Airing Our Laundry (Room)

As a mother of five boys, my laundry room has seen a lot of me in the last 25 years. Of all the laundry rooms I have had, this is my favorite. My other, bigger laundry rooms had lots of space, but since they also functioned as mud rooms/back entryways, they always collected so much clutter and stuff that they made me rather crazy. Plus, because there was plenty of room, clean folded laundry just collected in the kids' baskets until putting it away was an overwhelming chore. Most of the time, my kids just dressed in the laundry room and just never bothered to put their laundry away at all. 

Here's what we started with - not bad at all, but rather cozy. It's actually a closet with bi-fold doors across from our bedroom on the first floor.

We added an extra 3.5 feet on the right side by incorporating the adjacent hall closet:

Because he gets tired of my complaining about my achin' back Because he loves me, the Handy Stud built me a raised platform for the washer and dryer...

 

...from this coffee table.

Our brilliant engineer son came over to help the HS. Notice which of the two is on the floor behind the washer...where do you think he got his brilliance?

Paint + shelves + a leftover cabinet from the kitchen = (Almost) finished laundry room - and I'm loving everything about it! (We'll just skip over the part where perfectionistic wife makes poor HS move/change out the cabinet three times...)

On the right side - deep shelves with the hanging clothes rack below. On the floor, the hampers for darks, brights, and whites, which you can just barely see here.

Still a bit of painting still to do, and I'm guessing that the shelves will fill up a bit more as we unpack the kitchen again. Also, some laundry signs and other ideas you can see on my Pinterest board are on the ever-growing LIST. But for now, it's pretty, and it makes me happy. And the laundry is getting done.

Update (and maybe the best part)

Cost for finishing out laundry room:

Plywood for top of  raised washer/dryer platform  ~ $5; repurposed coffee table from raised washer/dryer platform ~ $0; repurposed cabinets and shelves from other parts of the house ~ $0; paint ( about a third of a $20 gallon can - to be used in other rooms also) ~ $6.66; hanging clothes rack, an Ikea rail we already owned ~ $0; 3 laundry hampers from WalMart ~ $12; 2 candy jars from WalMart for holding soap & dryer sheets ~ $8; all other baskets and containers we already owned ~ $0

Total so far: $31.66

With the rest of the paint and some DIY signs and/or decorative things here, I expect the grand total to be less than $50.

Kitchen Progress

I think we are finally on the mend here. And while we were coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and generally being miserable, many things were happening in the house.

The Handy Stud actually pulled the floor up before the plague struck. Two layers of vinyl, subfloor, and one more layer of tile before he got to the actual subfloor.

He had to leave a little square under the stove for now. But we ordered the floor yesterday, and this stove will be making its exit sometime next week when the plumber comes to put in the gas line for the new stove. Since the basement is finished, they will have to cut up the subfloor to do the gas line and pull a water line for the refrigerator ice maker. Here is the floor we are going with:

It's a vinyl tile by Mannington, but it will be installed with grout to look like ceramic/stone. It looks a good bit  like the stone on the fireplace and the outside of the house. And, best of all, it's DIRT colored!!

The carpenters also removed the old cased opening, and made this lovely arch...

...and added a knee wall.

The shelf is just sitting there for now so we can see if we will like will look when finished. We think it's cool!

Looking from the kitchen into the great room. This side will have a cabinets and countetop.

And here is the new refrigerator that we found at Best Buy in the scratch & ding section, which saved us over $500. There are two dings - we figured it would look like that after two weeks in our house, at a conservative rate of one ding per week. It also gives us the relief right up front that you feel when you get the first ding in your new car - all other dings are far less traumatic. Except we always buy pre-dinged cars too. Probably for the same reasons.

I'm guessing when she reads this, my daughter may try to use this logic on me for the importance of buying pre-ripped jeans. Somehow, it just isn't the same. Case closed.