This space has served us well for the last 26 years…an old school ‘laundry room’ with bifold doors. For years it did exactly what it should have done…hid a whole bunch of junk AND served as the the goal for many an indoor soccer game.
I once came home to a board on top of the washing machine and a few of my boys riding a state board down the ramp, down the hallway and shooting outside at full speed. Oh, the joys of raising a houseful of boys. 😎
And yes, it was hard at the time. And yes, I miss the chaos. And yes, I love the quiet.
Along the way, the bifold doors became so broken that they were literally hanging on with heavy duty paper clips and zip ties…because we be fancy (and cheap) like that. That fix wasn’t working any longer and because of the age of our house, and nothing being standard size, putting in new doors wasn’t as simple as we had thought.
But all along, I had a vision for this space. I didn’t like the doors and envisioned it being more open. I had never seen it done and literally sketched it out on a piece of paper for our contractor when he was doing our kitchen. I knew I wanted it to mirror our kitchen and flow as one space. He had never seen this done either, but took my idea and ran with it.
Lots of ‘unseen’ things needed to be done along the way. The header and side pieces had to be removed. All the plumbing, including the drain line from our AC, had to be moved and updated. The electrical (the boy who skateboarded off the washer? He’s a journeyman and has gone from costing us $$ to saving us $$. Payback is bliss!) had to be moved and upgraded. The ceiling had an old access panel to the attic that had to be covered/patched. All the lighting had to be changed from those old huge can lights to those new fangled 1 inch LED pancake lights. Oh, and our washing machine broke two weeks before demo…so add that in.
Basically…a whole lot of stuff before the pretty could happen.
But then? The pretty DID happen.
The only thing original is the floor. The counter top is a beautiful butcher block that matches the custom cart in our kitchen. It’s sturdy enough for multiple people to stand on and is the perfect area for folding laundry and for storing things before parties. The machines are behind heavy duty doors that match our kitchen cabinets. I originally wanted cabinets up top and am so glad I changed my mind…the black shelves are 18 inches deep and while supposedly decorative, they are anything but. The green toolbox has tools we might use on a more regular basis…a hammer, tape measure, screw drivers, blue tape, a few picture hangers. One basket has all our outside flags in it, the other holds candles. A canister tucked in the back holds batteries. The big basket is for laundry. There’s a Lazy Susan with three cute canisters I already had…they store the laundry detergent, dryer sheets and dryer balls.
Oh…and that brick. 😍😍😍 Old, dirty bricks. 😍😍😍
The cute light? A Turkish lamp from my Turkish BFF. Of course. 😊
Little House, Big Table 