So this is how my laundry room looked last year. Exactly the way it appeared when we bought the house minus the washer and dryer.

 

It's a very small room but it has great natural light! It's hard to tell, but those tiles on the floor are a glue on linoleum type with pretend grout lines on the edges. These same tiles were in my entrance and in my guest bath and they were replaced years ago. This room is right off of the kitchen and in between the guest room and guest bath so it's got a prominent spot in the house. And the door is almost always open.

 

 

I knew it wouldn't take a lot to make it pretty, but what I really needed was to make it functional. If you have been reading this little blog for a while, you know that I am the mom of 2 athletes. Our games can be hours away so each mom fixes dinner for an away game. Each time it's my turn, I am forever looking for my stash of cups, napkins, plastic silverware, etc. Some items would be in the hall pantry, some would be in the drawers in the dining room, some in the kitchen cabinet...frustrating. Not to mention that my baking items, my tablecloths, my Christmas dishes, were also stored here there and everywhere.

 

 

These cabinets were only inches deep and I couldn't reach the back. They just were not practical to hold all of the big things that I needed to store in here. These are actually the same cabinets that are in my kitchen. if you want to see them all painted up, visit this post. I wanted to take these off and use them in the garage to store tools. Then I could use the entire height and depth above the washer and dryer to create a 'pantry' so everything would be in one spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          

 

I painted the walls with one of my very favorite whites - Natural Choice. It has a touch of gray and is just warm enough.  

 

 

At this point, I searched for baskets to line the shelves. I needed specific sizes and cheap they were not. I was not willing to drop $100+ on baskets. So, I searched through old plastic storage bins that I had once used in my store. 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were lots of these plus others. They were the right depth, there were plenty of them, and they were free! Because they aren't the prettiest things to look at, I decided to hang a curtain that could be pulled to cover them up. This way I could leave the door open to enjoy the great sunlight and not be embarrassed!

 

 

The curtains are a cute coordinating little green check number.  Tomorrow I'll show you how I hung the curtains and a break down of the ton of everything that is now being stored here. Oh, and did I mention that there's a new floor up in here AND that I did a little big painting for the opposing wall?? 

  

 

It seems that there is a lot of cleaning up, reorganizing and revamping that happens in January, right? As you know, I love decorating kids rooms. One of the challenges that goes into designing a teenagers room is finding a place for all of their stuff. One of my favorites, designer Beth Keim of Lucy and Company, just shared a fantastic install of a teenagers room. 

 

There was so much stuff that needed to be stored in this small 12 x 12 room.

 

  

Beth's vision: "a bit Parisian, a bit Bergdof Goodman, a bit Audrey Hepburn and a dash of Vogue"

 

 

Her twin bed was traded for a queen bed which is nestled in a custom built wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling storage unit. perfect!!

 

 

 

Even the new vanity is flanked by it's own floor to ceiling storage. But my favorite part of the room, is the collection of photos above the desk/vanity. Originally, Beth was going to use a series of shoe sketches, but she wanted to go for something a bit more personal. Beth works with a fabulous photographer, Mekenzie France, and they decided to take shots of some of the teenagers 'pretties' as well as have her pose for a photo shoot. They were then displayed in simple black frames. The collaboration was perfect. What teenager doesn't want to have her own photo shoot?!?    

 

 

A few close-ups of the photos.

 

 

To see more of this project visit Lucy & Company here.  

 {images via Mekenzie France via Lucy & Company}

 

I only had my iphone, but I promised you some pictures of Fridays install so let's start with the before:

 

 

And now feast your eyes on some tween goodness:

 

 

 

I love stripes. I simply do not tire of them horizontally, vertically, chevronny...they are the perfect backdrop in a kids room. My 9 year old client only had one request--make it orange and pink, and I always gives whats my clients wants. Well, unless they want to use their favorite jumpsuit fabric to recover their sofa and to make new drapes.  

 

there are some boundaries

where were we? oh yeah

 

 

 If you remember, I wrote about the transformation of the side tables here. There are still a few more things that need to be added, but we are 90% complete. I'll have more photos and details soon.

Have a room you want prettied up--email me!   

 

 

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Years ago, I saw this room designed by HGTV producer/designer Brian Patrick Flynn, and fell in love with the billboard size photo mural on the wall. It was an old picture of his very young parents. I think it's just the coolest thing.

 

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He even took the idea into his kitchen with another photo that he used as his backsplash. love.

 

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I knew right then that this was a project that I was going to attempt one day. Playing with the scale of a simple object can be such a fun an expected design element.

When you have a million pictures of your kids that you love, it makes it hard. But, as I have been going through boxes of old photos in preparation for Maris' upcoming senior parties and yearbook deadlines, I landed on a photo that I knew was 'the one'.

 

 

  

 

 Murals Your Way is the company that provided this great service. To begin, you simply upload your image and it lets you know if the quality is acceptable.

 

After you enter your desired size, you get to view it in different rooms to get a feel of the scale. This is a very cool feature and the entire site is extremely user-friendly.

 

 

There are several materials to choose from. I chose the 'Smartstick' which is repositionable, removeable with no damage AND reuseable. yea, no brainer. But you can choose a more permanent paper or canvas.  

This was the 9'x 9' wall I chose. It is up in the kids area outside of Maris' room. {I dare anyone to have more chalkboard walls in their house than I do} I removed the clock and the nails and gave the wall a light sanding. Then I washed it down with a damp rag.

 

This particular size gave me 3 vertical panels. They allow a couple of inches of overlap with each panel to match it up.

 

They suggest starting with the left and working right, but I am awful at rules and it made more sense to me to start on the right since I had a wall on a 45 degree angle here and a corner on the other end. I used this right wall as my guide. Now I am a huge DIY'er. I feel like I have tried every project imaginable--except wallpaper. I have no experience. Which may be why this was not easy. You need 5 2 people to hang this. You start by pulling a little of the paper backing off at the top, smooth any bubbles, and work your way down. Sheets this long were heavy and once you peel the back off and you aren't paying attention--it can and will stick to itself. Then you throw a tantrum and watch impatiently as your husband performs decal surgery by slowly pulling it apart while you scream 'it's ruined!!'. Unbelievably, it was ok.   

 

 

This was also the time when I discovered that you can see the wall through the paper....for most it would probably not be a big deal because walls are generally all one color. But mine had the painted green exterior stripe. After I stood back and stared at it for a little while, I decided that it kind of gave it a cool frame effect and it would be fine {aka-I did not have any desire to repaint this wall}

Because we only had 4 arms, I taped the seam {with the paper backing still on} with painters tape to help tweak it's exact location. This helped me to figure out where to place the top of the 2nd sheet.

 

 

 

The polyester wallpaper is thin and does have some give, but you don't want to stretch it too much and distort the image.

 

 

After all 3 panels were up, I pressed the extra paper tight into the cracks. The company prints your image a few inches larger than your desired size to allow for 'out of square walls' and/or 'out of square installers'.

 

 

Then I took this metal 'dry wall mud putter upper' to create a straight line and pressed against the trim. Using a utility knife, I cut off the excess. {I had to hold the camera with my other hand, so you have to imagine the knife cutting} I continued around all of the edges.

 

 

I love it! 

 Murals Your Way offers tons of examples of other peoples murals on their site and they are always having a sale, a discount code or a groupon offer.