Laundry room: before and after.

This is what my laundry room looked like Saturday morning. It's not exactly a room -- more like an alcove. But it was looking pretty dingy next to my beautiful kitchen and needed some attention.

John and I painted it Valspar Watercolor Blue (eggshell) after we did some touch-up spackling. We left the shelves up and painted around them. A few years ago, the wooden cabinets that were up there fell, around 11p one night, sending all the contents flying out onto the kitchen floor. Did I mention that I use to store paint on those old cabinets? We were up to about 3a cleaning it all up. When the cabinets fell, they were still wedged into the wall. We had to take them apart to get them out and we discovered that someone had put them up with six screws, none of them in studs. It is truly amazing that they stayed up as long as they did.

Anyhow, after that John installed these shelves, which I love much more than cabinets anyway. And since that area is a little sketchy structurally, I would have worried about the shelves' stability if we had taken them down and put them back up. Besides. It's just a laundry room.

To make things simple, we also painted the ceiling blue. We were able to pull the dryer out and paint all the way to the floor. I was concerned (worried) that maybe we should not move the washer. But I was able to turn it as much as I needed to paint all around it too. We noticed that the dryer vent was torn on one end, so we picked up a new one and I was able to install it this morning. My first dryer vent. I know my dad will be so proud.

Here's the whole area, with laundry supplies on the bottom shelf. Those three white bins are for random laundry, like the cloth napkins we use or the spare sock that gets dropped far from a laundry basket. I have ones for whites, colors and darks.

The second shelf has cleaning supplies and paper towels. I used to use this area for food storage, but with the new kitchen I don't have to use this area. Part of my plan for the this house is to rethink storage. We actually have a good deal of closet space. I just don't think I've used it well. I've already started by consolidating cleaning stuff here.

The top shelf will have our games. I like keeping them in the kitchen because we are most likely to play on the kitchen table. Just saves a little time. And they are high up so the girls can't drag them out and leave pieces everywhere.

In a few more minutes, I'll post about one of my next projects.