The house - Laundry room redo

When we moved into this house it needed to be completely redone, it had been a foreclosure and everything was very builder's grade and dirty. Paul deployed only about a week after we moved in, so a lot of the remodel was done while he was away and I was trying to fill my time!

So, one of the first rooms we did before we even moved in was the Laundry room (you have to be able to do laundry from day 1 right?) We were buying a new energy efficient washer and dryer, since the set we had were from off a street corner 10 years ago, and we decided stackable was the way to go.

The laundry room in our house is directly off of the kitchen and dining room, and is a pass through to the studio.

We started by Painting the room cobalt blue (the rug in the dining room has a dark blue border, and the kitchen has blue and white china) and then we moved on to redoing the floors; we took off the 1/4 round molding, and super scrubbed the existing linoleum. We decided to use a peel and stick tile from Lowe's, it looks and feels like marble, but is not as cold on your feet or hard on your lower back (I have back problems and tile always starts to hurt me if I stand on it for too long.) The tile has a 10 year warranty and cuts pretty easily as well, which is a great bonus.

After it was installed with tile spacers, we immediately grouted the gaps (this is the step that makes it look the most like real tile,) since we didn't have to wait for anything to dry first. Then we put down the 1/4 round again and touched up all of the white paint in the room. The washer and dryer then got delivered, which was very exciting since I really had never had any new appliances besides a fridge.

We went to the habitat for humanity store, and got a bank of 5 used upper kitchen cabinets for $125. We only used 2 of them in the laundry room, so the other 3 were installed in the garage as storage, for $25 we got a lower bathroom sink cabinet too. The lower cupboard didn't match the uppers, but I knew we were going to paint them all white, so it didn't really matter.

The finished laundry room looks pretty great (well at least I think it does!) I got a charcoal colored (granite look) laminate counter-top for the lower cupboard, and then we put a piece of wood with velcro stapled to it on the bottom of the top cabinet and and screwed down to the counter-top. I used a piece of bead-board (leftover from other projects,) that I cut to match the size of the square under the cabinet and above the counter-top, and framed it out in a simple molding. After painting the square out all white, I put velcro on the top and bottom and was then able to install it like a back-splash that could come off when we needed to get to the plugs or water hoses (there was a gap of about 6" from were the dryer couldn't go all the was against the wall because of the hose, and now you can't see it at all!)

I love how the laundry room is mostly white now with just a little pop of color, I recycled knobs from our last kitchen (housing on an AF base that so horrible they condemned it!) that were nickel plated and from Restoration Hardware. In the lower cupboard area we now have junk drawer space, a place where we keep the kid's extra asthma medication, stray sock space, and we keep a laundry basket behind the door. In the uppers we have extra light bulbs, all of the laundry detergent paraphernalia, and in the above the dryer section, anything we want to keep out of reach of the kids. We fold laundry straight out of the dryer onto the counter-top, and as far as a pass through is concerned, it's about as clean as you can expect a laundry space to be since nothing is in the way.

All together we spent $150 on cabinets, $40 on the counter-top, $50 on paint (between the white and blue.) $60 on the tile project, and I am going to guess an additional $40 on any extra trim or whatever that has to be bought along the way in any given project. So the grand total for the laundry room remodel project (I'm not counting the washer and dryer since they will be moving with us when we go) is $340, which I think is pretty awesome!