Our New Home- A Year Later

Has it been a year already? 

We moved into our house one year ago on July 15th. The house was 2 1/2 years old, but since it was the owners 2nd home, it was hardly lived in and no upgrades had been done.

Lets start at the beginning...Here's the MLS photo of our Carolina Cottage. I love how it looks small, unlike our last house, which was all brick and 3 floors!

MLS photo

Zhushing Up A Corner Of The Laundry Room

Can your laundry room use a little zhushing?

It has been a pleasure folding laundry in our laundry room ever since it was transformed from builder basic to pretty and functional. Lighting really made a difference too. This angle looked great, but there was a corner that still needed zhushing up...

Laundry Room Makeover

I'm really happy to show you how far our laundry room has come since we've moved in. I was really excited to have a larger laundry room than our previous house, especially because this house is a lot smaller. Our current laundry room is also a separate room and we don't have to enter walk through it to get into house from the garage. The main problem was that it didn't have any cabinets to store things in, which was a BIG problem, but easy to solve.

Coat Rack For The Laundry Room

I really liked the coat rack we had in our oldest daughter's room at the last house and it had some nice bronze hooks on it. Before we put our house on the market, we swapped it out with one that was made out of reclaimed wood from our mountain cottage and some inexpensive hooks. You can see that post HERE if you missed it. 

How To Make A Liner For A Basket

In between doing projects for the Mountain Cottage, I've also been trying to keep up with projects that need to be done at home. 
Painting the Laundry Room has been on our project list for a lonnnnngggg time.  The paint was purchased last March, hangs head in shame.  
Well, about a month ago,  Mr. DIY came home from work one day and was surprised that I had already started. One morning I just couldn't take it anymore and decided to open the can of paint. There was no going back once I cut in the corners! 

I still have one more project to do before the new Laundry Room is revealed. 

If you remember, the Laundry Room looked like this...

The new paint color is lighter and brighter and the old baskets that I keep Laundry Room essentials in didn't look good with the new paint. 

So, just like the wall art I painted (you can click HERE if you missed it), I used a couple of cans of Rust-Oleum Paint and Primer to paint the baskets white. 

Here's how I made the liners:

The old basket liners were taken out of the baskets and I started to measure them, but found it so much easier to measure one of the baskets. 

I measured height, width and the bottom, then made a pattern  for each side and added 1/2" for seam allowance all the way around. I also added 3" for the fold over on the top. The 3" also included 1" for a seam allowance. 

Since the pattern was very large and wanted the pattern in a specific place, I placed the pattern paper over the fabric until it looked good, then I cut out the fabric.

You can either sew the top finished edge first like this- fold under 1" and fold 1/2" of that under and sew or...

...you can sew the all the sides together first, then fold the top finished edge over the side seams and sew the top edge last. 

I always have to remind myself...right sides together!

I had to rip out one seem on this project because I wasn't paying attention! This is why when I sew, the seam ripper is my best friend. 

On the first basket liner, I sewed the top edge first. 

On the 2nd and 3rd basket, I sewed the side seams first then sewed the top last. 

I think I like the top seam sewn last. 

Once you sew the sides together and the top seam, then sew the bottom to the top.

Place the liner in the basket to see how it fits.

Here's a look at the baskets all finished. 

This could also be done as a no sew project if you don't know how to sew, just follow the same steps above. 

In the last photo, you see the wall paint(although it's more minty than gray) and you see a peek of the final project on my list for the Laundry Room.

Looking forward to showing you the finished Laundry Room...hopefully in a couple of weeks.

I'm off to SoCal for a week again, (by myself this time) to help my dad with cleaning and organizing his home.

Follow me on Instagram for what's happening behind the scenes.

Leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite sewing project (or no sew project) is!

Pam

Tiled Laundry Room Floor

As many of you know, I was in California with my girls last week visiting friends and family. We spent every day shopping...more posts to come on the places we went. Here's the previous post on my laundry room when I added the accessories.
While my girls and I were having fun in Southern California, Mr. Fanatic was working & in the evening he came home and installed a new tile floor in our laundry room! What a guy! This is what it looks like now:

This is what the vinyl floor looked like before.

And this is what it looks like now:

So purdy! And easy to clean! Yay!!! The cost for this project was aproximately $125, which included Tile (on sale at Lowe's for 97 cents a sq. ft), backerboard, screws & new base & shoe molding.

This was so nice to come home to! How great is that? ... Maybe I should go away more often! LOL! (Only kidding honey!)

Thanks for stopping by,

Pam


             

Laundry Room Mini Makeover- What a Difference Accessories Make

If there is one room in my house that I could make larger, it would be my laundry room. It is the first room everyone sees when they come home since there is a door to the garage. We painted it last Spring after living with the builder white for 9 years.
One thing that it does have is a laundry sink which comes in very handy when doing projects. The paint is probably the only color that I liked when it went on the wall. No custom mix on this one. My husband was relieved! 

I found the key rack at an online website that sold gifts for executives. Go figure!

My husband made the coat rack several years ago ... And you've already seen the mirror in another post.

The laundry room still needed a little decoration, so I used some things I already had and put them on top of the cabinets.

I bought the 3 baskets originally for my daughter's bedroom makeover, but there was too much of this pattern, so I was going to take them back to Homegoods, where I bought them. I didn't return them for several weeks because they were so cute & I wanted to use them somewhere. Ahhhhh, the Laundry Room!

I keep rags neatly folded in one and I use one for stray socks. Not sure what the third basket will hold, but I'm sure I will think of something to put in it!

Here is a close up of those 3 cute baskets!

Close up of the items on top of the cabinets.


Stay tuned for part 2 of the Laundry Room mini-redo ... Some time in April we are going to tile the floor.

Thanks for stopping by,

Pam