DIY Laundry Room Makeover With Design Ideas, Decor & Painted Cabinets

I’m beyond excited to start showing you guys the final product of several of our big home improvement projects that we’ve been tackling over the last 6 or 7 months, beginning with our forced laundry room makeover. I say forced because as many of you know, the laundry room wasn’t on our immediate list of 2020 home improvement projects, but a nice little laundry room flood thanks to a corroded washing machine supply line that popped off mid-cycle was just the kick in the pants we never needed to jumpstart this makeover with a bang! 

Laundry Room Makeover

Shop Laundry Room Decor

• 

• 

We actually started a lot of these most recent, much-needed home improvement projects around the time COVID began keeping us at home in March/April, and we’re just now putting the finishing touches on a lot of them. So as you can imagine, we’re elated to finally be at the finish line on these because it’s been a slog. But flood or no flood, headache or no headache, in the end I’m  actually really happy that we were forced into finally giving our little laundry room the attention it deserved because I just love the finished product so much! Even more so because we tackled most of the work in here ourselves save for the countertops, which was painful with the summer heat, but rewarding nonetheless. It’s simple, sweet and functional with the perfect amount of fun to help me actually enjoy the process of doing laundry. Well, sort of. I don’t think laundry will ever be super high on my list of beloved extracurricular activities, but at least now I don’t have to fluff and fold in the midst of an eye sore! It’s the little wins in these 2020 times, ya know?

• 

• 

As I told you guys in the post about our DIY console table makeover last spring, I’ve been itching for an opportunity to use my new favorite Sherwin Williams paint color, Dried Thyme, in a more impactful way in our house somewhere, and the laundry room makeover was the perfect opportunity to do it! To say I absolutely love this color on our laundry room cabinets is an understatement. There’s just something so sweet and calming about this rich, muted green hue with a hint of blue undertones, which feels perfect for a room that I previously kind of loathed. We painted the cabinets ourselves with our brand spankin’ new cordless airless paint sprayer, and this ended up being the perfect project for to take that thing for a spin and see what it can do! Summary? It’s awesome. Beyond awesome. It’s a little bit of an investment, but if you’re renovating your home this thing can end up saving you tons of money on professional painters in the long run, and bonus, it’s incredibly user friendly which is a really big deal when it comes to airless sprayers. They’re not all super easy to use or get the hang of, so this cordless sprayer has been a revelation and opened up so many DIY paint project possibilities for us! 

• 

• 

Ok so now for the details on this little laundry room makeover. Like I mentioned, we kept it pretty simple and sweet in here with this makeover with the idea that we kind of have most of the functionality we need in this small space for now, so all it really needed were some minor repairs and a good facelift.

Fix the Leak

Essentially the pipe that feeds the washer had a rubber connection in the middle of it that we found had a little hole in it. Either the hole finally opened all the way causing our lovely little flood during a wash cycle, or it may have even happened over time and the course of many wash cycles and we just didn’t know it because the water flowed under the floors and not over them most of that time. On the other side of where you see Chris in the pics below, we have a clean-out little that was used as the access point for a snake and scope last year when we were having other water/pipe issues in the house, and I think that the snake may have pierced that rubber connection at that time because the plumber was really wrenching on that thing. Not great. Nevertheless, that meant that our first step in this project was to replace that connection, make sure everything was 1000% water tight in there and get the wall patched up around it. Honestly, this was probably one for the easier parts of this project, though Chris may tell you otherwise.

• 

• 

New Flooring

I had to re-do half of the flooring in the room because of the water damage went behind the washer where there was no baseboard to stop it, and underneath our flooring. Our flooring is waterproof on top, but if water finds it’s way underneath somehow, it’s a goner. As part of the flooring process we also carefully removed, repainted and reinstalled the baseboard, which is always a tricky thing. Luckily with a little extra care, the end result was pretty flawless!

• 

• 

DIY Painted Cabinets

The existing cabinets were in great shape, they just needed a little facelift. So we used that as an opportunity to paint them with our cordless airless sprayer in Sherwin Williams Dried Thyme, which is officially a favorite paint color in our home. I’ll be working up a separate detailed tutorial on using this cordless airless paint sprayer very soon and DIYing your way to perfect, professional caliber painted cabinets, so stay tuned for that!

• 

• 

New Quartzite Countertops

This was the only part of this project that we didn’t tackle ourselves, mostly because we wanted really specific countertops and getting them cut and installed was pretty budget friendly, so there wasn’t any need for us to try to DIY this part. The countertops are quartzite and have these really pretty tan and grey veins that make them feel warmer and a little bit cozier than the average quartzite countertops. These are the same countertops we used in part of our kitchen and we knew we wanted to carry these into the laundry room because we’ve loved them so much! They’re also super durable and that little bit of warmth in the stone makes these feel so unique while also being really soft and simple.

New Wood Cabinet Hardware

We used this wood hardware in our kitchen and have loved it so much, we decided to carry it into the laundry room! I used a custom stain mix on the wood hardware before we installed it on the cabinets, which is 3 parts Minwax Weathered Oak stain with 1 part Minwax Classic Gray stain. If you love this wood hardware as much as we do and want to stain it before installing, head on over to our wood kitchen cabinet hardware post to see how to stain these tricky knobs and handles.

New Schoolhouse Light Fixture

That boob light had to go! As is frequently the case, it wasn’t a simple swap, though. The boob light was so old and stuck to the ceiling, most likely thanks to time and moisture, that even when carefully prying it off of the ceiling the thing took the drywall with it, which isn’t great. A huge round dent in the ceiling? Not cool. So I had to spackle (like, a lot), sand and paint the ceiling where it ripped off. It was such a messy job, but the end result wasn’t half bad. I also had to texture the the new drywall to match the texture on the rest of the ceiling and used a spray texture for that, and even though it’s not flawless, it’s not half bad either! I had chosen this amazing black striped schoolhouse light that I absolutely love for this space a while back, but the mounts that went with it on the website were all back ordered and crazy expensive to boot, so I decided to save some cashola by buying a cheaper, pre-wired mount that would fit my shade (pro tip, these glass schoolhouse shades come in a few different standard sizes for mounts like 4″, 6″, etc. – this one’s a 4″ so requires a 4″ fitter mount), and spray paint it black. Easy peasy and the result was exactly what I was hoping for! 

• 

• 

Fresh Paint on the Walls & Ceiling

Because of the many drywall touchups we had to do around the room, we decided to give the entire room, including the walls and ceiling, a fresh coat of paint to really make this makeover shine. For that we used the same paint that we have on the walls throughout the rest of the house, Simply White by Benjamin Moore. We just used the same paint on the walls and the ceiling, and the end result of that is a really seamless, fresh white glow throughout the entire tiny space.

Shop Laundry Room Decor

I hope you guys love it as much as we do! This was actually a really fun project to tackle because it involved painting our cabinets a pretty new color and adding a really fun light fixture to spice it up, which are two things I’m super into. And after living with this cabinet color for a few months now, I’m also kind of surprised to say that I think I love it more now than I did initially, which is a big step for me. Sometimes I live with a bolder paint color and just end up wondering what I was thinking, but Dried Thyme has definitely made its way onto my list of favorite cottage-cozy paint colors.

Have you done a laundry room makeover before? Let me know in a comment below!