Laundry Room Refresh

From the moment we moved into our brand new house, I was daydreaming on how we can make the laundry room more functional.

For starters, I am first believer that there can never be too much storage. Our laundry room came with a door, our appliances and avec rien storage, zilch, nada, nothing.

So in what I know call Phase 1 of the project, back in 2016 we ordered this cabinet from Wayfair (link is for Home Depot since Wayfair is no longer carrying this anymore), and my husband installed it (this was way before I got into this sort of DIY.)

And then 4 years went by…*tumbleweed drifts off in the distance*

And then…we had a baby and I quickly realized that baby clothes in a dryer, don’t often end well for the clothes, I needed a drying rack asap. I wasn’t a huge fan of the portable foldable ones, so I started hunting for what’s out there. I landed on this and knew this would be perfect! It was a retractable wall mounted unit AND it wasn’t an eyesore – #winning! As soon as my husband installed it, it got used immediately. We liked it so much, we even got a unit for my in laws and likely will be installing one for my parents as well. And thus marked the quick rise and…stop of Phase 2.

And then…the pandemic hit…and we were always home…and the pile of laundry still kept on coming. By this point I had started experimenting and dabbling with power tools, so I decided to take it upon myself to start Phase 3. Plus I was desperate for a countertop in our laundry room, I was tired of taking all the laundry to our guest bedroom to sort out (and sometimes remaining there for days, shiftily looks away, I know we can’t be the only ones who don’t put away laundry on the same day!).

My husband and I worked out a very humble budget for the room, this was due to a few reasons: we had just renovated our basement + we have some larger projects in the upcoming future + I’m currently on mat leave). With my budget on hand, I was adamant on being able to prove that a laundry room makeover doesn’t have to break the bank. And that’s the funny thing about budget constraints, as frustrating as it can be, the silver lining is that it forces you to get extra creative on how you can achieve a certain look for less.

Here is what I had on my to do list:

• floating countertop over our appliances
• floating shelves between the cabinet and wall
• cabinet trim
• cabinet underlighting
• spray paint cabinet handles
• peek a boo box to hide utility pipes
• board and batten
• mural above the board and batten
• backplash
• remove door to make the space more open (and eventually put in a barn door)
• paint refresh for our cat’s litter box (it’s in the laundry room)
• pull out utility cart

Check out my post next week on how I went about making my own backsplash! Yup, you read that right, I made our backsplash.