Ever since I started my devoted use of Pinterest a little over a year ago, I have secretly wanted to be one of those women who write engaging blog posts about home improvement projects they've been working on. I have been so inspired by what other normal, everyday, average people have done in their homes, that I hoped to be able to attempt to do the same thing at least once, with at least one project.
Enter my laundry room.
Back in September or October of 2012, I read this blog post about decorating our work spaces. As most of my apartment, in terms of decor, is a carbon copy of my last apartment in Beaver Falls, I thought that decorating my Laundry Room would give me an opportunity to have a new design project. But I needed inspiration for a color pallet to get me going. Pinterest again provided what I needed when I found the color swatch below:
Color me inspired! I love bold colors, I'm IN LOVE w/this color blue currently, and I happened to have almost the exact color orange left over from painting my living room. Ding!
Since I moved into my apartment last June, my laundry has had several "looks".
The above picture was the first. Just plain old moved-in and functioning. The white shelf came with the apartment.
Then my amazingly handy father came to visit in July, 2012 and helped organize the room some what by getting things off the floor (such as the step ladder you barely see to the right) and my bin for paper recycling (which you see hanging over the washer and dryer). He also hung my ironing board on the left wall and gave me a rack for hanging things like my broom, mop and strangely, a level...
I then bought the paint in October or so, but didn't actually start the painting until March...2013...sometimes I'm not great at follow-through on projects... I started by removing the shelving and all the hanging items and then wiped down the walls with a damp cloth.
Then I cut in with the blue. I only wanted to paint from the middle of the wall up because the washer and dryer covered most of the wall below-and well, who wants to go to the trouble of moving them? Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of the finished project of the blue...which wasn't finished until my mom came and visited me and spurred me on.
The next step was to paint an orange stripe around the bottom of the blue. Again because of the issue of follow-through, this didn't happen until my mom came back to visit last month... Above you can she her taping off the area to make the two stripes...which she thought was my idea, but was totally all her.
And after two hours of tapping, painting and being stuck behind my washing machine, I have stripes!! It.looks.awesome. In my personal (and oh so humble) opinion.
The final step was to cover cardboard letters I got at Jo-Ann's with fabric that brought the whole color scheme together. (This was another idea inspired by a pin on Pinterest.) I bought a window topper that I found at Lowe's (another great idea from mom-instead of spray painting which is what I originally wanted to do) and together my amazing mother and I cut out the fabric and applied them to the letters using Mod-Podge.
We applied the Mod-Podge to the letters to get them to stick, then covered the fabric in another layer. Here they are drying.
And DING! You have an amazingly fun and funky laundry room that makes you excited to go in it and do your laundry. Now all I need is a glass drink container like this one, to put my detergent in, and some red organizing bins to hold the miscellaneous items on the shelf to complete the look. And all I need for that is money...
Speaking of money-I spent a total of about $9 on this project. How is that possible?
1.) Well, in PA I was a part of PNC bank and their PNC points program. When I cashed out my account, I cashed out my points and got a $50 gift card to Lowe's. When I received it, it ended up having $100 on it. Which I call awesome. That covered the blue paint and fabric (I used the rest to create my first window box!). Those points programs can be great!
2.) The letters were paid for curtesy of a gift card my amazing friend Nico got from her sister. In exchange for driving to Jo-Ann's and picking up some items for her as well (including command stripes which I used to hang the letters) she let me get my letters on her dime!
3.) The hardware used for hanging items was purchased by my father as a gift. I already had the rack and bin for my paper recycling from my last kitchen (shop your own closets!)
4.) In the end, all I bought was the Mod-Podge. Which was about $9 with tax.
A huge thanks to my mom for the kick in the pants I needed to finish the project.
What is a way in which Pinterest has inspired you? Where else do you find inspiration? Is there a project that you've sort of started but need motivation to complete it? What kick in the pants would help you to get it done? I'd love to hear your ideas!!
No comments:
Post a Comment