Friday, January 13, 2012

laundry room progress

Over the past however many months, whenever I get a chance, I've been working to update our laundry closet.  When we bought our house, everything was white...and some of the stuff the builders had done just didn't make any sense.  For example, in our laundry room, they put the dryer on the left, and the washer on the right.


Noel teased me relentlessly for letting it bother me so much, but come on, think about it.  When you do laundry, or at least when I do laundry, I move from left to right.  With the dryer on the left hand side, you had to dodge the dryer door every time you went to put the clothes in.  More importantly though, whenever you opened the dryer door, it would scrape against the closet door, leaving a gouge (you can kind of see it in the lower left part of the picture) which is not ok.  So, one of the first things I did was switch the washer and dryer.  Immediate improvement.

I also painted the laundry closet to make it a little more cheery.  I decided to use Behr 400F-4 (Restful) for the paint color because I liked the fresh, clean feeling of the color.  The only down side to this was that once it was painted, it made the white plastic piece where the water lines come out really noticeable.  Quite the eyesore.  So, to help disguise it a little bit, I decided to put beadboard and chair rail up.

When I went to Home Depot, I ended up stumbling upon Martha Stewart's Paintable Beadboard Wallpaper.  Although I had intended on buying the actual beadboard, I thought I would give the wallpaper a chance since in theory, it would be easier to install.

I brought it home and it was actually a super easy process to install the wallpaper.  All you had to do was cut the pieces to the length they needed to be, dip them in water for about 60 seconds (I just filled the tub and set them in there one at a time), and then smooth them onto the wall.  Once I had all the wallpaper up, I let it dry overnight, attached the chair rail, and then painted everything with a coat of white paint.

Super easy, and I love how it turned out.

 
Although it was really easy to apply and really inexpensive, if I were installing it in an actual room, I personally would still choose to use actual beadboard.  This wallpaper is kind of squishy/foamy when you touch it, which I just think is a little weird.  Because I was putting it in an area where it really would never be touched, I didn't mind...but I would be afraid of something catching it and tearing it if were in a bathroom or dining room.  Maybe that's just me though...

Anyways, here's the progress we've made thus far:





As for what's next for this little closet?  I have these two cabinets from Ikea (they're stacked on top of each other right now) that I plan to paint white and then hang in the closet.  They have glass doors with wood trim that go on the front, which I'm debating adding the beadboard to as well...and I'm even considering not attaching the doors.  We'll see where we end up when all is said and done.


Hope you have a good weekend!

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