This project was sponsored by HANDy Paint Products and their HANDy Paint Tray.
As always, opinions are our own. See our full disclosures here.
Finally decorate your own home – with confidence!
You’re so much closer to a beautifully-decorated home than you think. You just need a little help to get there!
When we moved into this house last year, I was thrilled to have a laundry room on the main floor. I mean, having an actual room rather than a corner of the basement like in our old house is pure luxury. Every day I’m grateful for our laundry room.
Farmhouse Laundry Room Makeover Before
However, being thankful for it didn’t mean I loved how it LOOKED. Here are a few before photos so you see what I mean:
As you can see it was dark, dirty, and crammed with stuff. Scuffed and chipped blue paint really isn’t our thing either.
And despite there being a few wall-mounted cabinets, there still wasn’t enough storage. I really wanted a bright, clean space with plenty of storage for not only laundry room things, but also some overflow pantry storage. With a family of five, including three teenagers who eat like adults, we often buy things in bulk. The bathrooms can hold some extra toilet paper, but we always run out of space for paper towels, facial tissue, and random food items that we stock up on from time to time. Not to mention emergency water and our huge pails of flour and starch.
The tricky part is, there was next to no budget for this project.
Farmhouse Laundry Room Makeover After
Thankfully the laundry machines are in decent shape (with two repairs since we moved in) and the flooring is the same as the kitchen – not necessarily my favorite, but very durable and nice enough. All we needed was some paint and a few inexpensive things like shelves and lighting.
We started the makeover by adding shiplap to the back wall, behind the sink, washer, and dryer to give the small room a farmhouse feel. Then we painted the whole room in Sherwin Williams Eider White, just like the rest of the main floor and upstairs hallways. It’s a nice, bright, neutral white.
Of course, I used one of my favorite tools, the HANDy Paint Tray.
We’ve partnered with HANDy Paint Products a few times this year, but I can honestly say that their Trays and Pails are my freaking favorite tools ever for painting! The liners alone make them invaluable for quick clean-up. And the Trays themselves are so durable and easy to pick up and move, that I’m never going back to other paint trays again! That magnet for the paint brushes = life saver and no more paint on my paintbrush handles from them falling into the paint!
After we installed the shiplap and painted the whole room, Dean installed shelves at the far end of the room. It was the logical spot because I can reach most of them there, unlike if we’d put them over the washer and dryer. But also, because there was a bulkhead on either side of that wall that made great shelf ends!
Eventually, I’d love to actually frame in the washer and dryer and install a regular sink and countertop. But that was definitely not in the budget at this time. Instead, we replaced the terrible old tub with a similar laundry tub. Really if you’re thinking of updating your laundry room and your laundry tub is in decent shape, you might not even have to do that. But ours was plumbed wrong – someone got lazy when they installed the original plumbing and the drain was higher than the rest of the tub. This also meant that the tub was stained from almost 20 years of usage with improper drainage!
Gross, right?!
Anyway, we got a lovely basic laundry tub from Build.com and just dressed it up with a gorgeous Kraus faucet and a skirt we made from a drop cloth!
Essentially then all we did was swap out the old builder light fixture for another from Build.com. There are built-in LED lights so it’s nice and bright. Plus, we won’t have to change a light bulb for about 10 years or so!
The art is a giant piece of MDF that I simply painted using this technique.
Then the space was prettied up with some antique-looking clothes pins I found on Amazon and a few other things that we already had, like a pretty tray and some soaps.
We added a pail for dryer lint and the dryer sheets fit nicely into this little jar.
It’s funny how some paint and a few accessories can really make such a difference in a room, yes?
The laundry room also got new appliances a few months after this makeover, and now we have large-capacity grey LG machines in the space.
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What do you think of our little farmhouse laundry room makeover?
Great job!
Thank you!
Looks Amazing!!!
Thanks!
Beautiful!
Thank you, Nicole.
Stunning!
Thanks, Leanne.
WoW i love it!!!!
Thank you!
Nice job! Where did you get the glass jars?
Um, Kitchen Stuff Plus maybe? I don’t remember, I’ve had them for years. We used them in our old kitchen for flour and sugar on the counter.
Where did you find that adorable sign?!
I painted it/Dean framed it. It’s inspired by a Joanna Gaines/Magnolia/Fixer Upper sign.
LOVE the new look!
Thank you!!! 🙂
With the addition of the shiplap and the cute skirt you created for the laundry tub you really transformed your laundry room, Shannon! What a sweet spot to repeat that never-ending task! Quick off the side question. I surely know why you would have a big bucket of flour… but starch? What is it and how do you use it?
Lol. We do pretty much all of our baking gluten free because one of my daughter’s needs to be strictly gluten free and I should be 99% of the time. SO the starch is for Tapioca Starch. We buy our flour (rice) and starch in 10 kg bags from a grain supplier. It takes about a year maybe to go through all that starch, but it’s so much cheaper to buy in bulk.
Beautiful !!!! it inspires me for my own home!!!
Curious how big is your laundry room!?
It is about 5.5 feet by 9 feet. Give or take a few inches. 🙂
Hey Shannon,
The new look is just awesome! This would probably make me love to do the laundry everyday if this is my laundry room. 😉 The laundry sign is amazing.
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Jess
I’ve had this post saved for a while and the quarantine is finally spurring me to work on the laundry room. How did you make the utility sink skirt? I love it!
Yay for fun projects! The sink skirt was super simple…we just pinch pleated some drop cloth and secured the pleats with hot glue. Then we velcroed it to the sink with heavy-duty double sided sticky velcro. (Dean did have to reattach some of the velcro with more hot glue after about a year of daily use.
Wow, fabulous job. So many wonderful ideas to apply in getting our laundry room beautiful and handy to. Thank you!
What color did you paint the upper cabinets?
Where can I find the shiplap? What is the width of the “boards”?
We have a post about how we shiplap with all the details here: https://homemadelovely.com/diy-shiplap-wall/
Would you please tell us how you made the laundry sink skirt. The box pleats modernize it.
Honestly, it was super easy. We just bought a piece of drop cloth that was much longer than the perimeter of the sink. Then we attached it at one side of the sink (the back right for example) and folded and hot glued the box pleats every couple of inches or so until the opposite corner (the back left in our example). If there is any excess, simply trim it off. No fancy math for us!