Tearing Up The Laundry Room

I have hated my laundry room since we first looked at the house. It feels like a narrow tunnel to me with the wall of cabinets and appliances on one side. And then the hanging bar is over the sink so the clothes hang down into the sink. Who thought this was a good layout for a laundry room? Not someone that does laundry.  These are real-life, unstaged photos. Welcome to my laundry room:

Looking in from the garage. Like that floor? Yep, it's new and matches the guest bath.

Looking towards the garage. Sorry for the bad pic.



So I set out to fix it up a little. There isn't much I can do about the size or the placement of appliances... actually there is nothing I can do about that. But I can tear down the cabinets and rearrange them to achieve a more open feel. And that is exactly what I did. Just me, no other help. I always do my best work in the two hours I'm home alone before the hubby gets home from work. First I tore down both cabinets and the hanging rod.

Then I moved the double-door cabinet to above the sink. I did not want the hanging rod above the sink. Now I can have the bad towels and other odds-n-ends corralled into one neat and organized place.

You might be thinking - how did she hang that cabinet all by herself. Well, it is easy to do with a little help from my friends, aka nails. I made a level mark on the wall and then nailed a hand full of nails along the line. Then heave the cabinet up on top of the nails to help hold the weight. Screw the cabinet into the wall. Here are my helper-nails:

Next I painted the bare wall. Luckily the previous owners left all the paint so I already had this color on hand. After the paint was dry, I hung the wire shelf. I used the same method to hang the wire shelf as I used on the cabinet. Not so much to hold the weight, but to make sure that it stayed level.

Finally I loaded up the shelf with laundry goods and a pretty basket to wrangle hand towels. I also hung a large hook on the wall to hold the laundry basket instead of it sitting on top of the dryer. And a holder keeps the broom/mop/etc. nice and neat. Here are some almost-final pics:

Much better and much more open now. I think I need to either beautify the laundry containers and shelf to make it even better. And I still need to do something with the other wall in the laundry room. This wall:

Blue stripes? Or wall paper? Or a funky stencil? I think it needs to be something bold and happy. After all, this is a chore-driven, boring laundry room. And what did the hubby say when he got home - oh, you moved the cabinet.

Total project costs - about $2 for the hook. Everything else was sitting in the garage on hand.