House Tour 2012: SpareOom, Laundry Room, and Half Bath

Are you sick and tired of seeing my HOUSE, yet? Well, this post wraps it all up. These are the last rooms! Woo hoo! We did it.

SpareOom is the last main living space I have to share in the tour of our progress so far. It will be a main living space one day, anyway. Right now it's kind of a wreck. I gave a very detailed tour of this room this past winter... here, so I'm not going to basically redo that post. But, I will show you what's different since then.





Eventually, this room is going to be our school/craft/game room. And I knew I wanted it to be fun and ultra kid-friendly. I had in my head a photo of a kitchen in Berlin that I just could not shake. (I recently found the entire apartment online here - so excited about that!). There was something about that kitchen that gave the feeling I want this room to have when it's finished. Chalkboard walls are nothing new. They're pretty ubiquitous these days, really. But I particularly liked that the Berlin kitchen had a green wall. A green wall with colored chalk. So, that's where this idea sprang from. Edited to add: The wall looks green in only a few pictures... black in others. I don't think there are two walls. Maybe? Or maybe it's a super dark forest green? Whatever - I like the photos where it looks green! :)



We only finished it last week. I still need to rub chalk on the upper most part of the wall to "cure" the surface for drawing. It's been great so far, though! The children love it, of course. And it's been very handy for impromptu grammar review.



The rest of the room is Project Central. It's nuts right now. Makes me a little crazy if I let it.





Through this door we have the laundry room.



I did not get around to cleaning it before these photos. I think it has the makings of a great little room someday.



I hope I get to do some of the things I have in my mind's eye for this space.





Funny story. See that missing piece of trim up there at the top of the door? Well, Sam was trying to fit a chin-up bar in this door frame. I knew he was down there working on it, but I was upstairs with the children at the time. After a few minutes, I heard this crazy loud crash. He came upstairs a few minutes later, rubbing his knees. Apparently, he had gotten two or three chin-ups in before the trim gave way and his knees smacked the ground. It's not funny, except that it is. I just keep picturing the fall, and it cracks me up. I feel like I can laugh because he's totally fine. But, my door is decidedly not.



And the half bath is down here.



It's pretty much completely the same as the last time I shared it, too. Except for the gaping hole in the ceiling. That hole accesses the drain for the children's bathtub and it was cut to install the plumbing for that remodel. We need to make a removeable door thingy that can easily be slid out when we need to get to the plumbing.



And, we're painting it. Just two walls. I found a quart of Benjamin Moore's "Fieldstone" in satin finish... completely unopened. I cannot for the life of me remember why I would've purchased this paint. According to the label, I bought it in November of 2011. I was already thinking of painting this room gray... so, I decided to use the paint before it got too old. The wall behind the toilet and sink will be tiled white when we redo this bathroom.



I actually like the gray with the color of the door. The previous owners had installed some replacement trim in a few rooms. This baseboard is newer, for instance, but they never painted it. It's just primed. I may or may not paint it some Thursday night for a Mama Night project. It would be quick.

So, that's it! I'm hoping to post a sort of round-up post this weekend, bringing all of the House Tour 2012 posts to one page. That way I can easily link to all these rooms in the sidebar. It will be more of a housekeeping post than anything else.

Thanks so much for reading this week, guys! It's been fun!

The Smoothest Laundry Room of All Time

Last week, I shared some images of laundry/craft room combinations that really got my creative juices going. But, I left one of my inspiration spaces out of the post. It's my favorite, so I wanted it to have a post all its own.

It's from the home of Sarah Hartill, editor of Canadian House & Home (which is fast becoming one of my favorite shelter publications). I love nearly everything about this room. It's just relaxed enough, yet just put together enough. It's punchy but still serene. Orderly, but not in a hyper-managed way. It's a fanstastic example of how a room can begin solely neutral, but still wind up with plenty of color. And that rug makes me smile every time I see it.

The room still looks good with a different rug, too, though :) I thought it was interesting to find two images of this room, differing only in the floor covering.



Something about all of the pattern Hartill used, maybe. Or the cheery colors. Or both. I wonder if she knew ahead of time that the washer and dryer were going to reflect the rug like that. Almost like a mirror. I suspect that was a happy accident.

Here's another view of the room with the striped rug - which is my preference between the two choices.



It's pretty safe to say that I'm sold on a bold rug for the laundry room now. And I believe I must have pegboard.

Now, back to the brown graphic rug one more time...

It's funny, I posted the image above (from Apartment Therapy) back in April, when I first started thinking about adding a desk in the laundry room. I hadn't seen the rest of the room at that point. When I stumbled upon the photos that show the sink area, I didn't realize at first that the opposite side of the room was the room I'd already locked away in my little brain. The rug tipped me off, though, and once I realized they were photos of the same room, I was giddy.

