Thursday, May 28, 2009

Laundry Room

I'm so excited about this post it's embarassing!

You may recall our bare bones laundry room from a past post about Layla's fascination with it:


Or from when we first moved in (Pic from day 2 in our house, right after appliance delivery):

There wasn't much to it, which really is fine-it's a laundry room afterall. But it definitely had its share of pains in the behind.
  • The washing machine was always 'walking' so I had to keep pushing it back against the wall over and over again.
  • Because of the amount of shaking from the washer, things were always falling off-detergent, clothes, etc. So I'd have to contort myself between everything to pick stuff up. Not to mention getting the bejeezus scared out of you when a bottle of detergent came crashing down and you were downstairs or in bed.
  • There was very little surface area for putting clothes when they came out of the dryer, folding them and stacking them until you were done folding. Everything was always falling between and behind the machines.
  • Zero storage
  • Litter box was in the right side corner (not shown) and took up a good amount of space, and was very obvious when you walked in there.
  • It was just down right boring being in there. I don't need a tv or anything, just a bit of visual interest to break up the monotony of loading, unloading, folding, hanging, ironing, etc would be nice.

So...last week while washing all of our camping clothes 2-3 times each (campfire does NOT smell good when it's embedded in your clothes!) I was getting increasingly frustrated and talked with hubs about how our weekend project (or at least one of them) needed to be figuring out some solution for this room.

And I love it! SO much surface area to put, fold, and keep stuff, plus shelves for storage, and even a little nook for the litter box!





I even printed out a couple laundry-esque pictures and tips for around the room:

Even Max likes it now, as he spent a good 20 minutes sniffing around and seeing what was up with his business room.

We were going to use this as a temporary solution until we could foot the bill for an actual countertop and some cupboards, but I think this will do us just fine.

And all with about an hour and a bit of work and a few bucks. How many bucks, you ask?

Melamine White top $27.47
(just a couple bucks more than a plain MDF version of the same thing and already painted and no splinters to catch clothes on)

2 Melamine White shelves $19.22 ($9.61 each)

2x2 for bracing counter (not seen) $5.17

2x4 for counter leg $4.67

White Melamine 2x4 for bracing shelves $5.96 ($2.98 each)

Plank of MDF for the brackets $7.57

3 8x10 frames for pics $6.00 ($2.00 each)

2 4x6 frames for other pics $2.50 ($1.25 each)

Metal hooks for belts and hangers $1.00 for 4-pack

Plastic blue bowl for coins, etc hubs forgets in his clothes $1.00

Everything else we had on hand

So for a total of $80.56 and about 2 hours combined work, we have a totally functional laundry room that's kinda cute to boot!
Thanks hun!

2 comments:

  1. wow! I really really like it! It turned out so great! And it was a low cost, low time consuming project, which is always awesome!

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  2. Thanks Mrs! I'm really happy with it (and the low pricetag too :))

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