Laundry Room Project: Small Space, Big Function–Part 1
Our latest project has us working in a small laundry room space. From time to time, we love to use our skills to help those that have helped and supported us! This laundry room belongs to my parents. It has functioned for them throughout the years but never as well as it could have. We plan to change all of that!
Mom & Dad
We realize that the laundry room isn’t a very popular choice among our clients, which makes sense from an aesthetic perspective, but when you stop and think about how most laundry rooms function, they are definitely worth the investment from a time and organizational perspective. That’s why I thought this was a worthwhile blog. Even if you’re not going to spend thousands getting your laundry room professionally designed, you can take these ideas and make a few changes to enhance both the aesthetic and functional factors. The before pics of the laundry room are not the best due to the lighting. My apologies! The progress and after pictures will be much improved!
Sorry this pic is a bit dark. All the lights were a bit temperamental on this day!
I have yet to come across a laundry room that doesn’t perform double duty. It’s not just place to wash and dry clothes. Often the laundry room doubles as a storage space and a mudroom for wet boots, snow pants etc. My parents’ laundry room is no exception.
As you can see, their laundry room is slim on storage 🙂
Functionally, we took some time to ask my parent’s what they needed in order for the laundry room to function best. They both commented on a lack of functional storage. The laundry room really offered no place to put anything, so everything just ended up lining the perimeter of the room.
*A great tip is not to forget to go vertical. Always consider the walls as an additional option for storage. *
There was also an issue with the laundry room light fixture not being reliable, so they placed a lamp in there as a temporary (a-hem) solution! We’ve all been there 🙂 You make do and then you move on!
Lastly, my parents both mentioned that they wanted the laundry room to have a little personality, but said they were “trusting the vision” on that part! Yay!!!
You can see the need for a new light fixture!
Got it! Functional and pretty! We wanted to keep the budget as low as possible for them so we settled on about $300! Now that all of the preliminary questions were out of the way, we could be begin to plan.
There were really only 4 changes I wanted to make to wake the laundry room space up and maximize our bang for our buck:
1.We wanted to add 4 long floating shelves and brackets and a smaller shelving unit space to store cleaners. We also added a few hooks to hang items. These shelves and hooks would offer some much needed additional functional storage.
2. We needed to get a new light fixture installed that worked consistently, and this little gem was under $10!
3. We planned to install a new vinyl floor (the other one had become stained over the last 30 years).
4. To address the rest of the beauty portion of the project, we wanted to paint, add a few art pieces and some fun lettering on top of some functional “wallpaper!”
This is not actually wallpaper, its vinyl contact paper on sale for $2 at the local Big Lots!
One side note, with the exception of the contact paper and brackets for shelves, all other pieces listed were from Home Depot.
This laundry room currently leaves something to be desired, but with some great ideas and $300 not for long! Please check back in with an update later on this week and see our progress!
Create. Innovate. Decorate!
