Our laundry room was disgusting. I have no other words. Most of our house had been updated at least once since it’s origination in the 1970s, ,but I don’t think the laundry room had been. It was painted a horrible tan color with matching linoleum floors that look like they’d never been cleaned. The day we moved in, we removed the 1970s cabinetry, which had clearly been painted around and didn’t help the case with it’s beauty. My husband had NO interest in spending money to update a room that was nicknamed “mud room” cause it’s off our garage and according to him, “no one will ever see it”. Well I do. I do laundry about 23412 times a day and I enjoy a beautiful space. So, I promised him it would be budget friendly (cons of living with a CPA) and he agreed. My mission, laundry room makeover for under $200. Right now, if I’m adding correctly, I’m well under $200 and closer to the $150 range!
First, I painted the walls. My initial inspiration was a picture found online, which featured dark walls, natural wood, and patterned tile. Somehow, that inspiration turned into pink walls, and I can’t even explain why :-). Whenever I start a project, I get a nickname in my mind and design around that. What kept coming to my mind during this makeover was “easy glam”. I wanted it to be casual enough to be an appropriate laundry room to a family in the suburbs, but beautiful enough that it made you enjoy laundry even more. The color of the walls is First Light 2102-70 by Benjamin Moore. It’s pink, and at first, I was like “oh, my gosh, I just painted my laundry room pink” but it’s a subtle pink that looks beautiful when it’s dry! Painting is always so relaxing to me, and a room this size only took me a few hours so this was definitely my favorite part. It seems lately, I’ve been making drastic paint changes in this house (i.e., going from dark green to silver and bright red to charcoal) so this was a more subtle change for me.
My original plan was to paint the floors and stencil a design, but once I started looking into this process, it seem labor intensive and actually quite a bit more expensive. Several months ago, I had found peel and stick tile on sale from Amazon. I ordered a bunch and wasn’t exactly sure how I’d use it, but this obviously seemed like the best spot.
Once the paint was done, I could start the floors. This was a process that I would NOT skip. First, I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floors using a gentle floor cleaner. Once this step was completed, I used TSP to prep the floors. My husband didn’t want to remove the washer and dryer from the room, so I had to work around these, while they remained hooked up, which honestly, wasn’t that big of a deal. Once the TSP was dry, I gave it a quick once over with the steam mop and I was ready to go! I read many tutorials on how to do this and decided to follow the instructions suggested by the manufacturer. I worked from the center of the room and moved in the block pattern.
I read several reviews about these tiles before purchasing and the reviews were 50/50 on using as is or applying a adhesive such as Liquid Nails. I went ahead and purchased Liquid Nails as a back up but haven’t yet used it.
Cutting the tiles was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I wish I had a laminate floor cutter but I don’t and because of the current “stay-at-home” orders, I did not run out to by one. So I used what I had which was scissors, a box cutter (similar to what I have linked here https://amzn.to/2yruc27) and/or a craft knife (similar one linked here https://amzn.to/3ew8Sc6). I used the craft knife the most but none of them were great options. Overall, I’m not completely happy with the outcome of the edges, they aren’t perfect but they are “good enough” for now. I may end up replacing the edges that are visible, if I decide to keep the tiles. I have only had a couple corners peel, which I may add Liquid Nails to if I want to keep the floors. I was able to remove the trim from a small portion of the room and replace easily. This was great because I didn’t have to worry about how straight my cuts were.
Again, because of the current stay-at-home orders, we choose not to run out to the hardware store and use only items we had available, so we made the coat hooks and shelf, from items we had in the garage.
A few weeks ago, I picked up tons of scrap wood, for FREE! So we had several pieces of plywood, 2 x 4s and other pieces of wood sitting in the garage. We decided to use a piece of plywood for the shelf but I couldn’t stand it looking like plywood, so we build a small ledge out of trim on 3 sides of shelf. My initial design included staining and putting coat of poly on the coat hook and shelf. However, this ended up not happening. I had a few stains in my stack at home so I tried a natural oak color first but it was way too yellow but I didn’t have a good color to mix it with so I sanded it off and just put a coat of poly over the wood. But I ran into another snag, when I realized my poly had yellowed. Ugh, so I sanded that off and decided I would add this at a later time. I did a final sand with 220 grit sand paper to smooth the corners and edges and my husband installed it.
The coat hook was a made from a scrap piece of 4 x 1 sanded well to let out it’s natural wood beauty. I had these lovely black hooks already, so I spaced them well, attached to the wood and attached to the wall.
The shoe organizer was in that room before we started the makeover, but it got a makeover of it’s own. It was originally a cherry/mahogany wood color. It’s cheap and is definitely not a piece of furniture I plan to keep long term, but honestly, it’s working for now. I primed it and painted it white, added black and white bins (from Walmart) and called it a day for now.
Oh, I almost forgot, my beautiful light fixture! The light fixture in this room was likely original to the house and did not give off good light. Despite having a window in the room, I felt that the room was way too dark and it NEEDED a chandelier. I had bought this chandelier over a year ago off the swap. I had tried to put it in my playroom but it didn’t work in there so I was excited when I realized it would find the perfect home in the laundry room. This was the exact “thing” the room needed to go from drab to fab!
Because this chandelier was a Marketplace find, I can’t link the exact one. But here’s some that are similar.
Another small change I made was added updated hardware to the closet doors, again, using what I had. The hardware I used was left over from my kitchen. It’s amazing how something so little, like a change in closet door hardware, can add to a room.
This project was hard work! I do think that some of the hard parts were related to having to be creative and use what we had on hand. So we ended up spending a lot of time searching for screws or the right piece of wood, etc. If we would have had the ability to run to the hardware store, we would’ve been able to complete this project much quicker. I have had my peel and stick tiles down for over two weeks and I’ve only had a couple peeling pieces so far. I will give an update once we’ve had some time to live with it a bit.
