65 Laundry Land: Part 2

Earlier this week I popped in with an update on our laundry room changes, since we are revamping things a bit as we finish up our lower level.  And let me tell you, we are in the middle of the craziest busiest week in Jones family history {Peyton's 7th birthday was Monday, our 10 year anniversary is... TODAY, we are celebrating our anniversary and renewing our wedding vows this Saturday, need I say more?}  What do most do when hosting a giant celebration?  Well, get crunching on those projects of course, our house has to be party ready!

I thought I would take a moment to share the fun I am having with my laundry room though, because it's just got me feeling so giddy inside.  However, I am totally to the point of wishing the trim and doors would magically just be installed when I wake up tomorrow since I know they will completely make the room feel more polished.  And since the installer is actually also my husband, who will actually be working and not installing my trim, please cheer for the magic trim fairy to come to me.... please oh please....

End of tangent.

Monday I left you wish this real time photo of the laundry space... seriously, the paint was probably still wet in spots!

The hubs actually was pushing for a yellow laundry room.  100039 points to Bryan for suggesting a paint color, I think it was a first and I couldn't have been more proud.  Really.  But I decided to keep it neutral, which is totally weird for me.  However, I also agreed that yellow would be a fun accent color to start bringing in as we continue to chip away at the space.

But before I show you anything yellow, you just gotta see the shelving transformation that took place.  It's pretty sweet, if I don't say so myself.

We always had a single shelf above the washer and dryer, but I never really loved the fact that there seemed to be so much wall to fill above the shelf itself.  That's when the bright lights went off in the ol' noggin'.  I still had a second identical floating shelf from our old office space!  SCORE!

Are you cheating and looking at the goodies in the washer reflection??

Don't worry, I wasn't done yet.  You see, as much as I totally dig the clean lines of the shelves, they were definitely still missing something... and I knew JUST what those shelves needed!  Cheapo wooden corbels from Home Depot!

The corbels came in at $2.50 each and I picked up a total of 6, which means I spent a total of $15 smackaroos.  I used some leftover paint we had from our Billy Bookcase Built-In project, which we had color matched to the Billy shelves.  I figured, Ikea white is Ikea white, it should be close enough, and sure enough, the Billy Bookshelf White was also a super great match to the Ikea Lack Shelf White.  Catch all that?

The first coat sucked right into the wood.  So they were a two coat project.

Once the corbels were painted and ready to go, the hubs actually just removed the floating shelves and used the install bar as a guide to determine where to line up the corbels...

Because there were three "arms" to hold the floating shelf, we decided to place each of the three corbels right below.  And I will throw this out there, we were installing these corbels for aesthetics only, the shelves are actually fully supported by the original install.

Once all the corbels were screwed in, we just popped the shelf back into place:

And we were left with....

At this point, it was 11:30 on a Wednesday night, but I was so excited about the shelves, I just had to pop my belongings on them!!  {and then even stay up to write a blog post about it!}

All those great baskets on the top shelf are filled with my painting supplies {rollers, tape, brushes, putty, drop clothes, etc...}.

The second shelf has our detergent, a stain removal chart and other pretty things!

The "Laundry" drink tub I did awhile back, still contains my delicate clothing, and the green boxes still hold our little laundry essentials.

And to give you a peek at the rest of the space in it's current state:

The Expedit is housing boxes for our extra fabrics and pillow covers, overflow of surplus cleaning supplies, light-bulbs and other misc. laundry supplies.  We also moved our previous game cabinet into the space, it will ultimately function as our lower level linen closet {for those wondering about the cabinet, it originally came from Ikea and was pieced together from the Effectiv line}

And finally, there is that pop of yellow, special thanks to the pretty ironing board cover courtesy of HomeGoods {a score for just $10!} and the MacBeth Collection!

And that rounds out the current up to the minute tour!

So much fun to see the side by side of how it looked just a few days ago!

Totally coming along right?  And I still can't believe the difference the $15 corbel investment made.  Seriously, totally transformed the whole space.  Anyone else make a tiny investment that made a huge difference?  Any other midnight decorators out there?  Maybe we should start a late night decorating club...

26 Reader Space: Roxann's Rockin' Closet

Today's Reader Space is brought to you by Roxann.  She wrote:
 

Hi Jen!

I would love to submit a closet redo I just finished for your Reader Space.  It is published to my blog at http://waythatiam.blogspot.com/2011/07/closet-redo.html. 

