Our laundry room had fallen into chaos and disrepair. I mean, it was really, really gross. The kids claimed to be scared of it (or maybe just scared of doing their own laundry?). And just walking into the room made me feel so discouraged.

The laundry room is in our basement and is kind of half finished. The wiring and pipes are exposed, as you can see, and the window is ancient. When we moved in, my dad painted the room grey, but with the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, the grey paint made the room look sad. Plus, over the years we’d started dumping everything in there — the shelves were completely disorganized, and the stuff spilled out onto the floor.

Finally, I’d had enough! I have some free time now while I’m between jobs, and I vowed to rehab this sad space without spending a ton of money.

The first step was to move all the stuff into nearby rooms and paint everything (even the exposed wires!) a brighter white. I chose Cloud White by Benjamin Moore, one of my favorite colors for happy spaces. (We also used this color in the finished part of our basement and in the beach house.) I taped off everything, covered the laundry machines in plastic, and brought out our paint sprayer.

Good news and bad news: the sprayer worked, and the job was done quickly, but I must have assembled it incorrectly because it leaked paint ALL over the floor. Ugh. I didn’t notice how bad the mess was until later, when I pulled up the newspaper and sheets I had covering the floor. For a while I considered painting the floor white, too! Eventually, I decided to scrub as much of the paint off the floor as possible . . . but that plan didn’t work too well. As I was berating myself, I sort of stepped back and said to myself (out loud), “This is *just* a laundry room!” And I bought a big rug instead 🙂

After the paint dried, I brought the shelves back into the room and organized everything. It was quite the learning experience! In the process, I learned how many duplicates we had in food (check out those boxes of brownie mix!) and in cleaning products. Hopefully, having these items grouped together will help us avoid buying more until we use what we already have.

And I took the paper towels and toilet paper out of their plastic wrap and stacked them on the shelves. Now I’ll be able to quickly see when we’re running low and order more before it becomes an emergency. IYKYK.

Before, the bags we use for trips to the beach and the pool were stuck behind the shelves. I mounted a hook on the back of the door and hung my favorites there. We really don’t need more than a few bags, right? The others went into the “donate” pile.

One of my favorite changes: we had a plumber replace the weird, warped bathroom vanity with a proper laundry room sink. It has a pulldown faucet and a flat bottom, which makes it so much easier to water plants and soak stained clothes.

The things we use for laundry everyday — detergent, bleach, etc — are now corralled on a pretty tray on top of the washer. I put the OxiClean powder — one of my favorite cleaners — into a glass jar with a plastic scoop. Not only is it prettier than the cardboard box, but now I’ll be able to tell when we’re running low. I also put cute bowls on top of the washer (for loose change and other random stuff) and the dryer (for lint).

The small table in the corner was looking a little dingy, so I spruced it up with a fresh coat of paint left over from the girls’ bedroom ceiling. (Bravo Blue from Sherwin Williams)

The last steps were to add a ceiling light (I chose this one in white), the area rug, and a little cafe curtain (held up with a tension rod) to hide the yucky view.

And here’s the big reveal!

As you can see, the laundry table and the ceiling light look so much better!

And I love the sink nook. The sink doesn’t line up with the window, and we have an errant floor piece that sticks out like a sore thumb, but those things don’t bother me. The end result is so much better than where we started, and I don’t need it to be perfect!

Although I am very happy with the result, this project cost more than I’d hoped. Here’s a full rundown in case it’s helpful:

• 5-gallon bucket of white paint: 360
• laundry room sink: 257
• plumber: 250
• electrician: 200
• ceiling light: 110
• rug: 90
• curtain rod: 7
• curtain: 20

What do you think? Do you have an older laundry room, like us? Have you taken on any projects like this? And here’s a doozy: have you used a paint sprayer, and, if so, did you find it to be helpful or did it cause more problems than it solved? Let me know in the comments!