Laundry Room: Final Reveal!

I am happy to be able to post the "after" pictures of our laundry room make-over.
First, a quick refresher of what it looked like when we moved it. Remember the whole "paint melting off the walls" thing? So glad to be past that.

The "Before." 

Wasted space that was piled with boxes when we toured the house.
Flat panel oak doors, wire shelving, single light. 

Now...the final reveal!!

It's very hard to get a full shot of the laundry room since I'm backed up against the hallway wall as far as I can go.
New cabinets from Lowe's. Newer front loading washer and dryer brought over from the old house. Folding counter (mostly used as a stained clothing pre-treating area). New sticker from The Vinyl Letter shop on Etsy. Replaced the outlet covers with clean white ones. Drawer pulls from Ikea.

Right hand side of the room

On the right hand side of the room we put our Ikea drying rack brought over from the old house. It folds down when not in use and is mounted high enough to walk under when it's out. You can also see the new 6 panel folding doors. We decided to go with solid core doors here to help with sound dampening. We also were able to re-purpose the lights from B's room. They make much more sense in here vs the previous owner's choice of over the closet in the bedroom.

Left wall of the room

On the left hand side of the room we mounted a fold down ironing board...not that we do much ironing. Mostly I have the iron for my craft/sewing projects. This was a clearance, spur-of-the-moment purchase from Lowe's and I love it. Our previous ironing board was big and bulky. It made a horrible screeching noise when it was opened. We rarely used it because it was so awkward to get out of the closet where we stored it. The built-in is so convenient, readily available, and takes up minimal space. D had to wire an electrical outlet on this wall because the room had none. You can also see my Life Expressions Decor sign made by my friend, Jill, which I had in our old house. It says, "The most memorable days usually end with the dirtiest clothes."

View of the built-in ironing board. 

Not everything is new. We kept the flooring which is vinyl but in good condition. We re-purposed the lights. The paint was left over from the kitchen in our old home.

The finished product is just how we envisioned. I feel like it really reinforces our plans to make this house into something special.

Bedroom Paint Teaser

I think we have been painting off and on for about 7 weeks now. It's my fault because I decided to do a more elaborate paint pattern in the boys room. I thought I would try out stripes in one bedroom and decide after that if I wanted to do the second bedroom. Unfortunately/Fortunately it is turning out better than I expected. That means I have two bedrooms to do....two bedrooms that are larger than the bedrooms at our old house.
Since we only seem to have evenings to work on projects like painting, the boys have been taking turns having "sleep overs" in the other brother's room. Once they are asleep, they don't hear a thing and we can work on whatever we want. I think we've run saws in the next room while they've slept!

Here are the colors that they chose. They had free rein to pick whatever they wanted in their rooms. I guess I should say "free rein within reason" because we had to veto the first idea. B was really pushing for a rainbow room. It wasn't that I didn't think rainbows were a good idea, it was that we didn't want to buy all those different colors of paint!
See if you can guess which kid goes with which color. If you've spent time with the boys over the past few months, this will be easy for you. :)

Bright Blue with Greige
(Slight color cast in this photo, sorry). 

Bright Green with Gray

We purchased the light switch covers this year at the Ann Arbor Art Fair (they also decided to buy the same covers).

The green room is 90% done. I'm scaling down my original paint plans but I still want to add in an accent stripe. The blue room is about 70% complete. I think the final results will be very cool and very grown up...more "boy" room versus "toddler" room... and should last them a number of years. 

Halloween is fast approaching so I have some other projects taking up my time. Hopefully the bedrooms will be done by Christmas. Kidding! I hope.

I also learned a nifty little paint trick...wrapping and putting your wet paint tray and rollers in the freezer until your next use. If you haven't heard about this one, you can read the tips here from Home Depot, although I originally saw the article on This Old House. This has saved me countless hours in clean up. The article says store overnight, but I've put the rollers in my chest freezer for a week and they were fine.
If you have heard about this then I ask you, dear friends and family, why did you not share this with me?!! It has been the biggest time saver especially since I only paint for about an hour at a time.
And on that note, I'd better get back to work. Up next...Laundry room reveal! 

New Garage Entryway

A simple project that I had been wanted to tackle was the garage entry door. It's the door we use most and, therefore, I see it the most. It was dingy and dirty from years of hard use from the previous owners. The door itself was in decent condition but the streaks of unknown origin could not be scrubbed away. Gross. Paint to the rescue!

Garage door during our epoxy phase. Cream door, very blah. 

Several things I learned in this project....
One, read labels carefully. Just because you picked it up near all the other paint containers at Lowe's, does not mean it is water-based like you are used to. Probably shopping with twins in tow is not the best choice...tra-la-la...oh! Paint for the door! It says "door paint." Perfect! *drops in cart without reading*  

Two, do not try your new additive for water-based paint in the oil-based paint.They will not play well together and when you turn your back, it will have eaten through the cup and spilled entirely on your husband's freshly painted garage floor. Black paint everywhere. This may or may not have resulted in one tearful phone call to said husband and a trip to Lowe's with black paint covered hands to purchase mineral spirits and rags. Thankfully the cashier had the brains not to comment on that one. (Hubby was awesome about the accident, by the way, and used his lunch hour to help me clean up).

Lesson three, sometimes ideas from the internet are awesome.  :)

New garage entry door. Sorry about the grainy photo from my phone.

I love the final result and I could not be happier. Now I just need to find an equally cute entry mat.
Black paint, brushed nickle kick plate, coded lock in nickle finish all from Lowe's.  Custom vinyl applique from The Vinyl Letter on Etsy.