Laundry Room Re Do.

Before





The pictures were just thrown up on existing nails with the plan to paint the room a neutral color and put new holes in the wall when I was done. But guess what? I never had the $100 to do to this room what I wanted so it just sat here like this. Do you like the hole in the wall? That is for the intercom system my hubby never put in but wired the house for. Drove me crazy.




After years of dragging book bags and grocery bags across this wall it had scuff marks and scrapings that we dirty looking and it made me sad because I love my pretty wall color. Very soothing, but with scuff marks? I made a post about decorating on a shoe string budget on my Southern Charm Home Decor blog. I know all kinds of things about doing decor D.I.Y. So I decided to put my money where my keyboard was. I did a room on the cheap that really bothered me.

Braxton took a pencil to the whole middle part of this wall in January or early Feb. He is always in here with me doing laundry and he gets bored. He used to pull the clothes off the hangers or throw them out of the baskets but now he has taken to coloring on my walls.

This wall has some decorative stuff on the top of my cabinets. Otherwise it's just the cabinets, 2 machines and a folding table. All white. Nothing on the walls. I have two white wire bins on the washer that holds our socks waiting to be folded. I'm in here a lot and I really like this room to be a nice place to be. I was happy with it before for the most part but now.......I'm in love.

After

Chalkboard paint on the bottom part of the wall. Braxton can color all he wants now. No more scuff marks, book bags and grocery bags can't hurt this black beauty. With the new black wall I had to think of ways to tie in the black wall or it would look dumb. But I still had the no money problem. I had two frames I didn't love anymore in my dining room so I took out the prints and painted the frames black. Thank you Ocean Mommy from http://www.notesfromthesoul.blogspot.com/ for introducing me to Hobby Lobby. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought 2 scrapbook papers for 59 cents each and cut them down one half inch on each side and placed them in the frames I painted. The barn star was $10 from Hobby Lobby. I got it half price, yipee! The Nester gave me my love of barn stars.

Steak knives are perfectly legitimate Home Decor project tools!


Be careful cutting the paper backing.... in my case the existing mat was the wrong color for my room and after discovering I had no mat for my new artwork I remembered my carefully cut gold paper backing. I placed the paper backing against my scrapbook paper and the match was perfect. New mats for FREE. Now my two new art pieces cost only $1.18. Me like free. Total cost of this wall: $19.15.


This wall was free. I just wrapped the chalkboard paint around to continue the black and because it covered Braxy's pencil drawings. I forgot.... I spent $7.97 on the chalkboard paint from Wal Mart.


Remember how plain this wall was before?


Sign from Hobby Lobby $10. Half price from $20. The decor wall box on the left was clearance priced 80% off for $2. I already had the flowers. I saw some beautiful black baskets at Wal Mart that I thought were perfect for bringing all the black over from the other side to balance the room. I can use these for our socks instead of the two white wire bins I had. Perfect. But they were $10 for both and I didn't have or want to spend the money. Then I rememberd as I stood there contemplating the pretty black baskets that I already had two of these baskets at home. But they were not black, they were the natural wicker color. I had already had a gallon of black paint in the garage that I had used on the picture frames I painted on the other wall. That gallon of black painted I saved from another project awhile back.... glad I did. I always save my paint. So I painted my wicker baskets and now I have two pretty black baskets for FREE. I think they are beautiful and pull all the black together and give the room an elegant look.


This is the view as you come in through the outside door. It is so bright in here so it can handle the black. I just love the sign. It's one of my favorite cutsey sayings.
This wall total cost: $12.

I didn't wait for my circumstances to get better before I made my life beautiful. The same could be said for us inside as well, hmmmm.... I'm getting deep on you now. I used what I had and was creative about any purchases I had to make. Total cost for the laundry room was $32. That is wonderful. I think I practiced what I preached don't you think? Like I said in my work blog, if you are waiting for your circumstances to change before you make your home the place you want it to be then stop waiting. Because what you are waiting on may never happen and you deserve better than that. So does your family. Use what you have, I did. Ask friends and neighbors about leftover paint if you don't have any. Ask them about furniture or prints they don't want anymore either.... maybe you can do something with them. Of course you can.

If you want to see more step by step on what I did you can go to http://www.southerncharmhomedecor.blogspot.com/ and see all of what I did. Hope you like it! Tell me what you think or if you have any ideas.