Art by Isabel

Wow, it’s been some time that I’ve sat down and had time to blog. These days though school is back in session my paintbrushes have not been touched, I have found myself trying to keep up with my garden beds which I have to weed and mulch (I’ll give an update on those in my second post), and doing laundry, lots of laundry, Covid19 really has flourished my need to do laundry. I do love freshly laundered clothes, the smell of laundered clothes is the most relaxing smell, so much that there are candles with that scent. However, I hate doing laundry and my laundry room was a complete mess with the wire shelves, no laundry sink, no cabinets, and no style. So the first thing was to get a sink in there, I have never installed one, and had no idea how to go about it. I came across… House Doctor Ray on youtube, this was the best video explanation to install a sink :). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ6LAWQLhwU

I started shopping for a laundry room sink, it was already pre-plumb and it was a priority. I wanted something nice with a cabinet but not too expensive, I came across one online at Home Depot with free delivery. So, I ordered it and all the components that I needed based on the youtube video. A few days later the cabinet arrived and it arrived like everything else, with “pandemic delivery”, damaged. Now, I had to shove it in the Suburban and take it to Home Depot, I exchanged it with no problems, but could have purchased it at the physical store from the get-go. I was trying to avoid the cumbersome process of going to the store. So, now that I had the cabinet at home I was able to visualize the space.

Now I felt that a laundry room complete makeover had to happen, I wanted it to be cozy, something that felt like me. I had ordered some tiles that were on clearance, 16 – 8×8 tiles for my front door threshold, they were ceramic tiles made to look like the cement tiles with the design that were or are a fad, these were made in Turkey and have a nice weight to them, but anyways few arrived broken and I would not have enough.

I was stuck with these tiles and I knew I wanted to use them because I really loved the look and besides I still had a good amount to use. I started searching the web for ideas, I originally wanted a white laundry room but all the pictures on the web made me realize that they kind of looked like a mental hospital, a little too sterile for me. I needed an environment with a little color but not too much, one that I would feel comfortable, and happy to be in. Not being sure where to start and went back to Home Depot to look for tiles for my original project, and sure enough, I found more cheap tiles. These were really cute, had to buy them, they were sheets of small white matte hexagon tiles, I purchased 10 sheets. I brought them home and I was stuck again with tiles that I had no idea where I would use them. Oh, I forgot to mention that prior to the purchase of the Turkey tiles I had purchased some glass tiles, 6 boxes – 10 in a box because they were a buck and some a box. Okay, so here we are with this collection of tiles…

So, for about a week I stared at pictures on the web and stared at the tiles and no ideas would spark in my head how to use these. So, I ended up putting the tiles aside and went ahead and managed to install the sink and cabinet combo. Then, I had to run out to Lowes to buy some bare wood cabinets and a board as pictured below.

I decided to add a small counter to be able to place stuff on and the cabinets I ended up buying were upper wall cabinets that I stacked, they fit the size specs that I needed. I started playing with the tiles again to figure out the placement.

I stained and waxed the cabinets with Annie Sloan Wax and got more brilliant ideas :).

The shelf goes up with the help of my husband, the board weighs 45 lbs, I never want to do that again.

Tiling begins and I’m on my way it was a long and tedious tiling process but, I managed to complete it. Here are some of the highlights of the process.

The tiles were up except a few little ones, but I began grouting because I became impatient. I had not grouted for a while and did end up with some sections that I was not too happy with.