Tweaking the Laundry Nook

This week we wrapped up a fun little tweak to the little laundry nook section of the mudroom (which I revealed way back in October) and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

There’s nothing like a little Christmas DIY project. In fact, I shared this Instagram photo of my husband on Christmas Eve when we were supposed to have already left for a family Christmas party at my parents’ house. Oops…

This tweak is by far the most functional part of this entire makeover and I’m really rather proud of how affordable this portion of the project turned out to be.
You see, this is what this space looked like way back when we moved in:

Our dryer was too wide to fit in the space to the left of the sink so it protruded out into the room, the sink drain leaked, and the open shelves were too high for me to reach and as usual, the open shelves bothered me. I didn’t like looking at bottles of detergent and bleach all the time.
So over the past year, we took out the sink and mirror and shelves, painted the wood paneling white, painted the ceiling blue, and then it sat for a while until I decided what I wanted. I gathered lots and lots and lots of photos on Pinterest of inspirational mudroom and laundry room spaces and finally determined that
#1 – I wanted some closed cabinets for storage
and
#2 – I  wanted a hanging rod because I air dry lots of clothing but typically hang it on doorknobs and the shower rod in the bathroom, etc. and it’s ALWAYS in my way. I needed a designated spot for hanging clothes to dry.
This is one of my favorite inspirational photos I found on Pinterest. I figured there was no reason we couldn’t pull off a similar look.

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Always working on a budget, I decided there had to be a way to score some cabinets for cheap. I hit up the local ReStore and found these 2 solid oak cabinets (one 18” wide and one 30” wide for a total of $45). We added some leftover beadboard from the mudroom shelving unit to the side of our cabinets and a top shelf piece from scrap plywood and also some crown moulding and base moulding ($10?) along the bottom of the cabinets and gave the entire thing a coat of Sherwin Williams gray-ish (?) paint (scored for just $10 from the ReStore). Our chrome hanging rod came from a closet elsewhere in the house (that was no longer needed). We also picked up some fun new hardware for the cabinets for under $10.
So for about $75 we had an entire hanging rod / cabinet system that I think looks pretty darn good. Don’t you love it?




Our next little tweak to this area will be building a folding table to the left of the dryer that will also hold two laundry baskets underneath. Something similar to the Ana White laundry dresser, shown below.

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Now I need to go organize those laundry nook cabinets…and the closet next to it… :) Always something to do, huh?