Nesting Ranch: Laundry room make-over

11/22/12

Laundry room make-over

Even though our house was built in 1965 we didn't expect what would be waiting for us...

... .. . in the laundry room!

We dreamed up all kinds of ideas before we moved in of how we would change things not knowing what was waiting for us. So far, and thankfully, there haven't been too many surprises but the laundry room has been the biggest room to tackle beyond simple painting and of all the rooms it wasn't really on our dream fantasy list...

Here's a photo of the family room that was on the sales listing. You can see the laundry room door is open in the view below.

And this is our awesome MS Paint dream make over of the family room prior to moving in.

And here it is after we moved in and really painted... the rough hewn beams inspired us to go for an old library feel.

Because the brick was painted white we thought about sandblasting it to the original red brick that we assumed was underneath but when we chipped off some of the paint we found that it wasn't red brick rather a tan/peach/beige brick - so we painted the entire fireplace brick red...

Some of us even cut our hair!

Annnd... four years later this photo is pretty much where we are today except the carpet and brass fireplace doors have been replaced... along with the big white tylenol pill shaped track lighting.

This might seem like alot but it's the facade...

So anyway back to the laundry room...

We knew it'd need some work when we moved in since half the wall was painted hunter green and there was a horrid peach geometric stencil as a border behind the washer and dryer...

we focused our efforts on correcting these esthetics.

Next we replaced the big 80's wooden cabinet sink with a pedestal sink and of course a new toilet. And that was that...

Or so we thought...

And over the next few winters we realized the laundry room was pretty cold but most of the house seemed to be cold so it wasn't a big concern. We replaced the front windows one year, the back windows the next year, and one year added all new insulation by ourselves in the attic.

But, the laundry room was still cold.

This summer we decided to take down the cabinets above the washer and dryer to put a shelf up there instead. We had assumed the cabinets were the bottom cabinets someone free-cycled, stuck up there, and must somehow be letting in a draft from behind them.

As we took it down we realized it wasn't a cabinet but really bits of particle board fastened together to make it look like a cabinet.

Looks like there's a sliver of wallpaper to contend with....

Woah, and there is... wall paper.

I personally like the panel of plywood backing that makes up the rear wall of the cabinet and is simply nailed into the drywall. You can see above the wonderbar floating on the bottom shelf which was covered up with molding to hide the fact it was piece-nailed together.

Such trouble, why not just buy a bloody cabinet and put it up?

So very thankful it wasn't the entire wall. The glue was very dry so it came down easily too.

Ah, no more ugly cabinet. Just a simple shelf is all we need here.

But let's first remove the dryer hose and the old electrical connection since the dryer uses a standard plug... going into the garage to remove the dryer vent and electric on the back wall we find why the room is so cold...

W-T-F... Who does this?! Who puts plastic over holes in the wall with packing tape and then covers the wall back up? One lazy $&*#@*#$#)@ that's who.

Sure, just bend the copper water pipe and shove the dryer vent in there...

Really like the burnt rustic touch of the blowtorch on the drywall.

Old electric socket removed, dryer hose moved, new insulation, and dry wall up.

A coat of Benjamin Moore's Stone White and ta-da, the laundry room is done.

This was all done over a weekend in the summer and now that it is October we've already had one frost... and success! Not only is the laundry room warm and toasty - the family room also stays so much warmer too.

The shelf we picked out is an old folding wooden ironing board found on a weekend antiquing trip to Point Pleasant Beach. We removed the standing fold legs, added some simple brackets, and ta-da!!!