Let’s call this duck a duck, shall we?!
This is a sort of reveal. It’s nothing fancy. It’s not designery. It’s not Pinteresty. Don’t get all excited. It’s a real life tucked-away-in-the-basement-laundry area. It’s a duck.
The thing is…I am super glad we have it available for our basement dwellers (that makes it sound like they are hobbits but in reality, they are just friends that needed a place to stay while they were in a transition) and it started off as a storage area so having laundry hook ups are a great thing. Nobody wants to share my upstairs half-finished laundry room….trust. me.
So the space started off as just a place we threw a bunch of randoms.
Back in January we found out they were moving in and we did an entire basement clean out. It was crazy and disgusting and awesome.
We decided that we did still need some storage down there and we divided the basement walkway area in half….part for our holiday and emergency storage….part for our guests to use and to put in a laundry nook. I painted the concrete floor to make it a little nicer and then we put up a ‘pallet wall’ to divide this walkway. Since it has doors on both ends, it works to have it as separate spaces.
Last time you saw it, it looked like this….this would be the home of the future laundry nook.
And now it looks like this….
When we did all the plumbing and electrical stuff, we made sure that we could fit in a washer and dryer right here and have it ready for our current and any future guests. These are our friends washer and dryer but we do think that we will keep our eyes peeled for inexpensive appliances for this area….to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t mind having two sets!
Honestly, I wish we had the resources (time, money, energy, babysitters, etc.) to finish this space to the nines but in reality, that is just not the goal of a get-it-done project like this. I had to limit myself to know exactly what we could put in and how quickly it could happen. The clean out and the floor and the hookups were obviously the most important elements just so that our friends could immediately start laundry when they moved in. The rest was more ‘wants’ than ‘needs’.
I did come up with a basic list of things that could make any laundry area more comfortable….here’s what I put on that list….a small rug, some hooks, and a shelf or cabinet. This old rug has been in my storage pile for a couple years (it’s from Home Goods) and I threw it down.
The cabinetry is REALLY old…it’s from Ikea and we bought it probably six years ago at a heavy discount (funny because we originally bought it when we lived in our old house for our basement laundry area and we never even installed it!). Since it’s their discontinued Akurum line, we crossed our fingers when we headed to Ikea to buy the hanging rail (thankfully they do still sell those!) and for $5 we installed both ‘boxes’ really quickly.
This kinda storage is great because then it frees up the top of the washer and dryer to be a folding area.
If I did one more thing, it would be finish that back wall….maybe one day if I find a good gallon of oops paint I will give it a coat or two. Maybe I’ll wait to have this baby first
The hooks I added were actually curtain tie-backs. I found them years ago at the Pottery Barn outlet (they are West Elm brand) and they were discounted to three dollars each. I think they are perfect for things that need a hanger and they are slightly deeper than a normal hook so they can hold a little more.
So that is our little basement laundry nook. Not super fancy but functional and for a secondary utility area…totally meets the needs. Who knows…maybe one day I will just make this the boys laundry area and they can do their own stinky socks and underwear and dirt ridden uniforms! That would be smart, right?!
Oh and because I know that some folks will ask this….with any dryer, you need a vent, right?! So I will share tomorrow how we vented this interior dryer and how it was super simple!
Happy Monday!
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