Can't tell you how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE your blog.  Every time I see you post something to do with a labels I swoon.  Oh, and your boys are DARLING.  Can't believe how beautiful the blue eyes are! 

Thank you for your consideration,

Roxann

I took one look at the INCREDIBLE transformation and couldn't wait to share it with you all!  Talk about taking control of a space.  Conquering it.  Making it lovely.  Extreme function.  Bliss.

Roxann blogged:

I love our home, but one of the frustrating parts of living in this 1950s house is that storage is limited, and what closets or storage we do have is rarely utilized to it's fullest possibilities.  I've been weeding through all of our belongings and relentlessly sorting through the excess.  If I don't love it or use it, it's gone to the yard sale pile.  I've been busy redoing a closet in our home for about ten days now.  My progress was slowed due to fatigue and my {frustrating} perfectionism.  However, it is finally done and I'm quite satisfied with the results! 

The closet outside our upstairs bathroom was wearing on my nerves.  It seemed to be a catch-all for every item that didn't really have its own home.  Instead of a junk drawer, we had a junk closet.  I never knew what was towards the back, couldn't reach half the items stored there, and wanted to scream every time I opened the door.  Because I couldn't stand it anymore, I decided it needed to become a first priority in my room by room redo.

I'm pretty organized by nature, but this closet needed severe help. Here are some before {aka, embarrassing! No judgment, please!} closet pics:

BEFORE

I recently saw a blog post with a closet painted a pretty color inside. { I wish I could remember where it was, because I haven't been able to find it since!}  I was charmed by it.  I'd never considered painting the inside of a closet any color but white.  But why not?  I know the prettier something is, the more likely I'm going to work to keep it that way.  Thus the deliberation began over paint color.  I've mulled over the possibility of painting our master bedroom grey, but I'm a bit nervous about grey.  I decided to use it on the closet interior so I could try some out some shades.  I initially tried the $3 samples of Home Depot Behr paint colors Anonymous, Pewter Mug and Sage Grey, but I wasn't drawn to any of them.  Too dark, too purple - too this or that.  Then I stumbled across this gorgeous room on Cents-able Spaces Blog.  I swooned over the Coventry Gray walls.  Home Depot doesn't carry Benjamin Moore paints, but they matched it by looking it up in their computer and I came home with a gallon of this gorgeous paint color.

Before I began painting I had one more task to do.  I wanted to be able to put a broom and vacuum in this closet.  Both get left all over the house, shoved into various closets or are out in the open since there's no broom closet.  I measured the height of my vacuum and removed the bottom three shelves from the closet so that vacuum and broom would fit below the two remaining storage shelves.  I was a little freaked out about losing all that shelving space, but figured the less shelving, the less likely to fill them up with junk! 

I left the shelving supports on the closet walls, just in case I ever decided to put shelves back into the closet.  I initially painted the entire interior gray, but somehow it just wasn't right, so I went back and painted the shelving supports white.  I didn't think to take a pic of the all gray, but here's the inside with white supports.

Let me just say that trying to get clean paint lines on those supports resulted in me aging five years and fretting endlessly for two days.  I tried painters tape, small brushes, wet rags and researched "clean paint lines" on Google for hours.  I finally had to say it's as good as it gets, (after all - no one will see it but me, probably!) and from the picture above, you can't even tell they aren't exact.  When I paint our bedroom I will use these great tips at Living with Lindsey.  Live and Learn!

When the paint was dry, it was time for the exciting part - organizing!!! I had splurged on some new baskets, a mop and broom holder, and some catchy tags, so I got busy putting my closet back together.  Here is the finished result!

AFTER

The black storage baskets came from Marshall's.  The two smaller baskets {$3.99 each} are on the top shelf and the two larger baskets {$5.99 each} on the bottom shelf.  In order to pull them out of the top easily I needed the shorter size up there.  Each has plenty of storage room inside.  The top left basket stores soaps, sunscreens and bug spray.  The top right houses cleaning rags.  The bottom left contains 12 rolls of toilet paper, and the bottom right my Shark Steam Mop accessories.  There was just enough room then between the two baskets on top for three rolls of paper towels and on the bottom room for Kleenex.

These adorable labels were at Target in the greeting card section.  There are 16 labels total in four different patterns.  I stuck to using pink for all four baskets, and then labeled them with my beloved label maker.  I get giddy when I get to use my label maker!  Each is stuck to the  basket with velcro tabs.

