One Room Challenge Week 5 – Spring 2019: Laundry Room Renovation

{Thanks for stopping by. I’m an Interior Decorator located in Milton, ON just west of Toronto.}

Hello and Happy First Day of May!

Welcome to Week 5 of the One Room Challenge. I am renovating my tiny second floor laundry room in my home, adding both function and style. If you missed my previous posts where I shared before photos, inspiration and the design concept, you can click on these links to get caught up.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

The laundry room is coming along which it should be because at the time of writing (Wednesday night), there are only two days left for the contractor/trades to finish and then the weekend for me to style. I’m sharing a couple of sneak peeks. The porcelain floor tile (above ) which mimics marble was installed. I love a herringbone pattern and so happy to have this in my home now. I used a light grey grout to accentuate the pattern. Below is a photo of where we are as of right now:

The Metrie shiplap is up and I’m in love with it and it isn’t even painted yet. We added a piece of flat stock to finish it off. The baseboards aren’t in yet.The biggest stumbling block in terms of design for me was what colour to paint the shiplap. I think that could make or break the overall look. I did an Instagram story poll and the answers were across the board with followers weighing in on what colour to paint it: white (Benjamin Moore Simply White and Oxford White were mentioned), black, gray (Benjamin Moore Wickham gray was mentioned and it’s one of my favourite colours), taupe, green/mossy green/olive, robins egg blue and blush. I thought all along that I would choose a blue green similar to my kitchen island and my home office base cabinets. Those seem to be my favourite colours and what I gravitate towards. But for some reason these blue greens did not look great in my windowless laundry. Also, I always want to use a colour or do something a little bit different than the norm so I am going with a colour that I will reveal next week. Next week is the final reveal post by the way so please come back to see how everything turned out.

The Ikea cabinets are in and I love the new Axstad doors in a matte white finish. Even though I only have 8′ ceilings on my second floor, I went with the 40″ tall cabinets. The rule of thumb is around 18″ from counter to bottom of upper cabinets. I think I have about 15.5″. It’s not a real concern though. Here is a tip for you compliments of a good friend of mine who is a carpenter: washers and dryers are about 32″ deep and you need another 4″ or so from the wall to the washer/dryer. That is 36″ which means there would be quite a reach from in front of the counter to your upper cabinets. What we did was build out the upper wall 6″ so the counter that you see is only 30″ and there is less of a reach. Great idea, right? This is what I shared on my Instagram story so you can see what we did behind the scenes:

I received many messages on Instagram thanking me (my friend) for the idea or that they wish they had thought of that when they did their laundry room renovation. Sharing is caring. 🙂 As I mentioned in Week 2, the wood countertop from Ikea is this one which comes in a 42″ depth (it’s made for kitchen islands) – perfect for over washers and dryers. Very affordable and adds a lot of texture and warmth to the room.

The penny round tiles are up but are yet to be grouted. We will be installing two shelves painted white between the two cabinets using the leftover counter pieces.

My daughter saw the laundry room and said “Wow, that’s a lot of pattern!.” Yes, there is herringbone, penny rounds and vertical lines of the shiplap but I think they work perfectly together. Don’t you? I really can’t wait for the next few days to be over as this will be finished and I can do laundry again. (I have been to the laundromat over the past few weeks.) The appliances from Goemans are being delivered tomorrow and I cannot wait. I will be so happy to actually be doing laundry. Truth be told, I really don’t mind doing laundry as there is a quick outcome and it always feels good to get to the bottom of the laundry bin!

Oh, and I haven’t seen the stand that my contractor is building for my beautiful Native Trails farmhouse sink. But I have a feeling that it will look so good when installed with the brass faucet from Wayfair Canada. (Link to faucet is for my US readers.)

Check out the One Room Challenge blog to see what everyone else is up to. And follow these hashtags on social media to see 100’s of other transformations: #oneroomchallenge and #bhgorc There are some good ones!

Thank you for following along!