A New Room From Old Stuff

We (and by "we" I mean My Darling Husband) recently decided that the seventeen year old vinyl flooring in the utility room had to be replaced. While I agreed that the floor was in terrible condition, I would have placed several projects ahead of that one. But being the dutiful wife that you know I am, I went along with Andy's plan.

In our week of vacation, we (and this time I mean Andy and I!) moved the washer, dryer, deep freeze and toilet to the front porch (ever so lovely), tore out the vinyl, its plywood backer, and the hundreds of staples holding it to the subfloor, removed all the baseboards, laid laminate that looks like barnwood, painted the walls and all the trim, attended a couple of family gatherings, and still managed to spend two days at the lake! I'd say we made that vacation count! We did have to break down and ask one of the boys to come help us move everything back. We were just too tired and sore and sunburned to move the deep freeze and washer without some help!

I'm sure you are on pins and needles, waiting to see how the room turned out, so...

I love it! The walls are a color called High Noon, but we paper crafters know it as Baja Breeze. I think all the colors look great with the new floor!

This is what I see from the kitchen door. The bathroom only got flooring and a fresh coat on the trim. I'm not quite ready to cover my landscape yet.

The dark red on the doors is leftover from the dining room. I thought about painting the doors white, but I've always loved Baja Breeze with just about any shade of red. I planned on painting the green frame under the folding table red also, but I think a little touch of green works.

We wanted to get a piece of barnwood to mount the mop & broom holder, but I remembered this old red shelf from when the boys were little. There's a scrap left that we will hang above the dog food with hooks for their leashes.

The "LAUNDRY" sign is a fold-up ironing board, and Andy built the barnwood cabinets years ago with wood from an old barn that used to be in our back yard. 

I can't stand plain old plastic light switch covers, so I came up with an easy fix for this room. Pretty paper and Mod Podge! I used a digital paper from Crafty Secrets. It's the quilt paper from their sewing papers.

 I came home from an auction recently with a huge box of onion skin paper that came with the awesome heavy-duty guillotine paper cutter I bought, so I printed the quilt pattern on a sheet of that. I learned that if you use a very thin paper, you definitely need to spread your decoupage medium on the back of the paper, not the switch plate. My first one came out wrinkled because I put the Mod Podge on the plate first. Spreading the Mod Podge on the paper lets the paper stretch before it goes on the plate. Otherwise, the paper wrinkles when it gets wet. That is probably Rule #1 of decoupage, but I've never had a problem with wrinkles before so I wasn't aware of it. Let the Mod Podge dry and add a protective coat on top, then when that dries use a craft knife to cut away the extra paper around the edges and from the holes for the switches and outlets. See...easy!

This pic shows the light switch and outlet covers in the bathroom. These images are called Flower Art Prints, also from Crafty Secrets.

It's time for the monthly Linky Party at the Heartwarming Vintage blog, where there are always lots of ideas using Crafty Secrets items. I'm heading over as soon as I sign off here to show off my switch plate covers!

Believe it or not, the only money we spent on this redo was for the flooring. Everything else was leftover from other projects or re-used! Please share your inexpensive makeover stories!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!