Laundry Room Tweak!

I'm falling down on my blogging job.  It's been almost two weeks since my last post!  If I don't watch it, I may get fired!

I live in a small fifty-year-old wood frame house in the country, and there's really no architectural design to speak of, other than rectangular boxiness with scrolly cabinetry with cool iron hinges in the kitchen.

The walls in the living room, kitchen, dining room, and laundry room were all covered in blonde faux wood paneling which causes nails to bounce back at you when you are trying to hammer them in.  One of the first things I did after we moved in back in 1986 was to paint over all that paneling.

In the past 28 years (has it really been that long?  Gasp!), we have made many improvements on the little house, including adding a much larger master bedroom and bath, as well as a front porch and a deck, but the house is still small and not at all modern.

But I am a vintage soul, which is rather stylish these days, so I love my little home.  Mostly.  There are a few areas that bug me.

One is the far wall in my laundry room.
It's a teeny room only big enough for the washer and dryer, the back door, the door to the kitchen, and the door to the utility closet.  The water heater sits in the corner next to the washer and dryer with its huge wires spidering across the wall, installed by men who didn't give a hoot for esthetics, leaving the lady of the house to throw up her hands in despair and hope no one entering or leaving would notice.

Could the gigantic holes for those heavy cables be hidden behind the water heater itself?  Or lower toward the floor?  Probably.  But I've never been able to interest anyone in trying to relocate them.  This is what I have lived with for 28 years.


I used to be embarrassed for folks to see my home without some major cleaning or sprucing, but one good thing about getting older is you realize that it is what it is.

See those big lines going across the baseboards, not to mention the squirrely gray (partially painted yellow) wires going every which way across the wall?  The paint has come off the slick gray paneling in the middle.  I don't remember what I had there to make it scrape off.  What's a girl to do?

I did put a pretty basket in front of the baseboard.  It's handy for catching dirty towels and mail that needs to be burned.
(Yes, we burn the things that many people shred.  Country folks are a bit pyromaniacal, I suppose.)


And that's how it stayed for a long time.  
A very long time.  Years!
Until I finally had a brainstorm!
I needed some shutters to lean against that wall to hide those unsightly wires!

Next time I went to Canton First Monday I was on a mission to find some suitable shutters.  They had to be just so high and just so wide.
And then I found the perfect solution.
An old screen door!  It was short enough and narrow enough for that space.  It must have been in a hobbit house.  (I'm kidding.)


It didn't hide everything, but it was white, chippy, the screen was torn in places, and it begged for decoration!


I had some child's pantalettes I had been saving so I hung those on the door.
Then. . .


. . .I added an Australian cowboy hat to the corner.  And finally. . .


A chalkboard-painted canvas hung over the basket.  

Although everything isn't quite hidden, the eye is drawn to the screen door.
I am pleased with the results.
I just don't know why it took me so long to think of doing something with that space!

What do you think?  Is there an ugly space in your home you need to cover up?

XOXO






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