The One with the Laundry Room Reno: Part 1

There's a LOT to share about the laundry room reno. This is Part 1. Part 2 can be found here! And here's Part 3!

Okay. So pre-quarantine, the hubs and I had a HUGE list of home improvement projects and major renovations we were planning to do this spring before baby Cinco arrives in June.

The upstairs hallway and loft were to be painted.

The carpet in the entire house was to be replaced with hardwoods (except in the bedrooms and office).

The second closet in our master bedroom was to be converted to a bathroom off LO's bedroom.

The back patio was to be turned into a 3-season room.

The upstairs loft was to be converted from a pointless waste of space to a functional room with a wall of built-in bookshelves to solve all of our homeschool book storage woes.

And the laundry room? Well, it was just supposed to get a nice coat of Repose Gray paint to match the rest of the house. 😍

With the onset of COVID-19, we quickly realized our strict quarantine to keep myself, the baby, and our heart warrior, Chase, healthy, we simply couldn't and wouldn't allow contractors to work in our home.

Good news?

We could paint the upstairs. We could work on the loft. We would allow the contractor to close in the patio since it's outside.

Bad news?

No new flooring. No new bathroom. YET.

Bonus news?

We had some extra time on our hands, and decided to tackle the laundry room with more than just a new coat of paint!

Here's a quick pic of the BEFORE pic. Flat, contractor-grade beige paint, full of scuffs and scratches. Obnoxious wire shelving in awkward places. And sadness. Lots and lots of sadness.

A quick AFTER pic! So much excitement to share here!

To truly appreciate the overhaul of this room, you'll need to see more before pics. Let's take a look!

DISCLAIMER: This room was a MESS! And I didn't even take one hot minute to tidy anything up before taking pics. I wanted to capture this room in all of its awfulness!

Here's a pic looking into the laundry room. Note the ghetto $12 light fixture that came with the house.  And the aforementioned wire shelving. And the door that blocks the entire right side of the room.

You'll also see a drop-down shelf hubs put in years ago so I'd have a space to put folded clothes. And our lame 3-bin plastic laundry sorter. It wasn't very functional for a family of 7!

Don't forget to check out the floor: the cheap-o vinyl laminate. This didn't get updated simply because the contractors will need to pull up the laundry room floor to access the water lines to run for LO's bathroom (adjacent to the laundry room) eventually, so this floor had to stay--for now.

Then there's this. This is one of the WORST USES OF SPACE in the entire house! For starters, this "nook" is completely hidden by the door when it is open. And you can see sheets on the floor... these typically end up on the floor of the nook, shoved behind the door, often to be forgotten on laundry day.

Also, board games? Surely the laundry room isn't the most logical location to store board games. But the only other option was the loft, which was a HUGE mess of misused space... though that work-in-progress is improving! I can't wait to share the next phase of the loft's built-in bookshelves here!

Seriously. These pics are just plain embarrassing! But I needed you to see just how incredibly awful it was in order to truly appreciate the reno!

The first MAJOR improvement to the laundry room was the addition of a pocket door! Hubs bought a kit and went to work! He was able to reuse the existing door in the pocket frame, so that saved some dough!

He had to cut out the drywall inside the laundry room to install the track.

He had to remove the entire door frame as well.

And then remove some more of the drywall. I was happy to see none of the drywall in the loft needed to be removed. Hubs did a great job of working this project from the laundry room side!

I won't devote a ton of time to the crazy amount of work hubs put into this pocket door, but I will show an "AFTER" pic! Check out that beautiful door frame! Wait until you see how spacious the laundry room is without a big ol' door in the way!

Now let's take another look at the useless nook that used to be hidden by the door. I have a GRAND PLAN for this space that will revolutionize my laundry life! Check it out:

As you can see in the pic below, hubs finished the pocket door install, the laundry room has been painted gray, and the nook has been painted a bright white semi-gloss to match the  trim.

Next, hubs added six horizontal 1x2s in the nook.

I painted the 1x2s white to match!

Any guesses what we're going for here? If not, check out the image below! I LOVE it!

It's a laundry basket storage nook! This area was sized perfectly for this, and I don't even know what took me so long to make this happen!

Of course I needed labels for the baskets, so I created (and laminated!) these to help the kids keep track of where everything goes!

That's better! Six labeled laundry baskets, stored in the nook, off the floor, completely out of the way, and no longer hidden by the laundry room door! SCORE!!!

What a HUGE difference this made to our laundry room! No more games, puzzles, and miscellaneous junk shoved behind the door in the laundry room! Now it's a functional space that is completely life-changing! No lie!

I have much more to share about this room's transformation, including ALL of the beauty you saw in the "AFTER" pic at the beginning of this post that I didn't even discuss here! Click here for Part 2! 

Be sure to check out Part 3!