I am so excited about this laundry room renovation but so overwhelmed at the same time. We’ve taken a room down to the studs before but this is the first time that we’re actually taking down walls and moving things around to change the way a room works. We’ve never had plumbing moved and we’ve only had minimal electric work done. Other than building our deck, I’d say this is the biggest and most complex project we’ve done which means this post will probably be a long one.
First off, I’m pretty sure of the design plan but I won’t know for sure until we have the floor plan nailed down 100% and we won’t know that until after we meet with our plumber to talk about moving the washer hook ups. I do know that I want to use navy cabinets (real shocker there, am I right?) and potentially some sort of wall treatment like board and batten or maybe some tongue and groove planks to match the playroom in the front of the house. I know that I definitely want to use this wall mural from Society6 and we’ll need some hooks and maybe a bench to keep the mudroom functionality of the space. The built-in bench we had really just collected junk so if we do get a bench it’ll be something small that doesn’t work as well for a crap pile.
I don’t usually use a lot of bold design in our house because I get tired of patterns really easily but I love this large print mural. I haven’t decided if I’ll use it to cover a full wall or if I’ll use it above a wall treatment. I think I need the space to be finished to the point of drywall before I really decide on that. Originally, I was on the lookout for a lemon print paper because I love yellow and navy together but everything was such a small print and looked too busy. Young House Love used this wall mural in one of their beach houses and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one.
So basically the potential design plan is this: white walls, carry the laminate floors through from the rest of the downstairs, navy cabinets, bold wallpaper, and a possible wall treatment for the lower half of the walls.
Now let’s talk about the floor plan. This is the current floor plan (obviously not drawn to scale but you get the idea):
What you can’t tell from this is how tiny the laundry room really is (5ft x 6ft) which has to accommodate our washer and dryer and two doors that swing into the room. The bench was a closet with bi-fold doors when we moved in and the barn door was added last year across a wide opening that separates the foyer from the laundry/closet/powder room area.
When we first started talking about this space, we came up with this floor plan:
This basically just opened the room up on both sides, taking down all of the walls, and allowing us to push the washer and dryer back a couple of feet and adding cabinets.
After we started tearing down the drywall in the cat closet, we decided to change our plan. There’s just too much plumbing and electric to move and we have a pretty firm budget for this project so we don’t want to have to worry about costs escalating out of control. So for right now we’ve landed on this floor plan but obviously things could still change:
With this option, we can leave half of the wall between the cat closet and the current laundry room where most of the plumbing and electric is. We’ll tuck the stacked washer and dryer into the nook that would be created by doing that and open up the other half of the wall as the entry point since the cat closet door in the hallway will be going away and replaced with drywall. Then, we can add cabinets in the current laundry room for some much needed storage. We’re also hoping we can move the garage entry to where the bench was just to give us the maximum amount of storage space.
I hope you guys will hang with me through this. I know our projects tend to go slowly but we can pretty much only work on weekends and we plan on hiring out the plumbing because that’s something I don’t want us to mess with and screw up. It will be slow but depending on permits and the plumber, I’m hoping we can at least start putting the space back together with new drywall sooner rather than later. We’ve already torn out all of the drywall in the cat closet and some around the bench area and now we plan on holding off on anything else until the plumber comes out to quote us on moving our washer hook ups and maybe some of the plumbing in the ceiling. I’m going to do a little tour on my Instagram Story today that I think I’ll add to a highlight as well to give you guys a better idea of the space and how they all currently work (or don’t work) together.
Here’s our giant to-do list or at least all of the things I can think of. These are not necessarily in any sort of order:
– Demo cat closet
– Demo bench/closet
– Remove wall between existing laundry room and bench/closet
– Remove part of wall between existing laundry room and cat closet
– Get permits
– Call plumber for quote
– Have washer/dryer plumbing hooks ups moved
– If possible, have plumbing in ceiling re-routed so we can raise ceiling
– Have misc plumbing moved out of the way and hidden behind walls
– Move outlets for washer/dryer
– Remove tile in existing laundry room
– Level floors
– Remove cat closet door and replace with drywall
– Install can lights
– Move garage entry door (if possible)
– Frame in old garage entry and add drywall
– Put up new drywall where necessary (some walls, ceiling throughout)
– Prime/paint walls and ceiling
– Install floors
– Install trim
– Hook up and stack washer and dryer in new location
– Buy/paint/install cabinets
– Buy/install wall mural
– Wall treatment?
– Add hooks
– Buy/build bench
– Fix poorly done electric from past owners (or builder, hard to tell)
