Project Laundry Room – One Room Challenge Week 1

Guys. If you couldn’t tell over the last few years, we LOVE the One Room Challenge. I’m all about making design boards and tackling a space (even if it’s kind of under pressure in a short time span) in our home. It’s how my brain works. And it’s how the ORC works. Win, win!

So far we’ve tackled 3 bathrooms as a guest participant – a half bath, a guest bath, and our old master bath. We’ve also transformed a guest bedroom, an office, a nursery and even our garage. This time? We’ve decided on one of the most used rooms in our house – the laundry room/mud room!

When we bought this house, a first floor laundry room was one of my wish list items, so I’m excited to be able to tackle the space and make it more useful for our family. When we moved in, it looked a little bit like this…

The Before’s:

(Photo taken from original listing)

Walls, ceiling, you name it, it was green. The cabinets were the same peach as the kitchen, and the floors the same linoleum.

A few weeks after we moved in, I couldn’t stand the color and felt claustrophobic, which was a bummer because this room was one of the things I was excited for in this house. I ended up using some leftover paint to make the space a little brighter, and we took down the old florescent lighting.

This solved the claustrophobia, but the room was always a complete disaster. And to be honest, this picture was the room on a good day. Embarrassing.

If you look close enough (and if you didn’t no need to scroll back up 😛 ) there are doggy bags hanging off the wall, spoons in the photos, cheerios in a jar for puppy training, and old plastic blinds. It’s quite a sight. Normally there are also roughly 20 coats hanging from those hooks, but apparently we decided to clean up at some point in time. I don’t remember much anymore, baby brain I tell you!

We need some design in here, some organization, and to fix just about everything. There’s holes in the ceiling still from the old lighting, the cabinets aren’t fully installed, and the old worn out linoleum needs to go.

The Challenges:

Although this space has to serve as our laundry room, it also doubles up as a mud room space since it’s the first space you enter when you come in through the garage. But, our biggest challenge here is the space! I’d love to add a full wall of locker type storage, but there’s just not enough width to make that work. We thought about turning the existing coat closet into a bench area with hooks, but that’s not so practical for us. That closet is extremely hard working and holds lots of coats (we live in Michigan where it’s 20 one day and 60 the next), cleaning supplies and odds and ends that we use daily.

The Design:

All of that being said, here’s the design plan that we have started for the new laundry room!

Art / Basket / Light / Rug / Fabric

We want to extend the new kitchen cabinets into the room as the sink base and two large cabinets above the washer and dryer. We actually ordered the cabinets in the same wood tone when we ordered the kitchen ones, so now we just have to finish the install!

Our overall goal for this space is to be a bright, clean and functional space that’s welcoming without breaking the bank. There’s not too much inspiration we could find with dark wood cabinets, so we’re excited for the challenge! We’re planning on redesigning the existing bifold doors into something more modern looking, and adding some new flooring along with something fun on the walls (“something” aka I haven’t quite wrapped my head around it but will of course share everything over the next few weeks!).

And that’s enough for now! A green room that got a little lipstick put on it, but is far from functional and definitely does not scream “welcome” or have even the slightest bit of personality in it. That is until we’re done with this challenge! Crosses her fingers 😛

See you next week for updates or be sure to subscribe via email to get everything sent straight to you.

But wait! Before you go, be sure to check out the amazing designers and guest participants in this spring ORC! Some seriously good stuff happens each season and it’s so fun to follow along!