Friday Favorite

I keep having this idea to start a series of posts entitled "Friday Favorites" wherein I take pictures of things around my house that I really like. We've spent so much time (and money) over the last couple of years making this house unrecognizable to the previous owners and now there are so many things that I like about my house that I'm starting to feel compelled to share. The title would be cute and alliterative and the posts themselves would operate under the assumption that everyone, everywhere is fascinated with the mirror I bought last week or the shade of gray that I recently painted in my entryway. Yup. Cute and self centered, just the way a blog post should be.

Problem is that every Friday, I either forget or don't have the energy to clean up enough to take pictures of my house that I'd be willing to show the world. I guess that my plan for the perfect blog post is flawed. Oh well. I'm not afraid of failure.

Moving on... I have something to show you. Brent and I (so to speak) remodeled our laundry room and main floor bathroom. The bathroom isn't done, but the laundry room is. Oo la la. I love me a nice laundry room. First, allow me to show you the before.

The pictures look really cramped and tight.

There is a reason for this.

The reason is that it was small and I couldn't get any perspective. I have no issues with a small laundry room (it's just laundry) but we have those fancy shmancy front loaders and couldn't really open the door to get inside them. They were also wedged in a pan that slanted and prevented us from being about to level the washer. It got really loud when it shook.

And it was just gross. Once upon a time, there was a sink, but we had to move it because it wouldn't fit with the washer and dryer so there was just a messed up wall and cat litter and spilled laundry detergent on the floor from when the washer shook it off. I have been referring to it as the Pit of Despair.

So the demo began.

All we did to the space was bump the wall on one side in to accomidate a sink, but we moved the washer and dryer to another wall and bumped the toilet (on the other side of the wall) over a few inches which required a complete plumbing overhaul. Jaime cut a hole in the floor so that they didn't have to walk up and down the stairs to access the crawl space.

And Charlie joined him once or twice.

Have you met Jaime?

Jaime is our roommate. He's lived with us since before Charlie was born. He's our good friend, our kids love him and we love having him living here. He's also magical. Since we've known him he's worked his magic on our home including (but not limited to) transfiguring our ugly blue bathroom into one that looks like is belongs in a hotel (when I clean it), conjuring up a bedroom for Lizzy out of thin air and most recently transforming The Pit of Despair into a totally tricked out, overly upgraded laundry room.

Actually, we did the laundry room on the cheap, it just appears to be tricked out. The cabinets and shelves and countertops and sink are all cheap IKEA stuff. We already had the hardware and the faucet and we found the tile at Tile-4-Less. The only thing that cost actual money was the glass tile for the backsplash. It was my splurge and I have no regrets.

Now the whole family loves our laundry room. Laundry-doing is up 80% (or whatever), which is good for our reputations since we aren't walking around in grungy clothes all the time. In fact, the kids, I think, like to hang out in there a little too much...

The little thief.

The bathroom is almost there. All we need to do is put in a sink, a toilet, a mirror and a light. I'll be sure to post pictures of those too since it will undoubtedly be a favorite of mine, although I cannot promise they will end up on my blog on a Friday.