trim on the doors, and the book shelf space in the middle, that breaks up the expanse of cabinets and makes the room look a lot more interesting.
A really fine transformation!
Stop by sometime!
XO
Heidi - Heart and Home

Completely Coastal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Maya @ Completely Coastal said...

Wow. It looks great. Sometimes all we need is an inspiration room to show us what we want!

Jane said...

Lisa,
Thank you for your kind words on my blog post. It's been a rough couple of days but I have faith that we can handle what's ahead. I appreciate your prayers.
Jane
P.S. I love your laundry room redo. The color is so much fun.

Holly said...

What a wonderful ugly-duckling-to-swan story! It looks so nice; it would be (almost) a pleasure to do laundry here!

Triad Smarty Pants said...

BEAUTIFUL! I am inspired!

Beth@The Stories of A to Z said...

It's beautiful! You should be proud of it :). It's very Rhodaesque. I would have known she was your inspiration even if you hadn't told us! Love it.

Laurel @ Ducks in a Row said...

I agree with Beth - it is very Rhonda-esque! It looks great, what a fun room.

Linda@Coastal Charm said...

Lisa,
You should be very proud...your room looks fabulous!!!! AWESOME transformation...I just LOVE the colors!

Blessings,
Linda

Laura said...

Isn't it funny how a bit of beauty in a completely utilitarian room gives us so much joy? I have made a plan for 2010, and the laundry room is 2nd on the list, after the pantry! I hope mine turns out as cute as yours, cause I love it!

Wombat Central said...

I would never even have thought of making a laundry room pretty! It's gorgeous. You have inspired me to make *something* pretty like that in my house... my laundry is in the basement, so that's out. ;)

Help! Mama Remote... said...

Now I wouldn't mind doing laundry in your laundry room.

Millie said...

This is just gorgeous! Great job!

ShellE said...

Thanks for posting! What an adorable room. It has inspired me.