From Closet to Laundry Room PLUS $500 Home Depot Gift Card Giveaway

09 Aug From Closet to Laundry Room PLUS $500 Home Depot Gift Card Giveaway

Hello Everyone, it feels good to be writing to you so thank you for being here today!  Not only am I super excited to share my laundry room makeover with you today, but I have a $500 HOME DEPOT GIFT CARD TO GIVE AWAY TO ONE OF YOU LUCKY LOVELIES!!!  Wahoo!

Let’s get started, shall we?

Say hello to what this space looked like before.  We don’t have a true laundry room, and the washer and dryer were formerly located in the basement in this home.  Can you imagine lugging baskets of clothes for six people up and down the basement stairs?  Ugh.  Plus the basement is…weird.

So part of this closet became “the laundry room”.  This is my husband’s closet, and it needs an organizational makeover in and of itself, but one step at a time.  The closet is lined with cedar planks, and is in pretty much its original condition from 1921.  For an older home, this is rather a large closet so it was easy to borrow a few feet from it to create a nook for the washer and dryer in the new space.

There was a teensy tinesy closet that opened up from the upstairs landing so we knocked out its wall on the right (borrowing from Kent’s closet) to create that nook for the washer and dryer.

In our house before this one, our washer and dryer were side by side, and I thought I was going to have to get a new stackable washer and dryer.  My friend, Emily (thanks girl!), told me I could buy a stacking kit for my washer/dryer, and my problem was solved.  Duh, a stacking kit!!  Genius!  I used this one, but Home Depot has them for all of your favorite brands.

Making a closet feel…well, not like a closet was my primary goal.  I spend some decent time in this small space so I wanted it to feel light and pretty.  Feeling inspired by this iconic laundry room, the idea for the chinoiserie wallpaper was born.

The cedar planks were drywalled and painted.  I used some leftover creamy paint for the walls, and a barely there blue for the ceiling.  I looked to one of my favorite sources for antique wallpapers and purchased one roll.  That was all I needed!

Wallpapering the whole closet would have been too overwhelming, and with no natural light, this could turn into a dark space.  Keeping the walls creamy, and just using the wallpaper on the back wall gave me all the impact I needed.  (P.S.  I pretty much always use this wallpaper paste.)

I used leftover scraps for the insets of the cabinets, and I just love how this brings the look together.  Using wallpaper this way adds such a chicness to the space.  (I did this to the doors in my dining room, too.)  The blue/green knobs are from Anthropologie.  Little spaces like this lend themselves to the utilization of fun hardware.

One of my favorite stories from this makeover would have to be how the quartz countertop came to be.  I knew I wanted a quartz countertop because quartz is super durable, anti bacterial, and overall awesome.  I had my color picked out, but there was a problem.  This small countertop was going to be over $400.  No bueno.  However, I stepped into my local Restore looking for something else, and in a dark corner, leaning against the wall, I saw some old countertops.  I started going through them, and of course, most of them were pretty yucky.  But then, THEN, I saw it.  It was a long piece of my EXACT COLOR OF QUARTZ countertop marked…wait for it, $75.  It was way more counter than I needed, and one of the ends was badly damaged, and the other end had  a sink hole cut out, but the middle was perfect.  A few feet was all I needed, so I snatched it up.  Okay, I lifted one end, while the guy who worked there lifted the other end, and we loaded it.  Providence, I tell you, providence.

After having some simple cabinetry made, my little folding counter came together.  I used one side for some sorting baskets,and the other side to house laundry room necessities.

Because laundry soap and dryer sheets look much prettier in glass jars, I used them to decorate my counter.

Along with a vintage painting found at an estate sale to cover an electrical outlet (signed “Mitchell” no less), a jar of vintage sewing notions,  and a silver tray to collect buttons, my surface was pretty enough to make me happy, and simple enough that there was plenty of room for folding.

I’m really happy with how my laundry closet has transformed, but I still have some future plans.  Like building a shelf to fill this side space next to and above the washer and dryer.  Valuable storage here, and as we all know, inches count when you have a small space to work with.

I also think this wall on the left needs art or maybe one of those fold out drying racks??

The floor is an eyesore, and I think I’m going to paint it eventually.  (Do you see the laundry soap spill stain?)  For now, a brightly colored rug I purchased from Joss & Main hides most of its imperfections.

Now for the extra happy part, if you have your own laundry room makeover to do or any other house project, I have a $500 Home Depot gift card to give away!  Plus some Tide samples!

I’m going to give you a few ways to enter, and you may use all of them if you like.  Obviously, the more entries you have, the better your chances are.  Just leave a comment for each avenue you use.

Ways to Enter:

1.  Leave a comment on this post.

2.  Share this giveaway on Twitter using the hashtag #BrilliantHEClean.  (please leave link to your Twitter feed)

3.  Share this giveaway on your Facebook page.  (please leave a link)

4.  Like me on Facebook.

5.  Follow me on Twitter.

Pretty exciting, right?  For some practical tips on making your laundry room work, click here.

As a bonus, Home Depot, Maytag, and Tide have joined together for the #BrilliantHEClean campaign to give one lucky winner a $5000 laundry room makeover, a year’s worth of Tide, and a one room consultation with my friend Jenny, over at Little Green Notebook!  Visit this site to enter!

I’ll close the giveaway and announce the winner on Tuesday morning, August 13th.  Winner will be chosen using random.org.  Good luck!

Hope you enjoyed my closet to laundry room makeover!

Special thanks to P&G and The Home Depot for sponsoring this post.