A few things to notice:

Hartill painted the far wall in light blue as an accent wall to balance the blue of the map across from it. It seems from the photos that the painted wall is a shade or two lighter than the map, but definitely taking a cue from it's color.

That same blue only appears a few other times in the room, and in seemingly insignificant ways. But, because so much of the room is white, stainless, or otherwise neutral, those blues really pop out.

There is no earthly reason why that sink fabric would work with the blue - or a map, for that matter. But it all works so beautifully. More so, I think, than it would have had Hartill chosen a color from the floral for the accent wall or had she chosen a vintagey map with the creams, taupes, and roses found in the fabric. The mismatch is the key to this room's personality.

The rugs, both of them, are strong both in pattern and color and are immediately a grounding focal point to a rather full, small room.

I think one of the biggest things to note from this room is Hartill's restraint. Had the ironing board cover been patterned or brightly colored, or had she used the reds or pinks or golds instead of white, glass, and stainless for the many containers and bins, the room would've had a much busier feel. All of the white, glass, and stainless really work to set the stage to let the sink fabric, map, rug, and accent wall star. There isn't too much visual competition.

Let me just take a minute here to beat this into my head.

Restraint.

REstraint.

ReSTRAINT.

Gotta remember that.

I love this room.

Love it.

A few quick links to black and white striped rugs -

CB2 flor tiles (no kidding?!)

Ballard Designs indoor/outdoor rug

Or a more traditional, less modern version from Dash & Albert

Seeing Past Just Laundry

I think I've shown photos of the laundry room before. There's not really much to show, but I was cleaning in there today and all the while building on the daydreams I'd already been dreaming about this room. It isn't large, but at just a little over 6 ft. by 10 ft., it's the biggest laundry room we've had to date.



Maybe even big enough to double as something other than a laundry room.



Which is why I've been daydreaming :)



Quite a lot of room is taken up by the extra-capacity washer and dryer, but with front loaders there could at least be counters above them.

And if we were able to squish the dryer over a little closer to the washer, there might be enough room for a little desk beneath the window.



The window is obviously not new (and, yes, that's a wasp nest in the corner of it - I'm waiting for the rain to die down so I can hose off the outside of the window later today). This window is one of the three at the back of the house that we opted to not replace last December. When we do get a new window in here, I'm thinking maybe a casement window would be a good option.





There are a lot of random little craft boxes all over the house right now, waiting for a place to call home. I'm thinking... maybe... this little laundry room could double as a craft room of sorts - or at least a storage room for crafty things like yarn, DMC thread, beads, and sewing supplies.

And a special little mini space for me :)

So, that's what I've been daydreaming about.

Now that you have a good idea of what we're starting with (will be starting with, I should say - this project is down the road), here are a few of the rooms I've found online that are feeding my imagination lately. All photo sources are in the address bar if you click on them :)


loving: drying rack, wallpaper on ceiling

loving: wood-look floor, white cabinets, pop of color

loving: skirted laundry sink


loving: pattern, white, bold color w/ stainless
loving: gooseneck faucet, realistic laundry baskets, "fancy" lighting

loving (really loving): floral wallpaper, white cabinets, pink


loving: ALL of it, especially the wall and the oversized lantern

But, there is a laundry to end all laundry rooms that I didn't share with you today. It gets my Smoothest Laundry Room of All Time Award - and it's not even from Domino ;) It's just super cool. I'll share it with you next week, okay?

I'd love to hear which of these rooms is your favorite and why. What elements would you consider "must haves" in a dual purpose laundry room?

It's Gray Outside...

... and it's kind of been a long week. I haven't been able to have my regular Mama Night Out in over two weeks, and I think it's starting to get to me. I had a wonderful wonderful date last night with Sam and a younger couple from church last night, but I haven't been ALONE in a while - well, unless you count brushing my teeth and going to the bathroom (and sometimes I'm not even alone for that).

You know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to buy fabric. But, I wouldn't want to drive all the way to the fabric store. I'd rather teleport there and back. I'd like to look at all the pretty colors and patterns and touch all the soft, smooth cottons.

I'd buy some fabric to make Punkin a dress. Did you know I sew? That's okay, I barely know that I sew. It's been ages and ages since I've made a dress for one of the girls. Punkin's going to be 5 and 1/2 this coming week - before I know it she's going to be past the age for polka dots and ruffles. I'd like to make her a dress... soon.

I'd also like to turn part of our laundry room into a little sewing desk someday. We're a crafty bunch - sewing, crocheting, embroidering. There's a lot of craft stuff all piled in various plastic bins in the Spare Oom closet. Wouldn't it be wonderful to set up tons of clean, white shelving over the washer and dryer and fill it with all the yarn, fabric, ribbon, and buttons we possibly can?

And wouldn't it be wonderful if it had some kind of white noise maker? I'd only shut myself in there with the noise maker on when there was another responsible adult here with the children, of course :)

There's a window in the laundry room. And space directly beneath it for a small desk. It's fun to think about on a gray day.