While perusing my local Ross I found the perfect broom and mop holder.  It holds my broom and Shark Steam Mop, my duster, the extension to my vacuum, and it even holds my Shark hand vac since the vacuum has two little holes in the bottom that fit precisely over the two hooks. 

In the bottom of the closet sits my Little Green Bissell, and my Shark vacuum.  Yes, I got paint on the carpet, but in a future project, that will be yanked to reveal the hard wood underneath.  There is room behind the vacuum for something to hang if needed, and there's just enough room between the vac and Bissell for my little step stool to store. 

To the right side I put two metal hooks for additional storage.  I may add a matching set on the left side, but for now I have plenty of storage.

I wanted to do away with the black storage pockets on the door and instead place a row of hooks; however, I didn't want to lose all that storage.  I decided what I hated most about them was that they accumulated too much junk, with items stuffed haphazardly in there when they don't go anywhere else.  The solution, of course, was to give each pocket a job.  Obviously it was a task for my label maker.

So there you have it!  Let's see it again, shall we?

Total cost for this project around $50, but I still have 3/4 a gallon of paint for the bedroom, so not counting paint the project was around $30.  Totally worth it for the satisfaction of being organized and knowing where items belong. 

I am squealing with delight.  YES YES YES to painting the inside of a closet.  It's a great base, a great way to love your closet like it's a room in the house, a great way to be excited to get your organizing on!  I promise, it's a huge motivator to make your closet totally rock.

So many other great things going on here.  Those pockets for organizing cords and other itty bitties!  Not accepting the closet for what it originally was and modifying it to fit her personal needs.  The uber adorable labels so everything finds it's way back to the rightful home, and taking the right steps to ensure she won't have to endure the labor of closet love again.

Feel free to leave some love and questions for Roxann.  You can find all the details here on her blog.  Who else is grabbing a can of paint right now?  Aren't shoe pocket organizers seriously the best answer to any organizing dilemma?  What's your favorite part of this makeover, any additions to your to do list because of it?

ATTENTION!!  Want to be featured in a Reader Space edition?  Have an awesome organizing story to share?  I am looking for projects that have made a positive impact to your life.  Please send your story and photos to iheartorganizing@gmail.com and I would heart to feature them right here, on the blog!!  Photos should be high resolution and un-editted.  Please include a description of the project, including any costs, inspiration, and how it has changed your life and routine for the better!  Oh, and no worries my friends, we will NEVER judge "before" pictures because that just wouldn't be nice!  Only love goes on at this blog!  More Info HERE.

141 IHeart: Janery & a GIVEAWAY!

Those of you who have been hanging out at IHeart Organizing for awhile now, probably recognize my friend Jane, from The Borrowed Abode and now Janery.com.  She is one of my long time blog sponsors that I will always have a special love for!  Not only is she witty and funny and creative, but she also has this super mega talent, which we now get to benefit from since she just launched a super amazing online shop!

Janery.com is full of all sorts of beautiful products from throw pillows to sun-glass cases to hand towels and more!  Her online shop is really allowing Jane to get a step closer to achieving her dream of turning her creativity and talent into a full time business, as well as eventually providing jobs for skilled woman in the community!  And I absolutely love that she tries to source as many, "Made in the USA" supplies as possible!  For example, the pillow forms are made locally by a family-owned manufacturing business!!

How SUPER amazing is that pillow {you know me and my love for colors so it totally makes my heart skip a happy beat!}.  And the best part?  The pillow is actually an example of how Jane works her magic and the powers of being resourceful, by blending modern fabrics with recycled wool suits and sweaters!  Genius!

As you can see, many of her items are full of life and color, which is why she is one of my personal favs and why I am so excited to hit her up any time I am in need of a change!  Jane, consider this your warning!

In fact, Jane and I are already in cahoots about a special little project for me, and that's another reason why she is so amazing, she is totally up for trying to work out custom orders, so feel free to let her know if that's something you are interested in!

Oooh, and coming this fall, she will be creating fabulously stylish dog beds and doggy duvet covers to coordinate with the throw pillows.  Thank goodness for a stylish solution to typically blah puppy beds!!  CAN NOT WAIT!

So who is ready to add some lovely color to their space?  Today, Jane is offering up a $30 shop credit to one of you lucky readers!  How sweet is she?!

