Laundry Room Refresh

After moving the keezers out to the garage, we moved the washer and dryer into the ever growing pile in the family room to prep the laundry room for paint.


We never had before pictures of the this room, because before we moved in we painted everything.  We had to, the walls and floors were dark red.  Like dried blood.  Who would want to look at that while doing laundry is beyond me!

As I was painted I told Mike I must be blocking out bad memories of painting because I don't remember painting this room.  He reminded me that I didn't and that because he was working on the house a lot while I was at work when we bought the house 3 years ago, he painted the laundry room.  I do all the painting and assumed I had done it, that's when I promised myself to start using no VOC paint and stop sniffing paint fumes because I was losing my mind.  This also explained why there were no before pictures.

The room is pretty basic, cement block walls on two sides, concrete floors, a window, and the water heater, furnace, and sump pump.


You can see that bloody red color in the spots where the paint chipped.  Funny story is that Mike actually got a really bad bloody nose while I was taking this picture, and was dripping blood everywhere.  I told him that I've seen enough Dexters to question whether he did it on purpose to set up a fake murder scene and set me up to take the fall for his disappearance while he flies off to Mexico or something.

I told my mom the story and said "I want this on record", and she responded that I could have just been setting the scene for me to murder Mike and telling her the "bloody nose" story to explain why Mike's blood was all over when she was scheduled to visit the next day.  I guess we have weird trust issues in my family, or watch too many serial killer shows! 

Looking to the left.

And, to the right.

We were happy with the color of the walls and had almost 2 full gallons in storage, so we just needed to touch up the cmu blocks and paint the new drywall Mike had added to the other walls.

The floor was the big issue, and definitely needed a new coat.  We had spots that were chipped away and new concrete from the new drainage pipe installation.  We didn't have any paint left over so I just got a gallon of Porch and Floor Enamel in Pewter Cast, just because I liked the paint chip and it was a darker gray.  We figured a darker color would hide dirt better than the lighter gray-blue we painted before.

The wall painting and touch-ups went fairly quickly, but with cold temperatures and a high gloss finish, I spent more time waiting for the paint to dry to do a second coat then I spent actual painting.  Once the walls were done, I was able to do the floors and tried to paint it on pretty thick so that I wouldn't need a second coat, painting yourself out of a room already requires enough strategy, I didn't want to have to wait again and do it a second time.

After an hour or so, it was dry enough to walk on, (which was good because we had turned off the heater to elevate the condensate line in order to paint under it, and the temperature outside was in the single digits).

My mom came into town for some wedding excitement over the weekend, so it was a good excuse not to work on the basement and leave the floor to cure for a couple days before we put anything back in. While I was out with my mom on her last day, Mike got too excited to wait and put the washer and dryer back in.  I'm not complaining since I was more than happy to have my laundry back up and running.




Our laundry room is far from beautiful, but in a house this old, I'm just happy to have so much storage, and a space separate from the living space to hide my laundry.  Since we did re-evaluate the usage of this room as we were cleaning it, Mike and I did come up with a couple projects that will make my little laundry space even more efficient, and I can't wait for them to be finished so that I can share them with you all.

Also, if you're a reader of Young House Love, you know that today they posted the
The Macklemore Thrift Shop Challenge.  My mom played along, (and I'm embarrassed to say learned the song), so go check it out on her blog, A Real Retired Housewife of Florida!


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