Warning: A color happy room is ahead...
Our laundry room is in a deep, dark and windowless corner of our home. And just like most rooms, it is always evolving. Over the past year, our laundry room has been housing our paint supplies, but in very unorganized piles. In an effort to finish organizing our final storage rooms, we finally focused on the paint pile by building ourselves a custom cabinet (read more about that here).
When we built and painted the cabinet, I really intended on blasting the cabinet with a coat of color. However, with the recently papered sewing/folding nook, and the other colors being used within the space, white (although it can be trite) was the way for us to go.
You see how those colors just shine through the cabinet doors? As I sit and work at my desk, I look over and this is my new view. Before I would just shut the door to the room, but now that I have taken the time to do some laundry and clean up clutter, I am loving the new scenery!
The uppers were filled with the main painting essentials; the jars of colorful paint, brushes, tools, swatch books, etc...
The jar labels are created from an Avery template I downloaded into Microsoft Word.
Quick tip: Place the full jars of paint near the front to create a clean visual appearance. Half filled jars can live near the back of the bunch.
We have been using jars of paint to hold the remaining contents of our gallons and quarts for the past few years now. I did receive one comment awhile back that paint shouldn't be stored in glass, but I can't personally figure out why because we have been loving this solution like crazy. The paint stays fresh, I can quickly see the colors I have and it has reduced the amount of shelving space that the over-sized cans take up. I am a fan.
On the top shelf, I used vases and jars to hold my different sized paint brushes.
Quick tip: Check out this You-Tube video for cleaning paint brushes. It was very life changing for me. I personally use a small grill brush I found at Home Depot and my brushes have never looked better.
The woven baskets added a really nice natural element to the room, and also concealed some unsightly items. One basket corrals my waxes and specialty paints while the other holds the remainder of my favorite tools. A paint can opener, triangle stands, tape, sanding blocks, spackle and a painter's tool, rags and cheapy test brushes are all items you will find within this basket. And on painting day, I can just pull the entire thing out and tote it to the room I am working in.
The lower portion is concealed because it is a little more busy on the eyes.
I used the beautiful bird gift wrap to cover two cardboard boxes. The labels were created on my computer and printed at home on copy paper, which I cut down and affixed with double stick tape.
One box holds paint roller covers while the other has the ugly paint thinner and paint additive bottles.
Empty glass jars for future paint storage as well as the over-sized jars of paint and cans of stain, make up much of the rest of the lower half. I also placed my favorite specialty technique tools inside of a clear container that previously housed my roller covers.
The bottom shelf holds my spray paints. Because I knew it would be hard to access and see the colors near the back, I placed them inside of plastic bins I found at IKEA. Now, they just pull out like drawers and I can easily grab any color of the rainbow.
Quick tip: Add felt to the bottom of baskets and bins on shelves to help them slide out easier.
After I got the paint cabinet loaded, I couldn't wait to polish the rest of the room up. We hung a few laundry room art prints I purchased awhile back from Lettered & Lined. I love that they look cute yet offer real life functional advice!
After I temporarily lined the nook with pretty paper, I was trying to find the common color link within the room. No surprise, I had been drawing inspiration from the same color palette as my recently recovered office chair. It has a beautiful and playful blend of pinks, corals, greens and blues. Pretty much my all time favorite colors, ever. So using my very last scrap of fabric from the chair project, we made a small bag to hold our clothes pins.
We just sewed it up quick and attached it to a small embroidery hoop which I hung with ribbon. Does it get any cuter than that?
Funny how something so small can link both sides of the room together so well!
The paint cabinet lead to me finishing up the space "for now". Small DIY projects (like the pretty paper and DIY cabinet and small pops of colorful storage) all add up to a big impact. I say, do what you have to do to make the dungeon the most cheerful place possible to get those daily chores done! I really consider this room the Disney World of our home. Hopefully all of the prettiness will inspire me to keep it clean moving forward.
Do you have a room like that? One that brings on feelings of butterflies and happiness when you enter it?
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