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About a year ago, right before Christmas, we finally finished off our garage into a basement and we were so thrilled to finally be downstairs.
I almost wrote “in” but that was the year before. We were living on the top two renovated levels, and long story short, downstairs was a nice addition. {You can read all about our home process/evolution here in the money pit series.} We practically slapped a big red ribbon over the basement door for Christmas, and it would be a while before we put the finishing touches on everything, but we were in, and oh so happy.
If you’ve been around for a while, you can totally skip this part. You may be crossing your eyes at the screen right now, like, get to the good part already. {At least, I hope there’s a good part.} But if you’re new here, I’m giving a snippet/summary of sorts, because you can read about our exterior portion of the renovation here.
The main basement reveal can be found here.
When we moved in, we had a vision. But we had a few moments where we wondered if we would enjoy downstairs because of its scary origins. I mean scary like water in the basement scary. Not clown in the crawlspace scary. But that also.
And giant spiders.
I’m still really bummed the new owner took the deer heads.
I’m lying. But the antlers on the back wall would have been cool. We would have made it work, y’all. People often ask us what we did with that awesome singer sewing machine in the back… sadly, the past owner came back and got the good stuff. See: deer heads. He left the rest for us to take care of. Good times. And good thing we parked a gigantic dumpster outside the house.
We were glad to have a secondary entry which was huge for the entire family and all things organization vs. chaos.
We’re still working on calming the chaos with the great purge of 2018, but it definitely helps in the land of all things more square footage.
Then we shared the studio here – my little sliver of an office carved out on the other side of the kid’s playroom downstairs.
Ahhhh so much better.
But I realized in the middle of it all, that I never really showed you our laundry corner. I guess because we haven’t “technically” finished it off.
This is where it gets kinda “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” a-la house renovations: We have plans, after the back addition that we’re currently working on, to add a master addition. This all depends on several factors, and one of those is where the final, settled space of the laundry room may actually be.
That being said, this little space may actually be moved, and if that happens, it will be something else entirely. For now, it’s our laundry corner.
That before though. Ew.
There were mystery wires and dirty old pipes and ducts and things that sometimes made us wonder if this would ever look right. We moved the hot water heater {went to tankless} and did our laundry down here for a year until the basement was finished.
I would throw on some shoes and run down the stairs before any spiders could touch me, and then run right back up.
Yes, I am still twelve.
So we love the combo of fun wallpaper, blue ceiling and simple washer/dryer addition in the corner. I brought in an old piece from my office for storage, and right now it’s purely practical.
I think pretty cute, too. Which always helps when it comes to laundry.
*** I also have to add, and I would be amiss not to mention, the fabulous new windows from Window World. It truly opened up the space and added so much amazing light – the room simply wouldn’t be the same without these amazing changes. Definitely our favorite source for all things windows and more!
If the laundry stays here, I’d love to make this wall full-on tile, add a sink, and a cabinet to the right of the washer/dryer to store all things ironing board/drying racks.
We loved adding character to the basement with this tile a-la Jeffrey Court via Oakwood Lilly.
Someone asked us how much we’ve really enjoyed it, and we couldn’t be more in love. It’s extremely durable for one of our main traffic areas, between three growing kiddos and two 70lb dogs. We love it so much, it’s going on our back addition {more on that coming soon!}.
This light is one of our very favorite additions – {similar light found here on their site – I believe the other has been discontinued, but we also love this line}.
A-la Kichler, it adds so much simple style in character in our little corner.
Do you remember this sign? Our old laundry room had it too, and it’s always been a bit of an inside joke in our family.
But it didn’t fit in our new “laundry corner” so I made a new one to give it a little character for that “in the meantime” phase that we find ourselves in. Perfectly functional, we’re happy to wait and see and we’re just glad to have a working space with a little storage.
I found this piece at a flea market years ago, and added the knobs last year when I found them on sale from Anthropologie.
These photos don’t do it justice – I fell in love and had to have them on this piece. It’s still one of my favorites for sweet little storage.
We had a handrail made by a local welder, and love the simple elegance it added to our staircase, while still keeping an open feel to it all.
And our blue barn doors from Artisan Hardware do wonders for keeping the spaces separate – my studio is directly across from the laundry space, but we don’t have to listen to the dryer every time we have a movie on, if we just close the doors. It keeps the spaces both open and separate all at the same time.
And here we are! A little tour and a great example of how things don’t exactly have to be “typical” or “finished” or “perfect” to be functional. We certainly love the space just the way it is, no matter how we choose to finish it off.
So thanks for joining us on our little tour today!
As always, let us know if you have any questions. We’d love to hear!
Have an inspired day!
Tanya Derrey Bingham says
I love what you have done with your basement and laundry nook, gorgeous!!!
Mel says
Aren’t…YOU the new owner? Love the light fixture!
ashley @ the handmade home says
HAHA! YES! I’m also clearly, very tired. Thanks for pointing that out ;}
Alexis says
This is the cutest laundry area I’ve ever seen! So we’ll done as always! Can’t believe this transformation! It was so creepy before 😂
Anna says
Love all of it! So great! Thank you for sharing the laundry corner!
Kathy says
You should have insisted on keeping one of the deer heads. We got one at a thrift store, because we live in the country and apparently it’s a staple for country decor.
We named him, RuPaul. I painted his plaque, distressed it and hung it in the middle of a large open turquoise frame. RuPaul has a beautiful pair of vintage pearl and crystal earrings, several strands of stunning vintage pearl necklaces and he sports a very sparkly, very large tiara.
He is quite the conversation piece for anyone that visits.
ashley @ the handmade home says
BAHAHAHA! This is amazing! If he’d left one, I would have loved to come up with something fun like RuPaul. Unfortunately, he only left a giant old desk a lot of trash and a dog pen, which he later asked if he could come back and get. We were a little annoyed with that request since he couldn’t be bothered to get the rest. ;} We’ll be using the dog pen in some of our halloween photography this year. One man’s almost-trash…
Kathy says
Can’t wait to see the pictures, I’ll be looking for the dog pen. 😂
I thought you might appreciate my RuPaul. He’s FABULOUS!
It’s even MORE funny, when you see people’s faces… you know the ones…My husband’s cousin, let’s call him Bubba. Bubba came for a visit, saw RuPaul, asked “WHY” and never returned again! 😂🤣😂