Don't Try to Outsmart the Sherwin Williams People.

 We love our laundry room. It's a nice size, has lots of great storage, a window to bring in some natural light, and even a built-in desk for crafting. The only problem: It's very visible from the kitchen. Since the garage door, half bath, and pantry all connect to the laundry room, it isn't blocked off by a door, which means it has to look nice. So, re-doing our laundry room suddenly made it's way up our priority list much faster than it normally would have.

We threw around the idea of doing a neutral color to blend in with the kitchen, but that's sooo boring. Having to do laundry already sucks as it is, so we needed an inspirational color on the walls to get the laundry detergent juices flowing. I searched pinterest for inspiration and realized I was loving the light airy blue/seafoam green colors like these:


Doesn't it almost make you WANT to do laundry? Almost.

So, we picked our color and off we went.
*Side Story: If you haven't noticed, we're cheap. We'll try and save any dollar we can. So we thought we'd outsmart the Sherwin Williams guy and only buy the little test can of paint because those little cans have quite a bit of paint in them, and we figured we were only painting the laundry room, right!? Well as it turns out, our laundry room is a LITTLE too big for that. And when I say a little, I mean a lot too big for that. Our cheapskateness bit us in the hiney this time. The little test can made it through almost one full coat on the walls, and we were definitely going to need another coat. We headed back to Sherwin Williams to get another test can, because surely that would be plenty to just do a quick second coat. NOT. The second coat made it through finishing the the first full coat and maybe halfway through the second. So long story short, after our THREE test cans costing about $10 each and gas going to and from Sherwin Williams THREE FREAKING TIMES, we could have just bought a whole gallon of the color and had extra to spare. So take it from us: Don't try and outsmart the Sherwin Williams people.

Here's what the laundry room looked like when we bought the house:

 

And here's what our laundry room looked like three test cans of paint later:

 

 The color just screams 'Do your laundry!'

We already had some green striped curtains that I thought would be fun to put in here.

 

It felt so fun and happy. It reminded me of the blue and green color scheme that I saw in my pinterest inspiration photo here.

But after looking at the color explosion from the kitchen, and listening to my husband complain about how it looked like we were living in a real-life Dr. Seuss book, I thought it was probably best to go with more of a neutral color.

I found these beautiful beige ikat curtains at TJ Maxx for only $15 smackaroos. It pays to be a maxxinista. The color goes perfectly with the countertops and backspash in the kitchen, and it's dark enough where it doesn't look too beachy with the blue and tan combo. It also goes great with our existing neutral wool rug.

The oak curtain rod still didn't look right, though. The existing homeowners kept the curtains and rod there for us, so we just reused it. I have literally never seen Devin install a curtain rod without 1. cursing at himself or at me, and 2. drilling at least one too many holes. So not only are we being super hipster by recycling it, but it helps our sanity having one less curtain rod to hang. You may remember from the last post that we sprayed it with our buddy, Oil Rubbed Bronze. Much better!

 We also replaced the old white and brass cabinet pulls with shiny new silver ones

 

We love how the color really makes the new washer and dryer pop

 My aunt gave me this super cool vintage washboard that she found at a thrift store. Don't ask me why there are bullet looking holes in it.

 

And here's the connecting half bath. More on that in the next post.

 

For the most part, we can stick a fork in this room but we still have some longer term goals that we'd like to achieve such as:

-paint the ceiling

-hang a chandelier like here, here, and here.

-bleach the tile grout (that's a short term goal. it's grody)

-replace the floors in here as well as the whole house. We love wood but aren't sure how it'll hold up in rooms like the laundry room and kitchen so we're tossing around the idea of using a handscraped looking laminate like this. Has anyone else had luck with handscraped laminate?

-add crown molding

-replace the desk countertop with maybe a quartz like this.

We loved our laundry room before but are obsessed with it now. I currently have a load of laundry washing as we speak. No lie.

Adios!

K