Using what I’ve got…. Doing a little laundry room make-over!

Being currently unemployed, I am keeping myself busy with projects in my house and trying to do them as cheap as I can….. Not so different than usual actually.

I decided I wanted to improve my laundry room, and make it feel like I have more space. When we bought this house a few years ago I quickly built a platform to put my new front load washer up on so I wouldn’t have to bend over to load and unload it.
I thought I would also raise my dryer, but then decided if I did, I couldn’t use the top of it, so keeping it on the floor was best. Especially since the cabinets along the wall above the machines would mean I couldn’t set anything on top of the dryer if it was raised.

Anyhow…. I got a flea in my hair about these cabinets along the wall that have always felt in the way since I kept rags and dryer sheets in one of them and the others remained unused. I also had a corner cabinet on the left side of the washer that served for me as a shelf. What a waste of space!
I didn’t think to take a picture before I ripped out the cabinets since it was a spur of the moment idea. Then they were out in a matter of 10 minutes! THREE screws held each cabinet to the wall, and the bottom corner cabinet… that was only held in by TWO screws. Badda bing –gone! Don’t know if you can tell by this photo, but there were loads of holes in the wall under the cabinets. So I had some patching to do.

I had also previously put some shelves in the laundry room for dirty laundry baskets. Light, Dark, & Red. Now that the corner cabinet was gone, I could move the laundry baskets into the corner, thus making me feel like I had more room, and actually HIDING the dirty laundry from view when standing at the laundry room door! Bonus!

Ok enough of the boring stuff! Here’s the best BEFORE pictures I have.

Here’s the AFTER.

A couple things I really like about this room now….

*I have a gap under both the washer and dryer where I keep laundry baskets. Under the washer is the basket for the clothes that come out and need to be hung. Under the dryer I have two baskets for clean dry clothes to be carried upstairs. They stay out of the way, and then just slide out to have clothes dropped into them. If I had the typical raised boxes that are sold with these machines I would have paid about $300 for storage that I wouldn’t use because I hate bending over. My 2x4 platforms are just the job! I would like to take the time to paint them white, but I haven’t got there yet.
*You can’t see I have dirty laundry in baskets living left of the washer.
*My shelf above the washer and dryer is long and all the storage I need.

It’s still a work in progress because I want to do a couple more things in here.

*I want to get myself a cute rug for the floor. (I know what you’re thinking… "but if you have a leak…." Well this laundry room was built w/o a drain in the floor. If there is a leak, I’m gunna have issues, so I figure I may as well have a cute and soft rug to stand on.)
*I also am coming up with a way to hang some laundry in this small room. I currently use a guest room for that and want it all to happen in one room. (This will be another post)
I’d also like to make it “cuter”. My AFTER photo is a little boring. This butter yellow color could lend itself to quite a few combinations, so I would like to come up with some cute ideas for this room. Melissa Phillips recently posted a laundry room photo on her blog, and it’s incredibly inspiring. So I know I can “cuten” this up! (Open to suggestions too!)

So, let me tell you the few things I did to save some money!
*I didn’t buy any paint. I combined two half cans of what I had creating this pale yellow color.
*I used scrap 2x4’s to build the platform I raised the dryer onto.

*I used a door to create a shelf above the washer and dryer. Which I’ll elaborate on:

I cut the door in half, and filled in the panels with joint compound. (already had both of these)
Then I sanded the joint compound down, primed the shelf, and painted it white. Then I painted a strip of frame molding white and glued it to the front edge of the shelf.

Worth knowing… the joint compound takes time to dry when it’s the depth of door panels. Also, it shrinks, so it needs to be filled in a second time after it dries. (This meant that my shelf was one of the longest processes for my room.) The door is hollow, so the joint compound didn't make the shelf too heavy. Just heavier.

Two things I did spend money on for this room:
*I went to Sam’s Club and had a 30x20 print done for my window frame. That cost $11.66! (w/o tax)
*I bought two plastic tubs for rags. They were $3 each! (w/o tax)

Some things I spent money on in the past for this room….
*These dirty laundry baskets. I got them at “Wally World” for around $3 each.
*Shelf brackets…. Two shelves gave me location for three dirty laundry baskets. And leaving a gap between them allows me to overfill them. (which I do on occasion ;)

Ok, I think that’s it for now! I do hope I gave you some ideas for YOUR laundry room!

Outta This Funk Blog Hop Friends… (those “blopping”) Please move on over to the amazing Regina Easter!

Photo Albums Revisited

(My post from Outta This Funk)
I have a fun idea that gets an event scrapped without all the time and expense... with just as much fun. This is great for those of us that want to accomplish more than we should expect to... I might just be doing this more and more since I find it so enjoyable.


Ever given a photo album by someone who knows you love photography and scrapbooking? I have. I used to get disappointed; thinking, what a shame I won't be using this... but now I see it as a fun project with just enough challenge to excite. Sure opening them you just see 4x6 slots looking very uninspiring, but since so many people print 4x6 photos, and it's easy to have them done quickly, this is a no-brainer for many people, but it felt like a light bulb moment for me :)

I started by deciding what was going into my photo album, and made me a mini title page. This took like 10 minutes! That's a die cut fish I had left over from a fishing page I did at a crop. (not my die)

Then I stuck in some photos, and cut some paper to fit.

I had a few photos I'd printed at home, and one 4x6, stuck in a piece of BG to journal on later, and moved right along.

While a passenger in the car, I wrote up some details about fishing on some 3x5 cards and scrap paper, these I will type up later and print them. If I hadn't been in a moving car I could have just written it to use. When I print it up, I will either matt it on scrapbook paper, or print it to cut out at 4x6.

It's crazy how fast an album builds when you're slotting photos into place, and leaving slots to tell the story. I have 2 events I'm still trying to finish large scrapbooks for... now I'm wishing I'd started them this way... I'd be done by now.

The big plus for me doing it this way -I'm not compelled to find ways to embellish each page.

~That's so liberating!

Maybe try this the next time you want to scrap an event and feel you have no time for it :)