Laundry Room Makeover AKA I Hate Wallpaper

I've been noticing a lot of laundry room makeovers lately. I like the idea of beautifying a place you spend so much time in but since I have more of a laundry closet than a laundry room, I've never given my own space much thought.

But then, a couple of months ago, I had the idea of transforming my laundry closet/room with wallpaper and I got really excited.

Unfortunately, wallpaper was both more expensive and WAY harder to apply than I had expected. But, despite that, I am very very happy with the end result and I'm glad I did it. Just please, lock me up in a padded cell if I ever talk about trying to apply my own wallpaper ever again.

So, here are a few before shots of my dated, messy, and frankly, ugly, laundry room:

See that Gap plastic bag sitting on the washer? That's my garbage where I put the lint I pull out of the dryer. Not pretty but it did the job.
I had tried to cuten up the place with that laundry room sign but it's so high, no one ever sees it.
On the right wall, we had started measuring our kids once or twice a year. This was something I wanted to keep but I had an idea to make it way cuter.

....And now....the "After":

This is the same sign that was hanging above the doors, repainted and hung in a more visible spot. I also used vinyl lettering this time instead of trying to paint the letters by hand like I did on the last one.

I put my laundry detergent into some pretty jars so I wouldn't have any ugly detergent boxes to look at on my new shelf. And again, vinyl lettering on the jars.

Here's my new measuring wall: a fence board, painted and labelled with inches, like a big giant ruler.

This is a new drying rack I bought at Ikea, it folds down or extends out, depending on whether you're using it. I used to just hang dry things on the edge of a laundry basket sitting on top of the washing machine. This is so much prettier.

I already had a couple of antique pieces that had been displayed elsewhere in the house, which were perfect for this space: a washboard and an old iron.

(If you look closely at the picture above, you'll see evidence of my wallpaper issues. See how I couldn't get the two pieces to line up perfectly and there's a gap? Also, you can see in the corner, some of the many, many wrinkles in the paper. As soon as I applied the paste, the paper bunched up and wrinkled and stretched and I could not, for the life of me, get it to lie flat. Soooo frustrating!)

I also repurposed the white basket on the shelf from elsewhere in the house to be my new, much prettier, lint garbage.

With some new paint on the cupboards and some new handles, along with the wallpaper, and many many hours of work, the space looks completely different. I love it!!!

And, in a completely unrelated topic, this is a shot of my goofy boys, pretending to be cowboys. Hudson is such a little mimic, he does everything Connor and Maira do and I thought his attempt at a cowboy costume like Connor's was pretty hilarious.

Bathroom Reno - Before and After

Our ensuite bathroom renovations are finally complete and I really love my new bathroom. It's so much brighter and cleaner and prettier, it makes me happy. Here are some pictures from before:

Kind of embarrassing how mouldy the grout was but it's not my fault! It was like that when we moved in and even spraying it directly with 100% bleach didn't kill all the mould.
The counters aren't usually so cluttered but I might have purposely not tidied them up before taking these pictures to make the before and after even more dramatic...
...And, here is the finished bathroom:

It's a really tiny bathroom so it's hard to get a good shot of the whole thing.

Those tiles aren't actually pink at all, but on my monitor they look really pink. They're actually cream coloured.

A Hole in the Bathroom Wall

So, the grout in our ensuite bathroom has always had mould issues. But we've been putting off redoing the tile until later. And then last week, Jess decided to pull back a couple of tiles to see how much water was getting in behind them. And then he pulled off a couple more. And then a couple more.

And sure enough, the drywall had turned to black mouldy mush and the insulation wasn't looking too good either. So then, instead of taping over the hole and phoning a bathroom renovation company, he decided to go and buy a ventilation mask, put on some goggles and a head to toe haz mat suit (I wish I'd snapped a picture of his outfit but sadly I didn't), and finish pulling off all the tiles. So now our bathroom looks like this:

And it's going to be at least a month until it's fixed. But at least I'll finally get that bathroom reno I've been wanting!