The Laundry Room Is Done!

Five and a half years ago (has it really been that long???) Daniel and I bought a “fixer-upper” house in Pegram, TN. We were determined to not overextend ourselves financially, and there was not much that we could afford at that time. We totally didn’t know what we were doing when it came to real estate, and we didn’t even use an agent. How many times have I wondered: “What were we thinking?” When I say fixer-upper, I mean the real deal. The house had been lived in by a smoker. The carpet was not something you would ever want your bare feet to touch. The den and kitchen had parquet flooring, and the bathroom had linoleum with mold staining it from underneath. There was no central heat and air, and there was a hearth (no fireplace, just a hearth) in the kitchen where the woodstove used to reside. The day we brought our parents to see the house the owner had been hunting and had left turkey feathers strewn across the front yard. He had left his underwear on the floor of the bedroom too. They also wanted to know: “What were we thinking?”

Well, all of this added up to one really good real estate bargain. And five and a half years later, I must say that we have whipped the place into shape. We have invested blood, sweat, and tears (literally), and lots and lots of money into our little palace, and I am so proud of the way that it looks now. Our plan had been to live here for about five years as our “starter” house, and then we would sell it and use the profits to move up a bit. But after all the love and toil we have poured into our home, I am in no hurry to leave it in the hands of another. I love this house.

It is a blessing to us in so many ways. We live only a mile from our church, and so our home is very convenient for entertaining our church family. We have people over all the time, and we both love to do it. We have an acre and a half of yard, and I have had such fun landscaping and planting a vegetable garden every year. And best of all, our property backs up to the Harpeth River. We have a porch swing down by the river, and it serves as our own personal retreat center right in our backyard. We can have bonfires, we have lots of privacy, and we can see the stars. Oh, and Daniel has a barn for his woodworking shop. Pretty cool. And I can’t tell you what a tremendous blessing it is to live in a place that we can afford. We are not enslaved to our mortgage! We are free to travel, free to give, free to live. Praise God!

So anyway, this weekend we finished renovating the laundry room/mud room for the second time. We had painted, laid tile floor, and put up a cabinet on the wall the first summer that we lived here. It was certainly liveable. But now that we have the rest of the house shipshape, I wanted the décor to flow from the adjacent den and kitchen. Also since Madeline came along, we have been in need of more storage. We found a killer deal on some beautiful solid wood cabinets at Costco, and so we loaded up the truck with as many cabinets as we could fit into the room and got started.

Here are a few pix of our new and improved laundry room:

Looking from the den into the laundry room. The walls are greenish khaki. We had replaced the backdoor a couple of years ago. Doesn't the trim and crown molding look great? Daniel is amazing.

I found this awesome fabric at JoAnn's and made curtains and a cushion for the bench. I love my sign above the door! I found it at the flea market.

I got the rug at Target. It matches the curtains perfectly!

Cabinets by the back door.

And yet more cabinets! Oh, and my little constant companion. :)

This bench and shelf used to be white. Daniel made the storage shelf as a Pottery Barn copy cat. The bench came from my room growing up.

My dear grandfather painted this picture years ago - perfect for the laundry room!

And, of course, this post wouldn't be complete without a "before" picture:

Here is what it looked like when we moved in. Pretty big difference, huh?