• Giveaway is for one $30 shop credit to Janery.com.
• Giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.
• Giveaway is open from Tuesday, July 12th through 9:00 p.m. central time, Monday, July 18th, and will be announced right here on Tuesday, July 19th.
• One winner will be selected using random.org.

 To Enter:

• Check out Janery.com and leave a comment here with your favorite item, what would you put the shop credit towards if you won?
• "Like" Janery on Facebook and leave a comment here that you did.
• Tweet about this Janery giveaway on Twitter and use the hashtag #shopjanery.  Then leave a comment here that you did.

Can't wait to win to get your hands on some of  Jane's fantastic shop items?  From now through July 22nd, Jane is offering all of you 10% off anything in her shop using the code IHEART07!!  Don't miss this great offer!

Thanks everyone and good luck!!

54 Laundry Land: Part 1

As I have somewhat alluded to in the past, we are in the process of finishing up our entire lower level.  Until the last week, we were sort of putsing on it because we only have about 8 million other obligations and things going on, which is why I hadn't really had anything exciting to post on the blog about the whole thing.  {In case you are a new reader to this blog, we had a huge flood in our lower level last summer that required the flooring, trim, doors and furniture to be replaced}.    However... we have a giant shindig taking place this coming weekend, so we really kicked things into high gear to try and get as much done by this Friday.  Enter chuckles now.  We are crazy folks.

So yes, we are replacing all of the flooring {goodbye carpet}, trim and doors.  More on that in a separate post, all about the things we are doing this time around to mitigate the risk of flooding again in the future.  We also decided to take this opportunity to repaint pretty much EVERYTHING.  We really want it to feel all shiny and new when all is said and done.

Today, I am sharing our current progress in our laundry room.  It's actually a room that I used to adore as is, however, the paint was a flat paint sheen {NEVER again in a laundry room}, and it was looking pretty shabby.  Plus, we were putting the new floors in seamlessly throughout the ENTIRE lower level, including the laundry room!  So, it is getting a face lift.

Here it was in it's previous state:

Yes, if you are observant, you will see the dryer was on a 2x4, it was propped up to fit the exhaust in the back.  Talk about one of those things that really drives a gal batty, an uneven washer and dryer combo.  Ugh.

The flooring was a cheapo peal and stick tile, the rug was a victim of the flooding...

And here is how the room is looking this very minute of the day, after a little re-working this weekend:

The floor is IN!  We went with TrafficMaster Allure Ultra from Home Depot.  Straight from the website, here is why we chose the flooring we did:

• Wood-grain design with a vintage-oak color complements many home interiors
• Resists marks, scratches and stains and absorbs shocks for easy care
• Waterproof material offers skid resistance
• Designed for floating installation over most subfloor materials
• No underlayment, expansion joints or heavy tools required
• Luxurious embossing and natural look of wood plank flooring
• Quiet underfoot
• Commercial grade wear layer
• Lifetime residential, 10 year commercial warranty

It actually went in pretty smoothly, we got the whole basement done this weekend {with much help from family of course}.  And we LOVE LOVE LOVE that it's waterproof and so durable.  Smiles all around.

I really wanted to paint the laundry room a crazy green color, but I chickened out.  Which is a first for me since I am such a color fanatic.  I decided to stick with something neutral since I have oodles of colorful accents instead.

The color is Behr's Light French Gray.

Now, I can have all sorts of fun playing off of the colors in the rug to finish up the room.  But there is still SO much to do in there, aside from the obvious trim and door installation.

UPDATE:  Lot's of requests for the rug source, it's from Urban Outfitters.

Oh, and notice, the washer and dryer are now LEVEL!  The hubs and his dad notched out the drywall correctly when putting in the new flooring, so that they would sit nice and perfect for this Mrs.

Forgive the photography.  It's so hard for me to shoot real color in a natural-light-less room.  Yep, zero windows...

Where to go from here?  I think I need some laundry room inspiration.  Ready to ooh and aahh?

Kinda makes me want to go finish things up right now!  Thank you inspiration!!  Stay tuned as we continue to tackle this space and all the rest!

What do you think of the new, more neutral color?  The crazy colorful rug?  The level washer and dryer?  Anyone else whipping up a laundry room makeover?

{All inspirational photos were found through the beautiful world of Pinterest, sources can be found by clicking here}