Laundry Room Update

Last time you saw our laundry room (in May, 2011) it looked like this:

And the floor looked like this:

About a year after those pictures were taken, our washing machine, which was pretty old, gave a clunk and a cough and stopped working.  I called a repair man to describe what happened and he pronounced our old machine dead.

But you know how God provides!  My mom called to tell me that she could help me with buying a new set because my Papa's house was being sold and she would have some extra money.  Such a gift!  I had to wait a few weeks until the house was closed on but in that time I was able to do laundry in a couple different places:

1.  The Laundromat.  This place was awesome because I could get ALL the laundry done in less than 90 minutes.  And it all got put away right away, too.  It was also awesome because I was able to watch the Summer Olympics on the TVs there.  We don't have cable and watching events online didn't always work out the way we had hoped.   The only bummer was that it cost about $20 each week to do our laundry.

2.   Becky's House.  My BFF was really generous and would let Miles and I (and sometimes Toby) invade her house for hours at a time.   She fed us, pulled out awesome toys for the boys to play with and watched movies and chatted with me about nothing and everything all while I used her washer and dryer.  Those were some great days.

One day while I was perusing Craigslist I found and immediately fell in love with a set of Kenmore front loaders.  And...they were orange. Orange!  I know, I know, who in the world would want an orange washer and dryer.  ME!   They were actually up in Seattle and my mom and her friend, Sandy, rented a trailer to bring them down to me.  

Now I have to back up a little bit.  When we very first moved into this house our kitchen, bathrooms, hallway, and laundry all had this sheet vinyl flooring. 

It was fine.  Neutral, basic.  But we almost immediately ripped a hole in the vinyl when we were trying to move our refrigerator.  For a quick fix we cut out a piece of vinyl from underneath the dryer and used that the patch the hole in the middle of kitchen.

So, since we were moving out the washer and dryer anyway and had a chance put new flooring down while the space was empty, and since I found flooring that matched the laminate I had put in our living and dining rooms, and it was on sale for only 74 cents per square foot, we decided to just go for it.

While my mom and Sandy were driving down from Seattle I was ripping up the old vinyl and laying down the new stuff.  Sandy and my mom arrived just as I had finished laying a big enough section for the washer and dryer to sit on.  

I hooked up the new front loaders and they worked perfectly!  I could not be happier with my orange washer and dryer.  But I also wasn't thinking about them that much because I still had the entire kitchen to finish to flooring.  And when the floor was all in we loved it!  But it did make our kitchen feel kind of dark. So I repainted the kitchen.  And then I repainted our little step down hallway/nook/weird space.  I'll have to show you updated pictures of those spaces, too.  Here's one taken on the day I finished the kitchen floor, before the new paint.

Phew!  That was a crazy tangent.  Sometimes following home improvement stories is like trying to follow a path through a plate of spaghetti.  So, back to the laundry room.  The new orange appliances are front loaders and they are a little bit deeper than our old set.  So we decided to stack them (with a stacking kit made especially for that) and then I found these two large cabinets on Craigslist for a song!   So now our laundry room looks like this:

And I know what you're thinking.  "Jeana, why in the world would you make your laundry room uglier?" Well, it's because sometimes you have to tear down in order to rebuild.  And sometimes the middle of a project makes no sense.  And because even though the reality is kind of ugly now, I can see the potential for beauty in my head.  Here's the plan:

• Add trim to the cabinet doors and drawer faces to give them more style.
• Build a washer and dryer surround so the entire unit looks like one built-in.
• Paint the whole thing white.
• Add beautiful cabinet hardware.

I have a couple other projects that are a higher priority than this one but I am really looking forward to getting this one done.  I think it will look so nice and function so well for our family.

In the meantime, we are definitely enjoying how much wider the hallway seems now that it's not full of a washer and dryer and laundry shelf.  And I love that our dirty laundry is literally not out in the open anymore.   

Ooh, and sneak peek of the orange stripes in the step down/hallway/nook/weird space!  More pictures coming soon.  (And you should probably assume that by "soon" I mean in about two years.  Just kidding.  Not really.  It always takes me so much longer that I think it will to complete a project.  Sigh.)