Thankfully, the new house has a laundry room.  It is, however, very small. The hot and cold water faucets to supply the washer and dryer were old, sticking out several inches from the wall and plugged around the hole in the wall with steel wool.  Not attractive.  It also meant the washer and dryer cannot be pushed flush against the wall.  In this laundry room every inch counts!  A smaller project this day makes a huge difference in the amount of usable space here.  And it is much more attractive to walk past than big metal pipes and steel wool.

Having the washer and dryer as stackable like the old place and taking out a cabinet was one option.  But, I really wanted side by side for this house.  This leaves little to no room for a folding table which is essential for not leaving piles of unfolded laundry all over.  My genius husband of course had a solution to this.  There is an adorable retro utility sink and cabinets already in place (they will soon shine with a little DIY repair and refinish).  Two perfectly sized melamine boards cut to fit make perfect inserts for the sink and turn it into a folding table for this space! Holes are cut to allow easy pick up of the boards to move when I need to use either one or both sinks.

New Pantry Shelves

The Pantry here is small closet sized.  Originally there were only the shelves on the left.  We added an entire right side of more shelves.  With the way we cook, I need a lot of pantry space.  There are many dried goods, rice, beans, lentils, etc.  We try most things from scratch and mostly whole foods.  There is room now for lots of staples of our diet: whole grains, nuts, seeds, potatoes etc.  Then fresh veggies can be purchased weekly.  Until we can run electrical to the pantry and put in lighting its pretty dim in there.  We found some really great stick-on lights with a little remote and even a 10 minute auto shut-off from Costco that work amazing!

Kitchen Lighting Updates

It seems that every house in the 80’s loved fluorescent lighting in the kitchen.  For me, after 8+ hours of fluorescent lighting at work all day then last thing I want to see when I get home is more fluorescent lighting.  With the help of a good friend we were able to remove both large obstructive lights and put in recessed lighting.  Its an amazing difference.  It opened up the kitchen even more and the space is calmer.  I will post a true “after” picture when patching and painting are also finished