Making Our Laundry Room More Functional

When you move into a new house, there are typically things that you want to change to look better and things you want to change to work better. While we I have plenty of things in the former category, this one falls almost entirely into the latter. 

Our laundry room is galley style. When we moved in, there were upper and lower cabinets on the left side behind the door, a counter running across the far wall of the room, and the washer and dryer with upper cabinets on the right side of the room. This before photo mercifully leaves out the cheesy "Laundry Room: Loads of Fun" wall decal above the window.  

BEFORE

After living here a little while, it became clear that we needed to make some changes in the laundry room. 

Even though I'd hoped to make the older washer and dryer work, I couldn't live with a washer that went out of balance multiple times on every load...and had a service record of doing it for years. I did some research and ordered some new machines, which we had installed in reverse for better flow of laundry from the washer to dryer. That was the expensive but relatively easy part. 

I grew up without a dryer, and I still air dry about a quarter of our laundry. As it was, the only place to hang wet clothes was a rack on the back of the door, which didn't allow for much space between items if more than four or five items were hanging at once. Meanwhile, the counter across the back made the room feel small without lending much utility. These problems and this pin got me thinking about putting in rod in the space to the left of the machines. 

AFTER

George graciously gave me a fair bit of his weekend time cutting out the back section of the counter, sanding down the new counter edge, and hanging the curtain rod that I picked out. I pulled out the previous owners' paint and touched up the walls and cabinet where the counter used to be. I was pleasantly surprised that the wall decal peeled right off with the help of my hairdryer. 

Now, the room feels a lot more spacious, we can more easily access the rear cabinet, and I have the vertical space I need for drying clothes and storing things like our step ladder and vacuum. While I was a bit concerned about losing half of the counter space, the remaining space has been plenty for my needs. Mission accomplished. 

How are you making your home work for you? 

Madeleine - Week 41

Here is our busy girl, planning her next adventure:

Indoor Tulip Bulbs

I have a mental list a mile long of projects I want to share with you. While I'm wrapping up some of the more involved ones, I thought I'd share this simple (and inexpensive) way to bring spring indoors.

I originally saw this pin, which planted (how punny) the idea in my head. When I was recently at the local home improvement store, I picked up some sad looking tulip bulbs for $1.87. Back at home, I pulled the bulbs out of their dry soil and put them in one of these $1.99 vases I picked up on my last trip to Ikea with some aquarium rocks I had leftover from an old bamboo shoot.

For less than $5 and little more than 5 minutes, spring is blooming in my living room.

What are you doing to bring spring to your home? If you're in the southern hemisphere, what are you doing to prepare for autumn?

Madeleine - Week 40

This is a big one. Madeleine was born at exactly 40 weeks, so she has now spent as much time outside as she did inside.

In labor - evening of June 26, 2012

12 hours old - morning of June 28, 2012

George and I are more aware everyday that Madeleine is inching closer to toddlerhood and away from infancy. She crawls proficiently, pulls up at every chance, and occasionally cruises from stationary item to stationary item. She continues to eat virtually anything we give her, including chicken tikka masala this week. And, even though she has hit a rough patch in the sleep department, we think we'll keep her. :-)

This is probably my favorite NZ fabric to date. How many of the birds can you name?

Crafting Fail, Or How To Mess Up A (Really) Simple Project

A few weeks ago, Misha and I had a crafternoon and decided to make our own framed keys based upon this Pinspiration. As Misha mentioned, it's a pretty stinkin' simple project.

I was super pumped to find these frames at Target because the glass is not directly on the photo without being a full on shadow box. Bonus: they'd been bumped around in the store so badly that I got a discount.

After about a million coats of antique brass spray paint, my frames were ready to go.

I cut maps for each frame and glued them to the frame paper with a little bit of rubber cement.

Then I plopped heavier glue on the keys, put the keys where I wanted, closed the frames, clicked a few pictures, and smiled at a completed project done with great company.

The next morning, I went to admire my creation and instead discovered that glue was taking up as much of the maps as the keys. Turns out, I was way too heavy handed on the heavier glue for the keys. Doh!

So now I'm hoping that super mega tough glue is going to come off of the keys so that I can get some new maps, press the rewind button, and start again. And, no, this is not an April Fool's joke.

Have you ever screwed up a really simple project? Was your re-do successful?

{Pssst. Here's what happened.}