Alright, I won’t keep you waiting any longer.  I’ve got the after shots of the laundry room coming up in this post! Exciting!

This room is crazy hard to photograph (it’s only got one window, it’s almost perfectly square and the entrance is stairs — I mean, it’s a basement), but I did my best.

Penny is the number-one photo bomber in our house.

You can see that we left a non-carpeted space by the back door.  Since we go in and out to the backyard here, we opted not to carpet that area to cut down on the dirt we’d be tracking in, and opted instead for an industrial welcome-mat to wipe muddy feet on.

The carpet squares we chose are seamless and a bit multi-colored.  Since there’s a bit of foot-traffic in this area, we thought that having something that wasn’t all one color would help hide dirt a bit better.  We originally were considering installing plank flooring down here, but determined that because the floor was so warped that it would be too much hassle or look crappy.  The carpet tiles ended up being a perfect solution because they were super easy to install, cover the flaws of the floor, make the space much cozier and act as a bit of soundproofing as well (always important when you’re renting and have neighbors!)KC has been using the space quite a bit to get work done lately.

We chose to paint the walls white because the room only has one window (which gets zero direct sunlight), it’s not the brightest space. The green walls, in addition to being ugly, sucked a lot of the light out of the space and made it feel very basement-y and unwelcome.  I wanted to brighten up the space and make it a bit warmer, so we chose a creamy white with just a hint of a yellow/peach undertone.  It offsets the bright white trim nicely, and makes the space seem larger and lighter as well.  (Note: I did take home at least 3 dozen paint cards from Home Depot and Ace trying to find the “perfect” white for the space.  It was really helpful to hold the swatches up against the trim during daylight hours to see how each would look on the walls.  It’s amazing how different whites are — some were “too white” and looked like paint primer, others were obviously pink when held up against the bright white trim, others were way too yellow or a tad green.  In the end, I narrowed the choices down to three, and eventually went with Behr’s Almond Cream.)

We opted to hang a (cheap) mirror over the couch to help the space look a little larger and to reflect the overhead light in the room — another trick to help lighten up the space on the cheap.

KC loves to be photographed.

Not bad for a budget redo, I think.  We’ve got some plans to spruce things up a little more with some pictures/artwork for the blank wall above KC’s head, and possibly the relocation of a TV (for extreme lounging), but that’s all down the line for now.

Here’s what we did to the space and the materials we used:

1. KC patched the giant hole in the wall using some kind of purple board patch and patch kit from Home Depot.
2. He filled in all the random holes with spackle and let it dry overnight.
3. We painted the walls Almond Cream by Behr (flat finish, paint + primer in one) — hooray, no more pukey-green paint!
4. Installed 2 packs of seamless carpet tiles in Toffee Tranquility (which I hated when I saw it in store, but like it now that it’s installed — also from Home Depot)

Notes — we bought a gallon of paint for this job, and opted for the paint and primer in one.  The paint and primer in one is clearly the way to go, especially if you’re trying to cover a dark color with a light one (or vice versa).  We did two solid coats of paint on the walls + some touch ups, and were left with barely any paint.  If you’re planning on painting a room that’s any larger than 10′ x 12′, you’ll probably need more paint than we bought.

If you have any questions about the materials we used or how we did the update, feel free to email me or leave me a comment 🙂