Beginnings of something good (hopefully)

I decided to start the laundry room.  Basically because I knew what I wanted to do on one wall.  I've seen it on a few blogs and I really like it.  So I copied.  Like I usually do. 

Here was the laundry room when we moved in.  It's sandwiched between the family room and the playroom.

Taken from playroom doorway

Look at me getting all fancy with arrows and stuff

Here's the wall.    Stripes!   Know it's not for every body but I like it.

Pretty easy to do.  Painted it all white, then  taped off my 18 in stripes. I chose 18 in because it divided the wall perfectly into 5 stripes.  I sealed the tape edges with another layer of white paint and then filled in the grey stripes.  The edges were crisp and clean in most places, just a few touch ups.



I also decided to paint the door.  Weirdly I didn't think about it before but as I was painting it became the obvious thing to do.

I haven't decided if I want to do the rest of the walls grey or white.  They won't be striped because there are too many corners and cabinets to make it worth my oh-so-precious time.

I had the Goodwill mirror for ages and decided this wall would be the perfect spot for it.

And I painted it purple.

It originally came in gold and I debated whether I wanted to just leave it gold. But my wilder, sexier side took over and 5 coats later, I had a purple mirror for my laundry room. :)

See the tiny black lines on the door frame?  Not dirt.  That's our family growth chart.  We started it when Jonah was born and he was measured on the doorway at 22 in.  I had Lucas copy it from our old house to put here.  I give that kid one more year before he passes me.  Yeah, it's usually 12 or 13 when normal people keep growing where I seemed to stop.

To finish this room I want to paint or refinish the cabinets. Most likely white.  I've been researching and comparing painting all the cabinets myself to paying for them to get resurfaced.  

 Painting =Cheap but SOO much work with a pretty good finish

Refinishing=  Little work (on my paty) but SOO much more money with a beautiful finish

There are upper cabinets above the counter as well as underneath and I am going to do the kitchen cabinets plus two built in bookcases.  That's a whole lotta cabinets.   I waver every month depending on my mood and energy.  I might ask for an air compressor and spray gun for my birthday coming up if I get adventurous enough to do it myself.  If not, I'm going to start saving my pennies. Either way, it will be a while before anything gets done.  Finishing the room is on the (ok, my) Home Project list but around #40 or 50.

 I also want to change the laminate countertop to a dark butcher block and the linoleum flooring to tile, or cork or hardwood. Don't know yet.  It's such a small space we really could do something fun.

No matter what our laundry room looks like I can only think how far we've come.  In our first Seattle ghetto apartment we had all our whites stolen out of the communal laundry room by a drunk, crazy lady and thrown into the dumpster because Aaron moved her clothes out of the washer after waiting an hour for her to change her load.  It took him 20 minutes to figure out what had happened and then sweetly climbed in the dumpster to salvage all our wet "whites."   The manager apologized about the incident and said the resident had the police called on her earlier that day because she threatened another neighbor with the promises of returning with a gun.  Oh the stories we could tell about that place- urine in the elevator, puke in the stairwell, our neighbor who repeatedly set off the complex fire alarm by leaving food on the stove and falling asleep, the water heater that broke two stories up while we were gone in Chicago and came back to everything covered in mold. 

Ah, cherished memories.