One Room Challenge Week 1: Planning a laundry room makeover

I've always been so interested in One Room Challenge and this round I decided to hurry up and start a blog (which I've been meaning to do) and a website (which I've also been meaning to do) just so I could take part! 

For those of you who aren't familiar, One Room Challenge, or ORC, is a bi-annual event where bloggers have six weeks to transform any room of their choice. Each week, we will post updates and share our progress, setbacks, and changes that have occurred along the way. This event is hosted by Linda at Calling It Home and media partner House Beautiful. I'm so excited to take part in this event and also a bit nervous as well!

For this challenge I have chosen to give my laundry room a much needed makeover. When we have friends and family over, everyone comes in through the garage and that means they walk right into the laundry room. Its a really small space but its the first impression for guests a lot of the time; which is a bummer, because its not so pretty. I plan to change that. Also, we keep the door open A LOT and you can see into our laundry room from the kitchen. It drives me crazy to look in and see the bottles of detergent, etc. I know that the nicer I make a space, the more likely we all are to keep it neat. I'm so excited for this room to change from a space I want to hide into a space I want to share! 

Here is my laundry room as it is now. Small, disorganized, and not very functional. The clothes that are hanging are down onto the washer and dryer because the shelf just isn't high enough to hang the clothes properly. Everything is out in the open and I have nowhere to hide anything. There is also no place for me to fold or sort laundry.   

Needs some work!

The game plan: We are going to add two gray cabinets I found online from Home Depot to hide allllll the ugly laundry room things. I found gorgeous brass cabinet pulls from Rejuvenation for the doors to give these stock cabinets a more custom and high end look.

Between the cabinets we will install a wooden dowel rod so I can hang clothes to dry. I love light wood with gray so we may just keep it unstained and give it a coat of sealer and call it a day.

For the wooden countertop, we are going to get oak plywood and cut it to fit the space. I want the countertop to look thick and substantial so we'll mount a 2" strip of plywood to the front to make it appear as if its a really chunky piece of wood. Tricky, tricky. I'll stain or seal this to match the dowel rod. 

I keep going back and forth with whether or not I want to paint the walls or just keep them as is. They're a really light green that almost looks grey so I'm nervous the cabinets will be too close in color if I don't paint. I'd LOVE to do wallpaper but the walls are textured and i'm not sure if we will have the time to apply a skimcoat and then wallpaper as well. I've never wallpapered, but my mom has, and I would have to bribe her with something pretty dang good to get her to do it! Hah! BUT- I have seen some gorgeous stenciled walls that look like wallpaper that could get me around using bribery to get this room done in time. Or I can always just paint the walls white which would really brighten this small room up and make my cabinets and decor pop. Hmm...did I just talk my self into painting? Probably. Gonna wait and see how the cabinets look with the walls and then I'll decide what to do. But I smell paint in my future at the very least. ;) 

For now, we are waiting on items to arrive (and the weekend to come) and then we can get started! This should be a fairly easy (I hope) room to complete and it'll make such a huge impact! I'm so excited!!

Here is my mood board for this project: 

Be sure to check back each week to see our progress and updates. I'll post a photo each week on my instagram account as well to keep you in the loop. So excited to be participating as a Guest Participant in this year's ORC! Click on my post title to check out the other bloggers and see what's happening with the ORC. There is TONS of amazing inspiration over there!