I’ve had a fascination of the laundry room for many years. Sitting back with my dog in my lap I contemplated on today’s blog. It’s warming again in TX and there is a slight breeze in the air. I am sipping a diet coke – which I really try not to do, but I had a weak moment and needed the kick to find my inspiration for this week’s blog. The Laundry Room – – as a child I remember my mother telling the story that when she was pregnant with me or shortly thereafter my father bought her a dryer. (He did not want her going into the cold to hang diapers. Hold that thought back to “hanging laundry” in a minute.) But her washer and dryer were always in the garage. Maybe that is where this all started.
My father was the inspiration for my love of design. From the time I can remember he was renovating our home. He and my mother worked side by side and took an 1100 sq foot home and converted it over 20+ years into a lovely 2500 sq ft home. They not only handled all of the construction but they worked together to build cabinets and design paneling because what was in the stores would be too expensive for the budget. We were in constant build mode. BUT the one thing we never had was that laundry room. I remember my mom always talked about putting a wall up in the garage to protect the precious space but it just never was a priority. Andy has joked over the years with me on why this has to be a big room. I guess now I know.
I wish I had a picture of the laundry room we created when we built our first home in Edgewater, MD. We built a 5 bedroom home (why – who knows) where we converted 1 bedroom upstairs to the laundry room. At the time I was fascinated with Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. The flooring in the room was the square black and white linoleum – you remember it by Armstong! My dad crafted small Mickey heads as the face of the drapery rods painted black with red tabbed drapes. We finished it off with an old chair that I wanted recovered in Mickey fabric. But trademarked fabric was very expensive and not in our budget. We lucked out as we were at Disney where I found Mickey embossed towels. Talk about innovation. I bought the pool towels and a friend made the chair covers for me. I loved that laundry room. It is still my absolute favorite to this day.
The laundry room in the new house is not large, but it will be functional. In the original plan the entry was from the guest room side. I had the builder open it from the master side and then decided to leave both entrances as a pathway. There are two doors so it can be closed off. I also like the feel of the openness since it is not a large space. It’s pretty basic. Our Washer/Dryer will be on a shelf so to speak with slots for “cool” laundry baskets below. The W/D add color to the space (they are Burgundy) and we have cabinets above them. We also have a small folding area and above that will be a wet rod area with a 2 tone picket tile backsplash accenting the walls. The cabinets are white (it was all I could do not to paint them pink). But I will add Burgundy, Black and Pink accents to tie it together.
Remember I mentioned about the “hanging of laundry”. Funny story. My dear mother in law never had a dryer in her entire life until she moved in with us in 2010. At that time she was 85 years young. We moved into a home in an HOA managed community and she wanted a clothes line. Well I pulled out my HOA docs and low and behold there was no mention of clothes lines. I surmised at the time the young lawyers now drafting these documents had never experienced a clothes line. They mentioned flag poles, tv antenna’s, and things like that but nothing on a clothes line. I happened to mention it to the builder and he did not have a problem with it as long as our neighbors did not. Well all I can tell you is we had a very lovely retractable clothes line that all of the neighbors wanted to enjoy and in fact we installed several of them for our friends. So here’s to our mom’s who paved the way for our laundry rooms today.
Until next week…
Lori Weber Home Design 