Humpty Dumpty Laundry Room

My poor laundry room is like Humpty Dumpty. All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put the laundry room together again. Or should I say, didn’t put the laundry room together again. There is a story here, and it goes something like this…

A long time ago, we tore the laundry room apart. The reason? All of our house had old pipes. Some of these pipes were replaced before we moved in. Some of them weren’t. The pipes to the guest bathroom had not been replaced. The guest bathroom sits directly over the laundry room. These pipes began to get stopped up and corroded. To get to the pipes in the above bathroom, we had to take out the ceiling below in the laundry room. So we did. We got the guest bathroom working again. But not the laundry room. And that was 4 years ago. It’s somewhat functional (we can do laundry) but it’s definitely not pretty.

It’s the room we try and forget about. We just keep the door closed and try not to see it. When we give house tours it gets skipped. I will just gesture to the closed door and mention that it’s the laundry room. It also doesn’t get any blog time. Believe me, it’s an eyesore. And I’m about to show it to you. Because we have finally started working on it again. Yay for us! Here are some before photos:

The laundry room is actually a half bath/laundry combo. There are two really small square-ish rooms connected by a doorway with no door (although at one point it had a bi-fold door there that we took out). This photo looks an awful lot like when I posted this post back in 2008. It’s so sad it’s funny.

Neither of us remember why the door molding is gone. We removed it at some point. Why? I have no idea. There are some crazy holes in the walls here and there. All of the molding on the walls was removed too, in preparation for our little redo that has been 4 years in the making.

I forgot to take a shot of this area before so this is actually once we have started working which is why there are tools everywhere. The toilet and sink have been out of commission for the whole 4 years too. We tried to fix the toilet at one point but we aren’t really sure what’s wrong with it. The sink faucet leaks like crazy so we just keep it turned off. It’s a bummer too because all of our other bathrooms are on the top floor. This bathroom joins our family room so we have to go up 2 partial flights of stairs to reach the other bathrooms. It will be really nice to have our extra half bath working again.

And the walls? Umm… gross. They have this weird texture that was just painted over and I hate it. All of the places where we removed things (like ugly towel bars and toilet paper holders) have this underneath that shows what it used to be. Plus, everything was painted in a very glossy white. Which, you know me, I love white! And I don’t mind gloss. But in this case, it just accentuates the ugliness.

On into the laundry room… The floors need major help too. They were painted glossy white that didn’t reach all the way to the walls. Then, at some point, touch ups must have been made. But when they were touched up, they used matte paint so it’s really obvious. Weird too.

There is a laundry chute (the door on the wall). The top part to it is in the guest bathroom closet. The bathroom and laundry room have also become a catch-all for the stuff we don’t have anywhere else to store it. Like this clock that I was temporarily storing until after Christmas. And the huge box that my computer came in. And other things that don’t belong in a laundry room. I guess that’s what happens when a room doesn’t function like it should. It becomes storage :)

The only thing I liked in this room were our washer and dryer and the cabinet painted a bright teal. My brother built that for us for our wedding present and it fits perfectly in our laundry room.

At one point a while back we did put the drywall up on the ceiling but we never finished mudding and taping it. We also had taken down the light fixtures in both rooms for when we did the drywall work and never put them back up. We couldn’t ever do laundry in the dark :) Then a couple of months ago, Jason put up this old light in the laundry room so we could at least see in there at night. We never even put the globe on it or anything. We just quit caring what it looked like. So sad.

Another thing about the light fixtures. The previous one that was in the bathroom area hung too low (these ceilings aren’t 8 feet) and the door hit it every time it was opened. So we didn’t really want to put it back up until we got something different. Why do old houses have so many quirks?!

Here is a shot headed back out of the room towards the family room. I took this shot right before we started work while I was in the middle of removing our Christmas decor so the mantel is blank. See the huge boxes by the toilet? One is for my computer and one is my wedding dress. Talk about using this as a storage space. Weird things end up here :)

Although they don’t show in the photos, another thing to fix is a couple of the window panes. Two of them got broken in the April tornadoes (from the golf ball sized hail) and we need to replace them. It’s something we have never done before so it will be an adventure!

Well, you know me, I wouldn’t be showing all of this to you if we weren’t working on making it better! Jason and I have been working on this room non stop for about a week now. Literally, from morning until about midnight almost every night since last Thursday! My Dad even came over and helped us for a while. We are making progress and I’m excited about it! But for today, all you get to see is the before. Next time I will show you some in-progress shots of our transformation. Plus, you already saw a progress shot on Monday so you know it’s getting better! Yay! Stay tuned…