May 11, 2017

One Room Challenge Week 6 | The Laundry Room Reveal!

The past 6 weeks have been packed with excitement and frustration as we completely gutted and remodeled our outdoor utility room. For those of you who are visiting for the first time, I'm Elizabeth and I write the posts around here. We bought our house less than a year ago and it was a big fixer upper - I mean like we couldn't even move in until 5 months of remodeling. We completely overhauled the inside and re-did the kitchen, but our outdoor utility room was left empty with only the water heater.

This will be my first and almost completely remodeled by myself space, my dad graciously helped me with the plumbing and electrical (because who wants to learn how to do that stuff on 50 year old pipes/wires?) oh, and hanging the cabinets. Not that I wasn't offered help, but I wanted to prove to myself that I was capable of doing it. You can see all the progress week by week, and I still can't believe where we were 6 weeks ago.

Week 1: Laundry Room Before and Plans
Week 2: Plumbing, Prepping Walls, Cabinets, and Mood Board
Week 3: Faux Shiplap & Water Heater Closet
Week 4: Finished Water Heater Closet and Trimmed out the Cabinets
Week 5: Open Shelf, Base Cabinet, & Final Wall Color


We didn't get any before before pictures (since my sweet husband tore everything out on a whim one day), but once we gutted the room I got some pictures of the drywall. I do have a video of it completely gutted that I shared in Week 1, but I'll share it again below. Just imagine 50 year old drywall, old metal bracket shelves covered in rust and grime and spiders - and you'll be where we really started.





6 weeks later, a few hundred dollars, and the entire That 70's Show (yes, all 200 episodes), this is where we are today.


November 18, 2016

Sketch Plans for the Utility/Laundry Room

If you follow me on Instagram (@jonesvilleblog), you will have seen our completely torn apart utility room. When we had our big leak, we had to dig up some concrete in that room where the water heater is to get to a pipe. Because our house is not insulated (it’s the worst), the utility room wasn’t insulated either. We knew that we would have to insulate that room and the pipes in there so they don’t crack in the cold winter months. Originally we were just going to stick the washer and dryer in there and worry about redoing the space later on. Next thing I know, Auston had torn out all of the old nasty sheetrock in just a few hours! You might have caught a glimpse of it in our Leak Post. I know a few of you have asked about how I start thinking about how I start planning a space, and this is the very first step: I sketched up my ideas on Windows Paint, to show that you don’t need sketching software to start planning.

If you’re standing in the door, you have a wall with a window opposite you and the washer side would be on your left and the dryer side would be on your right. Originally I had planned to put both the washer and dryer on the same side so that we could have a big counter space on the other side but after carefully measuring a few times, we realized that it was about an inch and a half too small. Just an inch and a half! Bummer. My plan B is to now put them on opposite walls and have a small counter space on both sides.

The washer side will have a bigger counter than the other with a suspended thick wood shelf that spans the entire length of the wall. There we can keep all the stuff we use regularly like detergent and fabric softener and of course a few pretty decorations.  Above that will be a wall of cabinets where we can store extra cleaning supplies and things. I love the shaker cabinets so I’m hoping we can incorporate them in here with a chunky rectangular gold pull. My favorite idea for this space is making a place for pull out laundry sorting baskets! I got the idea from YellowBrick Home and Kim had put canvas sorting baskets on the wall in their cute small laundry room. For us, this will save trips carrying loads inside and outside which we are all about making things more efficient, especially in the cold! On the back of the wall on both sides, I’m hoping to do a fun but muted wallpaper. This is the only space that I can quantify doing wallpaper because it is small and not a major room in the house so if the next owners want to take it off, it won’t be a big hassle.


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