Laundry Room Closet Makeover
Hello! I hope you had a good week! This shorter week has flown by for me extremely fast. I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend with a few home projects sprinkled in.
As I’ve mentioned, we have a Mid Century, California Ranch home (in the middle of Iowa) that we have been restoring for the last three years. I wanted to share a small makeover I recently completed that has made a big difference for me. I love a project that can be completed in a weekend but make a lasting impact.
We love our house, but if we could change one thing it would be the amount of storage space. I never thought I would buy a ranch but I’ve loved living entirely on one level more than I thought I would. I especially love having the laundry on the main floor. However, with no basement and no attic, storage is limited to closets, the garage and a shed. Both my husband and I hate clutter so I try to make the most of all available space in our closets. Fortunately, I love to organize!
One closet that’s been tormenting me since we moved in is one of our laundry room closets. Our laundry room is right off of our main entry, so this closet has to function as a coat closet and storage closet. Recently, we had to get some electrical work done (which is also housed in the laundry room), so it gave me an excuse to gut and makeover this closet.
This how the closet looked when we first looked at the house, before purchasing it.
Right when we moved in, the very old bi-fold door that was poorly installed in this closet broke and fell apart. We’ve been living with a curtain over it ever since. There was one very low closet rod across the lower third of the closet. Above this were two very heavy shelves which were bowed and drooping. I’m not sure how the previous owner used this closet over the years, but there were also random nails sticking out of the walls on both sides of the closet along with some random hooks. Every time I tried to get something out, or put something away, in this closet it would snag on a nail. I hated it.
Before shots showing the shelves and low rod.
To start this project, I measured the interior space of the closet and wrote down my needs to help determine what kind of closet system would work best. My needs included:
-More, and longer, coat storage
-Small shelves for basket storage
-At least one long shelf for storage
I also wanted to paint and make the closet feel and smell clean.
After I gutted the closet.
The color I chose for paint is the same color as I painted the cabinets in our laundry room. (I will go into our laundry room makeover in a future post). I had it custom matched and it’s kind of a grayed out aqua. I chose a semi-gloss so that it would be durable and reflect a little light to brighten up the space. When I am painting, I usually like to paint ceilings the same color as walls. The ceiling in this closet was the hardest area to paint because there are pipes running though it that I had to work around.
Also, we have popcorn ceilings, and this one had never been painted, so a lot of it came off onto my roller.
I love unexpected details and wall paper, so once the paint was dry, I decided to give the walls a special treatment. I have a lemon theme going on in this laundry room. At first, I thought about hanging lemon wall paper in the closet, but that seemed like an unnecessary expense. Instead, I decided to draw lemons all over the walls using a sharpie paint marker.
I am in no way affiliated with these Sharpie paint markers, but I loved using it and I think they are awesome! I used their oil based version with a bold tip, but they have a lot of options. Here's a link
I wanted to focus on not making it “perfect” and trying to not overthink the design. I just grabbed the paint marker and started randomly drawing.
And kept drawing until I was happy with how it looked.
Even though I knew most of this would get covered up, I didn’t care. I like that it is a surprise that no one would expect in a closet and I love it so much! Drawing lemons all over the walls was so much fun! It makes me happy every time I need to get into this closet.
After the lemons dried, it was time to install the closet system and get everything put away.
My mom makes and sells these cute covered hangers. They are great because the padding keeps the hangers from leaving bumps in your clothes, they are non-slip, they are perfect for coats and they have a really cute vintage look!
The closet system I chose had the option of being as small as 48 inches wide up to 90 inches wide. It has the option to add hanging rods on both sides to expand it. The shelf across the top was optional and purchased separately. I got it from Home Depot. I got the baskets from Target.
Here’s the final result! It’s definitely full, but I can get so much more in there, see everything and our coats are not dragging on the floor anymore. I’m so happy with the results! All that’s left to do is get a new door installed.
I hope this inspires you to tackle a weekend project, to make it unique and to have some fun while you are at it! Thank you for being here! Please leave me a comment with any questions or stories about some of your projects.
