Laundry Room Before And After

The Laundry Room was a source of great debate when remodeling our fixer upper. By debate, I mean me, debating myself, in my own mind. Every day. For weeks. As you can see in the "before" picture,it felt like a cave in the back corner of the basement, and was as far away from the bedrooms as you could get. Laundry has never been at the top of my enjoying-to-do list, but it was looking like it'd get knocked down a few notches, landing right between picking up a lego after I stepped on it and cleaning out the gutters.

I went back and forth: do I move laundry upstairs in a small closet (and move plumbing and electrical), and forfeit that space? Then use the existing laundry room as a dungeon for the enemies that crossed our moat? We don't have a moat (although we do get a wicked big puddle in front of our driveway), and I didn't want to forfeit both closet and washer/dryer capacity. so that wouldn't work.

Next solution: We'll install a laundry shoot! Easy peasy, we expanded our master closet and the house was down to studs... perfect time for a laundry shoot. BUT. There was no reasonable place to put it that wouldn't hit HVAC, which is on of those essential things, or so I'm told.

Solution? Make the cave-dungeon-laundry room of doom into a space that I love.

With a little finesse, some incredible craftsmanship by my dad, some DIY with my hubby, and the most GORGEOUS wallpaper partnership from York Wallcoverings, laundry has moved up my list of things I enjoy. Like a lot.

First step (after gutting, replacing plumbing, building out the wall with access to new plumbing, dry wall, finish work, flooring): map out the space. It's actually a fairly large space for a laundry room, so my dad installed cabinets and butcher block counter tops to give me a sewing space as well.

The dungeon feeling was gone, but the room lacked personality. I went back and forth about how to make it feel more homey, all the while with wallpaper in my mind. I saw Rifle Paper Co.'s new line with York, and was IN LOVE. I ordered wayyy too many samples, hung them on the wall, and got to dreaming.

I narrowed it down to two selections, and used York's online "Room Visualizer" tool to see what they would look like in my space. Between that tool and the samples I ordered, I decided on "Wildwood". What really drew me to this wallpaper was how bright it made the room, while still having that cozy, romantic feel I wanted. The accent colors in it matched my trim (Worldy Grey by Sherwin Williams) and dove grey cabinets, while also having a METALLIC GOLD element with the leaves.

Yes, I said metallic gold. So gorgeous.

I decided I wanted to incorporate some vertical shiplap and wooden shelves my dad made me when I was a little girl into the sewing space, to give the room a more cohesive feel and break up the wallpaper a bit. For the "shiplap" look, we used wall paneling that came in 4'x8' sheets from

Windsor plywood. It was an inexpensive and easy way to get the look I wanted. This is a small glimpse of the shelf and faux shiplap paneling going up. I wrapped the paneling around the wall from the sewing table to tie it in to the washer and dryer.

This particular wallpaper is unpasted, so I used Suregrip adhesive, a non-toxic paste that rolls on pink so you can see where you glued, and it worked great.

The pattern was easy to match up, and this wallpaper was not only gorgeous but so high quality.

It brightened the space and tied everything together, while giving me some accent colors to work with.

Here's The Finished Laundry Room:

My grandma taught me to sew, and I have such fond memories of those times with her. I wanted to add little touches of her throughout the room: this apron was made by her grandmother, and is too old and precious to use so I framed it and hung it on the wall.