Every laundry room needs a zombie bar – you know, that bar that is so sturdily built it could withstand a zombie apocalypse (the question being why you’d be in that room to survive is neither here nor there…). Our laundry room came with beige and brown linoleum floors, to match the reddish oak cabinets and beige walls. The sink was a vinyl sink with a low faucet. I was grateful there was a utility sink but the faucet’s functionality could have been improved. I wanted to give this room a bright refresh as one of our last downstairs rooms to redo.
Here is the before:
This is room #2 that Ryan ventured out in complete DIY. He did the entire room, from removing linoleum, installing new tile and backsplash, installing cabinets and knobs and pulls, installing the sink, and the best part is the custom-built-in-place shelf and the zombie bar, er, drying bar.
Here is our after:
And this image will hopefully help you fully appreciate the zombie bar:
We found a local cabinet distributor who had ready to order cabinets that nearly matched the custom paint/custom build cabinets we have in our kitchen. These were great for the cost, with full plywood frames and no MDF. Ryan was able to install those with (a teeny bit) of help from me. We picked a ceramic tile that is light grey wood grain. We carried that through our nearby bathroom as well.
For counters, I wanted white and bright. We selected the whitest white quartz counters and white subway backsplash. The walls are Benjamin Moore Balboa Mist, which is a light greige I’ve used in several rooms in this house and in our last house.
With this year of stay home orders and the many, many days I wear stretchy yoga pants or other comfy joggers, this zombie, er, drying bar has been a huge help to dry our clothes. We purchased this heavy duty rod to use in this space. I have bins that I can use on the upper and lower shelves, but we don’t actually need that space for much and I prefer it near empty to offset the sometimes chaos of kid hats and coats everywhere. I keep some towels there (those are actually from Target, and we got those and the hand towels for a wedding gift 15 years ago – way to hold up, Target hand towels!!). These are pretty and similar with a deep blue color throughout. I also like a fresh smell to walk into, and use a diffuser from West Elm. The tiny white vase with succulent is from TJ Maxx, but this is a similar one and a much cuter vase. Maybe I will upgrade!
For hat storage, I use grey plastic similar to these bins. We have one for hats and one for gloves during the winter, which is being repurposed for face masks right now. We’ve actually managed to keep bins for each of our kids shoes tidy and in their own bins, and use ones similar to these. I like the industrial look of the shoe baskets and dirt doesn’t get trapped inside. On the wall across from the sink wall, we installed two side-by-side of these white coat hooks and leather sitting bench from Wayfair we use to put shoes on.
In June, we went through our kitchen and laundry room to update all the pulls and knobs. We had been repurposing the knobs that came original to the house, along with cup pulls we had in our last house that worked. But I love these new ones! I actually bought and returned several options from Restoration Hardware, Rejuvenation and these with different types of finishes from Amazon until I settled on these. We’ll share more about how we updated pulls, including how we dealt with different sized holes when our old pull sizes didn’t match the new pulls in another post.
As we continue to think about updating our kitchen counters and lighting, we’ll probably update the faucet and sink in the kitchen, and carry that through to the laundry room since we use the same faucets in both rooms. Stay tuned for updates!
