Laundry Room Makeover

Remember a few weeks ago when I showed you how we were adding insulation and decking in our attic and I promised you some more home improvement projects?  Well, here's one of them!  I really debated about posting this now.  It's not finished yet and part of me wants to show the complete before and after.  But I'm really excited about how much progress we've made and I'm so excited to share it with you!

This pin on my Laundry Room Pinterest inspiration board really helped me get this project started.  I have a very small laundry room with hardly any storage space.  The laundry bags hanging on wall mounted hooks seemed like a great solution.

Image from Amazon

Here's what the laundry room looked like before we started.  Very small and not a lot of storage space.  Very plain and utilitarian.  An old leaky door that let in cold air and had a huge ugly pet door.  The laundry room is in between the dining room and garage.  It has three doors: one that opens to the main part of the house, one that opens to outside, and one that opens to the garage.  That's a lot of doors for such a small space!

And here's what laundry day typically looks like.  See why I wanted the hanging laundry bags?  After the laundry is sorted, it can be put in the bags and hung out of the way!

We started by replacing the trim around the door.  Whoever lived here before us had a dog that must have chewed or clawed it up. 

We've lived here for eight years.  For eight years I've looked at that and told my self I would do something about it and never did.  I can't tell you how good it feels to finally have that fixed and taken care of!  

Replacing the trim was really easy and I wish we'd done it sooner!  Here's what it looks like now.  It looks so much better!

 

Replacing the trim around the door was much easier than I thought it would be, and after getting that finished, I was fired up to move on to the next step.  We installed bead board and trim to the walls for a few reasons:

• I love the look of bead board!
• I thought it would be a good way to dress up some very plain and boring walls.
• The hooks for the laundry bags will be mounted in the bead board trim. 
• The door to the garage always bumps into the wall and the door knob damages the drywall.  The drywall has already been repaired once.  Hopefully the bead board will protect the wall and prevent any more damage.

We installed the bead board and it really does add some interest to these plain boring walls.

I really love it!  It makes such a huge difference!

After caulking everything, I painted the trim and the walls.  I'm terrible at picking paint colors.  Everything in my house that I've painted is some sort of beige (because it goes with everything and it's safe).  You can see here I'm trying to figure out which shade of beige I should use.  

I think I've decided I'm going with the lightest beige on the right.  It doesn't look great in this picture, but I've used it before in a bathroom and I really love it!

We've ordered a new door to replace the old leaky one with the pet door and it will be installed this weekend.  After that I can finish the painting and install the hooks.  When that's done I'll be able to share with you the complete make over!  Stay tuned!