Laundry Room Copy Cat

One of the things I love most about my husband is his excitement over home projects. Whenever we have a free weekend, he loves to tackle a project for the home. I love that he wants to make our home beautiful and I also love that he shares the same view as me-- that a home is never done, there's always something to do which makes it so fun especially for a home design nut like me.

In order to convince me to replace our perfectly good butcher block in our kitchen with granite, Luke said we would re-purpose it down in the laundry room. I then shared this image by the v. talented Studio McGee, who I am a mega fan of, and it sort of spiraled from there...

via

Our amazing friend/neighbor and professional tiler, Chris, installed the title for us and yours truly grouted it, which might be one of my favorite diy tasks to do.

So without further ado -- our new laundry room!

Please excuse the horrible nighttime photos, but I have a baby (can that be my excuse for everything always?).

Luke and I think it came out pretty good and are the next Chip and Joanna (I wish #wacoforever). We didn't spend that much either, here's the breakdown:

• Butcher block was re-purposed  but we got it from Ikea a few years ago
• tile was $1.99/sq. ft. from Lowe's which I love that it looks like slate, but is actually durable porcelain
• pendant light also from Lowe's (which Luke had to convert into a plug-in light thanks to the awkward outlet on the ceiling)
• rug, art, and baskets all from Homegoods
• paint color is Benjamin Moore Simply White, color-matched to Valspar (which I am not debating painting my whole house in... stay tuned)

 Luke is the laundry-doer of the household, and while he complains, I think he really likes it. He's such a neat freak that I think he enjoys the simple satisfaction of clean, warm clothes from the dryer. But whether he actually likes it or not, I hope the new laundry room makes it even more enjoyable for him. Especially now that our laundry output has exponentially grown thanks to a certain adorable spit-up machine:

DIY Monogrammed Pillows

As a newlywed, I'm so excited to have a new monogram and to share a last name with my husband.  I wanted some way to display our newly-married initials, and decided monogrammed pillows for the bedroom the perfect way. 

Like most ideas I have, I knew it could be easily DIYed. A quick Google search led me to this awesome tutorial by Kristen F. Davis Designs. It was a really inexpensive and easy DIY project you could do in an evening after work, like I did.

DIY Board & Batten

So I'll say it --  I've been kicking butt in the DIY house projects' department. This DIY board and batten project took me a while to complete, mostly because I needed Luke to cut the wood for me (I do not trust myself with a saw!), but it could have definitely been done a lot quicker. I am SO happy with how it came out, and it was so easy to do and I love the progress I'm making with the laundry room makeover plan.

 

There are so many easy-to-follow tutorials online, I especially relied on: Young House Love 's and Centsational Girl 's. It was a really cheap and instantly gratifying project to totally transform a room. The wood was so inexpensive and I just used white trim paint I already owned. The thing about this is -- you don't have to put up the "board" just the "battens". Once you attach your chair rail and vertical battens to the wall, you cover it all up with paint and it look like the entire piece was installed. Luke thinks I should do this in other rooms in our house now too!

Here's a look at the difference adding the board and batten made:

 

Definitely adds more interest to the room and makes it look more structured. Sill more to do, my next task is to replace the paper lantern and get a new rug (or at least iron the existing one, yeesh!) 

 

Love being able to check things off my House To Do List!

 

Install shelving above the washer and dryer. I've purchased shelves, brackets, and a pole to hang and dry clothes from, just waiting on my handy husband to help me install

Replace current paper lantern with a DIY drum shade light fixture.

Install board and batten. I've been following the Young House Love tutorial and so far so good! This is the biggest DIY I've attempted, though Luke did the cutting and nailing... baby steps... 

Come up with ways to hide weird dryer cords and circuit breaker

Shelving for a little nook to store misc things

Decide once the board and batten is up if I want to repaint the yellow paint color

Purchase baskets for shelving

Purchase or repurpose existing jars for detergent and dryer sheets

Art for wall

New rug

DIY curtain

How to Not Freak Out While Painting Stripes

 

I'd been wanting to paint stripes somewhere in my house since we moved in, and I finally did it. I love the result and surprised myself with how good it came out. I had nightmares of paint bleeding through, painting the wrong stripe, wrong measurements, crooked lines. Fortunately, none of this happened because I was aptly prepared (the countless hours spent looking at blogs paid off!) 

Oh hey ! I've been trying to think of an accent color for the bathroom - I think the emerald looks great!

I'm so glad this project is over, because it really took over my life the past few days. I kept painting at the most inopportune times because I was just so excited to get it done. Late one night, for example, I told myself I would just do a second coat and remove the tape for one stripe, "just to see if it worked...". Before I could stop myself, it was midnight and I had manically finished painting and removed all of the tape from 90% of the bathroom. Then, dressed and ready for work the next morning, I finished the rest and was so excited to see the finished results.


I won't go into the details of the entire project, there are so many great tutorials out there - I used Unskinny Boppy's , Young House Love's , and Life in Grace's (which was actually my inspiration for this project, below)



Striped bathroom at Life in Grace blog

Because I am pretty clumsy when it comes to DIY projects like this, I wanted to share my tips for how to not freak out while painting stripes on your wall:

 

Tip #1: Measure the entire length of your wall and decide on the quantity and width of stripes. My wall was 88 inches so I decided to make it easy and do 11 -  8 inch stripes. I found drawing it out helped my visual brand, too.



Tip#2: This leads to the next tip - shoot for an odd number. This way your top and bottom stripes are the base color and you don't have to paint stripes that touch the wall and ceiling (less careful, cutting-in painting, which I hate)

Tip #3: Use tape to mark off what not to paint - this was huge for me, as I was sort of in monster-mode and if not for the tape, probably would have accidentally painted a stripe the wrong color.



Tip  #4: Don't bother with the laser level or even a regular level for that matter, just measure and mark off with pencil a few times along the wall then eyeball the tape along the lines. I used a measuring tape, but next time I will use a seamstress tape measure and tape it under the ceiling and mark out my stripe increments all the way down the wall and just keep moving it along the wall.

Tip #5: Don't stress too much about the straightness of the tape or the exact width of the stripes - you'll lose your mind (and maybe throw out a few very unladylike words) I almost started to flip out, then I took a deep breath and decided to get over it. You'll get a hang of the taping, the first couple are tricky then it gets easy and methodical.

 

Tip #6: Get your tools together - I used Scotch Blue Painter's Tape and it worked wonderfully. I also used a 3 inch roller for the stripes and a paint brush for the cutting-in and corners.



Tip #7: After all lines are taped,  paint your base color and lightly over the edge of the tape with a brush (just the tape that will be eventually painted over with your stripes' color) - this seals the tape and makes for perfectly crisp lines.

 

 Tip#8: Paint one coat of the stripes' paint, let dry, paint second coat and immediately remove tape.

Tip #9: If you're doing a bathroom, I highly recommend going with a semi-gloss sheen. If you get your stripes color on the base color, it wipes right off with a damp paper towel.

 

 Tip #10: And lastly, (because I feel this list needed to have ten tips) make sure to have extra of your base color, it's inevitable you'll have to do a little touching up.

There you have it - I hope you try this, it's a lot easier to do than you'd imagine. And the excitement you'll feel (or was it just me?) when you pull off that tape to reveal your perfect stripes makes it absolutely worth it. (I think at one point I even let out an actual squeal of excitement)  I plan to add in a pop of come color (thinking yellow, emerald, or coral), easy to do with some new towels and bath mat. Can't wait to share an updated, less messy picture of the final result!