(k)nurture: before and after

Did I get your attention? Good, 'cause I'm lying. It's just plain ol' boring clothes laundering. I know, I know-- cheap tactics. Anyway, This is the next installment of my home makeover. The notorious Laundry Room!! How exciting!

By some miracle our little old house had an actual room made for the purpose of washing clothes. I mean, we barely have any closets to store clothes. So you can imagine my shock and awe, when we realized that hanging off our kitchen was a not-that-tiny room with the appropriate hook-up for a washer and dryer. Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, like the rest of the house, this room was ugly when we moved in. So we needed to make some changes.

The laundry room before...

After:

The first thing we did was paint the walls the same cheery color as the kitchen. Then, I knew I wanted to paint the cabinets white, but I thought it might be pretty (since the cabinets were so plain and ugly) to take the cabinet doors off (like we did on those upper kitchen cabinets) and paint the insides the wall color, and leave the frame-work of the cabinets a nice white contrast. The only downside is, of course, not being able to hide messes behind those cabinet doors, but really, it just made the space more functional for us. I was able to see everything we had instead of just stashing junk in the cabinets.

We also painted the utility door white to match the new and improved white cabinets. What a difference!

Last, but not least, we added this super awesome drying rack from.... IKEA! It folds flush to the wall when not in use, and pops open to dry those delicates. Love it!

This whole laundry room makeover only cost us $50. Twenty for the drying rack and hooks and the rest in paint. So worth the money for such a big improvement!

I hope you liked my laundry room makeover! Have you made any laundry room upgrades lately? I'd love to hear from you!

When we bought our 1960's ranch four years ago I knew that changes needed to be made. The previous owners believed wholeheartedly in flesh tone colored walls. No seriously, they must have been undertakers, because every wall in the house was some hue of pale death. Not a good look. Not only that but in the true style of the 60's bungalow, every room was partitioned off, making us feel particularly claustrophobic. With a more open floor plan in mind we knew that some of the walls HAD to go! Here is a journey through the before and after of our home renovation, enjoy!

This is the house when we bought it, we added the railings and planters to make it more welcoming (as seen in the photo above).

The entry way before...

And after...

In the 60's apparently people had just one outfit to live in, and thus did not have the need for closets, or at least not very big ones. And that left us completely WITHOUT a coat closet. But with a little help from IKEA, we created a welcoming entryway complete with a hat/coat rack and shoe rack/bench for under $150.

The hat/coat rack is great to keep our jackets and my purse out of puppy's reach

The magazine rack by the door is also from IKEA- great for organizing mail as we bring it in

This quick and easy DIY project can be completed on the cheap. All you need is a small framed mirror, some hooks, and the hardware. Instantly you have a home for your keys, so no searching frantically when you are already running late. And the added bonus of being able to check your teeth for stragglers before you head out the door.

Part of what bothered us about our house, was this giant wall which separated the front and back of the house when you walked in the door. The first thing that greeted you was this ghostly white wall which was about 20 feet long. It left us with these awkward rooms which were not very functional. The front of the house when you walked in the door was intended to be splint in half into two tiny rooms-- the living and dining rooms. Then the back of the house had the fireplace and was supposed to be a "keeping" room- whatever that is. The keeping room was this long and narrow room, which wasn't big enough to be a living room or anything else useful to us. So that monster of a wall had to go!! And it did!

View from the entry way before....

Why would you want to hide this fireplace? And as you can see, I was getting a little ahead of myself, trying to start the mantle decor prematurely :)

View from the entry way after...

As you can see from the above before picture, the fireplace was painted a lovely cyanotic gray-purple. Reminiscent of an episode of CSI. My original plan was to paint over that color entirely with the dark brown, but as I gently rolled the paint over the brick I realized that it gave it more depth and personality to leave it two-toned. So that's what I did... I only gently paint rolled the darker brown color over the surface of the bricks, letting the mortar remain a lighter contrasting color. Believe me, I was shocked that a color that horrific could look decent at all.