The Cozy Old "Farmhouse": February 2016

Hello again everyone!

I hope this blog post finds you doing well and surviving the winter weather with minimal amounts of the blues and fits of depression. Hang in there! Spring will be here soon!

Today I have a short little post to share with you about a little bit of progress that has been made in our laundry room. I've shared before how this room serves as our main entrance to the house because of the way the driveway is set up, so I've been working on getting it looking a little less cluttered and depressing and brighter and more streamlined and welcoming.

For almost two years it looked like the picture below, dirty peachy/orange walls and dark trim. With pretty much the only natural light being from the window in the door this room could be quite dark and depressing. But we were busy with working on other rooms in the house and this one has been low on the list. But finally....we're getting to it.

Two months ago, when I was still hugely pregnant, Hubby took a weekend and got the room entirely painted for me. My original plan was to paint it a light cheery yellow color, but at the last minute as he was walking out the door to go buy paint I changed my mind and told him, "Just get an off-the-shelf white and do the whole room white."

So that's what he did and the room is so bright and clean feeling now!

So that was a couple of months ago that he painted it, and then it just sat without any other changes until just last week. I was in the middle of folding laundry and I went to the laundry room closet to put something away and suddenly the urge to organize and purge it hit me. I've learned to just go with it even though it's a bit ADD, because if I don't it'll probably never get done. So I spent the next hour clearing it out and making a pile to get rid of and a pile of decor that had been stored in there waiting for the room to be painted. One of those pieces of decor was this little washboard cupboard.

I've had it for years and years. I didn't make it, someone gave it to me and it was already made this way. I've always loved it, but it's always had a purely decorative purpose. This time I decided to make it functional and I hung it just inside the door. I added "S" hooks to the bottom rung to hang our most used sets of keys, then I added small cup hooks to the inside to hang all the extra keys. The little shelf on top holds my husband's stash of Tic-Tacs that he likes to grab on his way out the door to church. : ) I added some fresh greenery clippings from the yard to a little galvanized bucket up there on top and I'm loving the touch of color and freshness it adds.

I also added our dog's name above her food dishes. I was so surprised to find the wooden cutout of her name at a thrift store a year or so ago for only 99¢, and I just couldn't pass it up. I've been saving it all this time for just this spot. It was an ugly dark wood color originally so I used some craft paint and changed it to a navy blue. I love the quirky touch it adds. : ) My husband said, "Well it's a good thing you put her name up there. Maybe now she'll be able to find her food." He's so sarcastic, lol!

You can see I also changed out the rug. I found the blue denim one at Walmart and I love how heavy duty it has been. The whole room is so much brighter and cleaner now. I also love how the electrical panel box just disappears into the wall with the white paint.

I've made a couple of other changes already, and there are plenty more to come. I've got lots of fun things in the works for this little room that I'll share another time.