My own home project is the subject of today’s blog. To be more specific, it’s two home projects – a laundry room and nearby powder room refresh. I’ll share some tips on what you can do too when you’re DIYing duties double.  

Two-Room Challenge 

When you walk into our house from the garage, you enter a short hallway. To the right is our laundry room, to the left is our powder room with a coat closet across the hall. From the photo below, you’ll see the laundry and powder room are mere feet from each other. Because of that I felt they should connect visually. In this case, we’re connecting through color. Same wall paint, same cabinet color, and same flooring. We have a special fun element to tie things together, but that’s for another day and another blog.  

Whenever you plan to redesign a room, here are four basic questions to ask before you begin:

1. What do you like about the room(s) currently?

2. What do you dislike about the room(s) currently?

3. What is a realistic budget for this project?

4. What is a realistic timeline to complete the project? 

These four starter questions should be considered for all of your home projects. Once you have these answered (make sure your answers align with the other people who share your home), you’re in position to start planning. For my projects, our starting point was some demo work. The remaining changes were mostly cosmetic. 

Challenges we wanted to address for each room: 

Laundry Room Goals:

• The washer and dryer were on a platform and too high for yours truly to reach down inside comfortably.  The platform made sense for the previous owners who had front-loaders. I have top loaders and short legs. Bad combo.  

• Brighten the room, which felt dark and dingy 

Powder Room Goals:

• Also brighten the room and make it feel larger

• Make it feel more finished and contemporary 

Similar Solutions

• Tear out the platform in the laundry room, get washer and dryer on the floor for easier access

• Replace flooring in both rooms with a lighter color

• Repaint walls, cabinets, and trim in both rooms to freshen them up and tie them together

• Add or replace baseboard and crown trim to give them a clean, finished look

• Paint the ceilings to brighten the spaces 

Because there wasn’t any major construction, plumbing, or electrical work for this particular project, it was completely DIY. Probably the worst part of the whole thing was having all the laundry and powder room stuff—yes, including the washer/dryer—in my dining room while we removed the platform and installed the new flooring. Boy, were our pups, Dante and Maggie, confused! Once the platform was removed, we got busy painting both spaces. While it didn’t work this time for us, due to wanting to get the aforementioned stuff out of the dining room, in general I recommend painting BEFORE putting in the new flooring to help with Oops! management.  

The major aspects of these projects are complete. We have a little detail work—and that surprise element! The total cost for the two rooms was around $500. Not shabby for getting two spaces updated and refreshed. I hope this inspires you to take on a project or two in your home. Be patient. Just remember for most of us, step by step and little by little get the jobs done. 

Now, what will you do next to love where you live?

Please feel free to reach out to us at The Redesign Habit and ask questions or simply share a project that you are working on or have completed.

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