Laundry Room Overhaul – FINALLY! I started this mini makeover at the beginning of summer thinking it would be a major laundry room makeover on a budget that I could get done quickly… but here we are months later! We had some setbacks, we had some motivation issues, but finally, with a few small changes, we made this little laundromat into a place I really love. Read on to see how we used a shoestring budget and a few easy DIY tricks to remodel this laundry space, and see if it gives you some laundry room makeover ideas for your home.
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Laundry Room Overhaul
Before we get too far into the details, here’s a little before and after of a laundry room makeover on a budget!
First Friday Feature: A Moody, Social, Overhaul
I started this makeover as I do all my projects, with a mood board. Or in this case, more of a shoddy photoshop version of the room.
I have a very small laundry space, it’s really just a laundry closet, not a whole room, and so the choices I had to make this better and more functional were limited. I can’t close the door to this space (the previous owners removed the closet doors and the machines got stuck by the opening) so I wanted to make this look a little nicer everyday. That meant hiding the machines.
To hide the washer and dryer, I decided to add a curtain. I tossed around the idea of ​​curtaining the entire closet as opposed to just the washer and dryer, and decided I wanted to drape just the bottom part, for a very English, country-inspired look. (Click here to see my laundry room design Pinterest board, which is full of laundry room inspiration!)
After deciding on the table and curtain, I worked on ideas to reconfigure the cabinets a bit to add open shelving storage, and then the rest was just decorating and choosing the right paint color!
Plywood Floor Laundry Room Ideas You’ll Love
We removed the old linoleum floor and I originally planned to put tile in here, but seeing as you can really see about 2 inches of this floor in front of the washer and dryer, I took a break and bought some peel and stick tile. from Home Depot. It ended up being really good quality and I was able to install it in about an hour! I love that it’s white which ties in with the adjacent black and white floor in the kid’s bathroom, and also that it has a bit of gray in it (the color of the dryer lint!) so it doesn’t look dirty all the time!
My husband and I made a DIY wood counter out of an old door and a removable back (you can read all about it in this post!). With the counter installed above the washer and dryer, we were able to have a little folding station to make better use of the limited space.
(Tip: You can find solid wood doors at Habitat for Humanity Restore, Facebook Marketplace, or sometimes even a thrift store (just in case you don’t have a husband who collects scrap building materials like mine!)
I ended up having a lot of trouble getting a nice color on this teak counter so I ended up with Minwax True Black. I think it was meant to be!
In 1001: Overhaul The Laundry Room
I explained all about how we built this artificial backsplash in this post! I’ve since added a little knob to make it easier to remove, as it’s super tight in there. The back hides the plumbing and provides an extra cuteness factor.
Removing the faux backsplash – behind it we can still access the plumbing to turn them off or off.
For this small laundry area, I also wanted to keep the upper cabinets that were already in place, just transform them with a little reconfiguration and a fresh coat of paint. I added some molding throughout the original cabinets which were just flat panel style melamine (the cheapest kind of cabinets you can find, really). It’s amazing what a difference a little shaping makes!
I used a level and pencil to first mark where my molding would go, keeping the edges of the molding 1 inch from the edge of the cabinet doors. Then it was just a matter of cutting the mold to match the pencil marks I made and then gluing them on using No More Nails. I did this the same way I did all the molding on my main floor.
Laundry Room Makeovers That Combine Storage With Style
I used a pencil to mark the molding locations and then just glued the molding to the cabinet using the pencil marks as a guide.
I originally planned to move the old cabinets down and forward so I could reach them better, but when we tried to take them down, we found they were well in place. We think they were glued in a few places and after a lot of trouble we decided it wasn’t worth destroying the walls to move them and I decided to turn the design around a bit.
There was about 12 inches of space under the cabinets before the drywall shelf. I decided to do open shelving between the underside of the cabinet and that pony wall. We headed to Home Depot and grabbed a piece of 3/4 inch thick plywood to make the shelf. We cut this down to the size of the space under the cabinet, glued and nailed it together, then added it to the space under the cabinets. We attached it to the sides, to the shelf below, and to the underside of the cabinet to keep it nice and secure.
We made a simple open back box out of plywood and sat it on top of a small ledge we had and attached it to the bottom of the cabinets and the side walls
A Total Diy Laundry Room Transformation (aka Peak Adulting)
Finally, I found some wooden shelf brackets in my stash and glued them into the corners to spruce up the shelf a bit.
I glued some shelf brackets in the corner of the shelf to add a little more detail before painting
After all the changes were made I nailed, filled the holes and painted the cabinet doors and base cabinets after proper priming. I used Benjamin Moore Advance in Edgecomb Grey.
I’ve been going back and forth on the paint color here – I originally planned to go for a color that wasn’t neutral. However, the overall plan for this hallway area was to paint it the same as my upstairs hallway (the white walls are Valspar Swiss Coffee and Edgecomb Gray on the trim). Since there are so many doors in here, I thought it would be more consistent and look better if the cabinets were the same color as the doors and trim, and I could add color and pattern in other ways!
Cheap Tricks Make For Budget Friendly Laundry Room Redo
I added these pulls from Rejuvenation and lined them up to go side by side to mimic the molding I installed to go over both doors, and I love how it turned out!
We made the counter come out far enough so we could install a ceiling mounted curtain track on the underside (I bought two of these from Ikea). Then my mom and I made two curtains from William Morris quilting fabric using my own pleat tutorial.
We hung the curtain on the track nice and high so that when closed, the curtain almost completely hides the track. On each fold we just sewed a small loop that we made from leftover ribbon to hang on the hooks that come with the Ikea track. The curtain slides easily when we want to access the machines.
My mother sewed little loops on each pleat to attach to the track. We put them low enough so that the curtain sits high and hides the track when closed.
The Laundry Room Edit
I have this textured, splattered paint throughout my home on door and window trim. As we slowly renovated each space, I removed the old trim, sanded the jammed doors, added a splash of paint, and replaced the hardware. I made a huge set of solid brass doorknobs on Facebook Marketplace a long time ago and stripped the varnish off them and aged them and replaced all the doorknobs in my basement with these. (Changing the hardware and painting are two easy ways you can update your doors on a budget, and it’s also an easy DIY project!)
After all the trim was replaced we painted (Edgecomb Grey) and the walls also got a fresh coat of white paint to provide a little contrast to the trim.
We changed and painted the trim and walls, replaced the door hardware