Quick Laundry Room Re-do

So do you remember here where we upgraded AJ’s kitchen? Well it had a dirty little secret.  Its actually more of a clean dirty little secret: his laundry room.  The laundry room in in a small hallway between his kitchen and his dining room.  Both the kitchen and dining room have had major upgrades lately, but the laundry room was looking less than ideal:

With his soon to be wife about to move in after the wedding, something needed to be done to spruce up this area! So his fiancee and I decided to tackle this as an afternoon project! Back when they bought Elfa for their closet and garage they went ahead and purchased a little extra for the laundry room.  The way it was there wasn’t any space to hang clothes to dry which led to them being strewn around or hanging on the door frame.

And there was absolutely no organization for his cleaning supplies. Since we needed to pull down at least one cabinet to add hanging space, we decided to pull both down (since they no longer matched the ones in the kitchen) and put Elfa in its place. First step: clean everything out of there:

 I would have taken a few pictures of us taking the cabinets down, but the 3 people in the tiny little space pulling the molding off and then unscrewing the cabinets from the wall and pulling them down didn’t leave much space for picture taking.

After we got everything cleared out, we painted the laundry room a pretty light gray color and then they hung the Elfa shelves.  It made a dramatic change!

And has made it a much more usable space for laundry! Since it is in such a central location in their house, function is a top priority! Check out that difference:

I love this navy and white striped basket… I bought the same one for the back of my car to corral all my junk!

One of the things I love most about their space is that they used the insides of the doors to maximize the usable space (and make all those cleaners easily accessible!)

And because before and afters are so fun:

It is always amazing to me what a fresh coat of paint and some new shelving can do for a space.  By taking a cabinet away and adding the hanging space, this closet laundry room is so much more usable and bonus… the doors can be closed on the mess if there are clothes drying!