Monday, March 3, 2014

Laundry Room Renovation

Our home was built in the 1990s, way back when the laundry room was considered a utility room. Now, laundry rooms are huge, spacious rooms with commercial grade machines and custom cabinets with all sorts of amenities. Apparantly, having one of those steam machines they use at Nordstrom is now a necessity, but I'm not buying into it. Seems unfeminist to me.
 
While I can appreciate having lots of space to spread the mounds of dirty clothes around (imagine the days and weeks of procrastination that afford me), I still think dirty laundry and the room that holds it should be private. Unfortunately, our laundry "room" was in fact the hallway from the garage to the kitchen. Ergo, anyone who needed a beer from the garage fridge could perform a plain view search of my Spanx collection.
Not. Cool.
 
Before
The view from the garage door looking toward the kitchen door. I have no clue how the previous owners had a washer, dryer AND another fridge in this tiny room.
I lobbied hard for a renovation, but was rebuffed. Other things took precedent.
 
Then came the garage/media room construction (long story), then the flood (longer story), then the structural damage. In short, I got my renovation, but not without an Act of God.
 
There were a few "must have" items: the door to the kitchen was eliminated creating a proper room, a cabinet with a cubby to hold backpacks and shoes, and a door for privacy.


 

During
Be careful what you wish for: doing laundry in a construction zone is a complete pain in the ass.
In the end, the space was even better than I imagined. Removing the kitchen door opened up a few feet of wasted space making room for the laundry cart. We moved the light fixture from another location in the house. I thinks it's over the top for a laundry room, but WTH. I'm tapped out on ceiling lights for now.

After
Not bad for a laundry room, right?! Looks good and it's a great place to hide from children.

 
The Otomi embroidery inspired me to add a cobalt blue chevron shade for the window (coming soon). I loved the combo when we were at Las Ventanas in Los Cabos a few years ago. So now when I do laundry, I can sort through the mounds and enjoy a margarita.
 
Will it end my launder procrastination? Probably not, but my Spanx are now behind a closed door where they belong and everyone is happy about that.