Welcome to My Jekyll-Hyde Laundry Room

INCLUDED IN THIS POST:

  • A tidier way to hide away cat litterboxes
  • A decorous disguise for ductwork in a utility/laundry room
  • A peek at my utility/laundry room renovation

I have a Jekyll-Hyde laundry room–part beauteous, part ugly. But it’s better than when we started.

If you read my Saturday posts “Week Endnotes” the past two weeks, you know I mentioned a last fix Chris and I planned for the laundry room in our new home. Well, we finally got that accomplished this past weekend after a couple of implementation snags the previous weekend. But more on that later.

Unfortunately, the laundry room in this house was the builder’s design afterthought

The blueprints call it a “utility room” rather than a laundry room because, although it has washer/dryer hookups, about one-third of the floor space is taken up by a gas furnace, its ductwork, a water heater and a water softener. The upside of this is because these utilities are in the house rather than the garage, they don’t freeze up in winter.

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The downside is they’re unsightly, just like Mr. Hyde. This is the view in from the kitchen table. What a view for guests, huh?

The only concession to laundry needs aside from the hookups is that the builder installed one wire shelf for storing laundry supplies. But because our washer and dryer are on pedestals, it was impossible for me at 5’6″ to reach the shelf. So for a long time, all the supplies sat out on top of the appliances, looking disgustingly messy.

I wish I had a full before picture, but my sweet husband, not realizing I wanted to snap one before he began the renovation, cleared that part out while I was sleeping in on a Saturday morning. Bless him.

So why don’t we simply close the door?

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That’s a good question. And here’s a good answer: Because our two cats enter their litterbox through a petdoor behind the furnace that cuts through to a deckbox-enclosed litterbox in the garage. You can see the pet door (barely) in this photo and the floormats Chris installed to catch any litter on the cats’ paws when they exit.

The deckbox is bolted to the garage wall where the pet door is installed, which you can see in the right-hand photo. The litterbox itself is a lidded utility tub with an entry cut into it, which offers more space for two cats. It’s also easier to clean.

We had a similar setup at our condo, and the cats love the privacy. In fact, getting this installed here was one of the first fixes we tackled because our cats didn’t like having their toileting area in the open (nor did we!). They scampered right through that pet door as soon as we pointed it out!

We’ve also talked about putting a decorative pet door in the door between kitchen and laundry room so we could close it and the cats could still access the litterbox. But I just wasn’t ready to cut up a brand-new door, not knowing how it would survive the alteration. Maybe down the road.

Back to those ‘Mr. Hyde’ ugly utilities…

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We couldn’t hide all the ugly stuff, but we did manage to disguise the ductwork with this runner rug.

Some improvement, right? I thought about a large folding screen to cover all the utilities and even a curtain, but I thought both would just end up being in the way.

Yes, we also could have built in some kind of permanent closet door, but we would have had to give up this lovely pantry cupboard we needed more. It now holds all the laundry and cleaning supplies, extra towels in case of leaks, coolers, bottled water and other items we buy in bulk.

Our first two tries to hang this rug failed. The problem was finding a way to attach the rug at the ceiling. And when wire, metal dowel rods and magnets didn’t work…

…we moved on to door casing and lauan blocks, staples and Command strips. To attach the rug at the ceiling…

  • Chris mitre-cut to fit pieces of prefinished door casing to border the front and left side of the ductwork. It would have looked better to do this on the right side as well, but there were pipes in the way.
  • He stapled the rug to the front piece, hammering in any staples that didn’t permeate the molding. He then nailed the molding to the ceiling, abutting the ductwork.
  • We applied Command strips to 10 pieces of lauan, spaced them out on the ductwork behind the rug, and stapled the rug to the lauan to keep it stationary.
  • A metal dowel rod inserted into the bottom hem of the rug helps keep it weighted down.
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It doesn’t hide all of the ‘Mr. Hyde” parts, but it helps, and the broad black-and-white stripes add some pizzazz.

Now for the ‘Dr. Jekyll’ (good) side

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Here’s the view coming into the laundry room from the garage. Nice, huh? You get a peek at that marvelous two-door pantry cupboard on the left and a full-on view of the two upper cupboards, whose bottom shelves I can reach.

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And these lovely Container Store baskets hold additional items within a reachable space. One I use to neatly store cleaning cloths, and the other holds various cleaning sundries.

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To the right of the dryer is my trusty chair, which is lightweight so I can move easily where I need it, topped by an organizer that holds dryer sheets, spot treatments, and dye-stabilizing sheets.

But my favorite part of the whole room is this print. I call him my “Laundry Lion.” I had him on a gallery wall over my desk at our condo but hadn’t found a place for him in the new house. I almost sent him to Goodwill, but Chris talked me into hanging on to him. And am I glad I did! He fits perfectly here, and the Rainbow Seagrass Baskets have the same colors in them as the lion’s mane.

In fact, the black frame with the black organizer below were what inspired me to go with the Safavieh Montauk black-and-white runner.

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I brought in one last final splash of black and orange in the two baskets over the doorway into the kitchen, which is also accented in orange.

They are Uganda Bukedo baskets available through Baskets of Africa.

So that’s the story of my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde utility/laundry room. We love so much about this house, that this one room was never a deal-breaker. And besides, I think we were able to do so much with it, aesthetics- and organization-wise.

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By the way, the cabinets are Cardell Lanston with a white thermofoil finish and available in-stock at Menard’s.. The door style is similar to what’s in our kitchen, but those are dark umber and I wanted white in the laundry room since there are no windows.

Laundry is my exclusive chore around this house, and I now have a place to do it that’s cheery and bright. Who could ask for more than that alongside clean, fresh-from-the-dryer laundry?

Here’s wishing you the same,

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