Laundry Room Makeover On a Budget

Our laundry room sits in the middle of the house upstairs with virtually no light. It’s a decent size – I wouldn’t do cartwheels in there, but it’s perfectly functional. There’s room for the washer/dryer and a cabinet for storage and a folding area. But it had zero style. And let’s face it – I spend a lot of time in there! So, I decided if I was going to spend so much time in there, then it should at least be pretty!

Here’s a look at what we were working with before:

Laundry Room Makeover

Paint and Decor

First we painted the walls white and then I had the bright idea that it would look amazing to paint the ceiling blue. Now around here, I do all the cabinet/furniture painting, but my husband is in charge of the walls.

He doesn’t love that job, but he’s better at it than me. Plus, he’s a perfectionist when it comes to painting walls. So he got the crappy task of walls and ceiling. I painted the cabinet to match the trim color in our house which is Sherwin Williams Panda White.

Even after just painting, it was dramatically improved. But, you can’t stop there, can you? Again, not a huge decorating budget around here so I have to be thrifty and willing to DIY a few things. Initially I had a DIY sign, but it was relocated when we did the $100 Playroom Makeover – it’s a scrap plywood sign that I painted blue and stenciled with “today is a good day”.

Since I stole it to complete the playroom, I replaced with a clearance tobacco basket from Hobby Lobby.

We took down the wire shelving (I couldn’t even reach it so it was completely useless for me). We bought an unfinished piece of wood and unfinished corbels. I stained them using Minwax Dark Walnut and dry brushed some black paint onto them, then  sanded them a bit.

They are still a bit dark and if I was doing it again, I would go much lighter. The lint dust shows like crazy on the dark surfaces!

Lighting

Why not add a fancy chandelier to your laundry room? I found this one at Goodwill and spray painted it. Our ceiling in here is 8 feet so we didn’t have a whole lot of leeway when hanging but it still works fine. As long as you’re not over 6’2″ you can get away with minimal head bumping. And, it gives much better light than the dreaded “boob” light that was here before.

My favorite spray paint to use is Krylon. I’ve used all kinds and Krylon seems to have the best application – not many drips and the tip doesn’t get clogged. I found a similar color here. My hand also doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall off when using that one compared to some of the others.

My favorite way to spray paint a chandelier is to use an 8 foot ladder and open it up – string up the chandelier in the middle using rope and then you can get all the way around it and under it. You should see our multi colored ladder after the numerous paint jobs!

Finishing it off:

The washboard is from an antique store, the basket on the dryer holds our dryer sheets, the mini ladder came off an old shelf, the lamp is an old one that got a facelift with spray paint, and the mirror was an antique store find. The pics of the kids make my heart smile so that’s always a plus – and they are both sitting in wash tubs which is pretty cool. The “Hi” and “Lovely” vases were Target from waaaay back in the day. The fun canvas is from a local boutique.

Pretty much the only new purchase is the rug – RugsUSA was having a major sale and I found this one for about $25. Again, the lint fairies like to collect on the black rug, so I will choose a different color if I buy a new one. Or maybe I’ll get adventurous and paint the floor!

Now at least if I have to spend so much time in the laundry room, it doesn’t feel like a drab box in the middle of the house anymore!

Pretty big difference for not much money or time!

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