If a modern country laundry room can be a thing, that’s what we created for our Colonial Farmhouse.
The transformation of this modern country laundry room only took us 3 months, 13 days, and, oh fine…a while. It took us a good long while to finish. Either this project was more tedious than we originally anticipated or we actually found a life and hobbies outside of working on this house.
Yeah…you’re not going to believe we have actual hobbies, so this project was probably just tedious…as all good projects are.
Almost four years ago our laundry room looked like this.
Sexy, wasn’t it?
That photo was taken on the day we moved in. Those were not our clothes hanging in that picture but I am thankful the previous owner was considerate enough to leave clean clothes and not dirty clothes.
It made them easier to wear donate.
The problem with our laundry room was not the color palate or the farm animals stenciled on the wall. Those, my friends, were opportunities waiting to be painted over.
The problem with our laundry room was that the floor had deteriorated under the washer and dryer. It needed to be replaced. Sections of the drywall needed to be replaced. The washing machine was on its last leg and every day it continued to work made us feel lucky enough to consider buying a lottery ticket.
We should have bought that lottery ticket.
New washers and dryers aren’t cheap!
So to all the kids out there who want to grow up in a hurry, I implore you to slow down. All that’s waiting for you is a bedtime that’s not as late as you think it’s going to be, an unending amount of laundry, and washers and dryers to buy.
Oh, but you can eat ice cream whenever you want and only your doctor will yell at you for that, so maybe adulthood isn’t all bad.
After we fixed the rotten floor so that we didn’t inadvertently end up with a laundry room in the basement, we set to work improving the drywall situation.
Our Colonial Farmhouse doesn’t have a lot of drywall. Most of the walls are plaster. However, everywhere we do have drywall it doesn’t look that great. Either it wasn’t installed well or it has been damaged. Lucky us.
Instead of replacing the bad drywall in this laundry room with good drywall, we added wainscoting.
If you’re going to give me the choice between the relatively easy job of installing boring drywall and the relatively hard job of creating and installing custom wainscoting, the answer is always going to be to give me more work.
It’s no wonder creating a modern country laundry room took us so long.
Yes, we cut and routered our own wainscoting with a custom profile.
Why would we torture ourselves this way? You read the part where we don’t have hobbies, right?
Here’s the actual deal.
There are people with new houses that try to make them look old by adding character in various ways.
Then there are people like us with a house that is over 200 years old and we are trying not to make our old house look too new when we update it.
The modern part of this modern country laundry room doesn’t come from the wall treatment or the decor. It comes from the fact that we have electricity and a new washer and dryer with wifi that sends us a message on an app when a load is complete.
I don’t know why we need that but this is what the world has come to. A doctor yells at you for eating too much ice cream and your dryer yells at you to empty the lint trap.
It’s good to be an adult.
Joking aside, we chose to create custom wainscoting to match the wainscoting in the adjacent kitchen area. The two rooms are spatially connected and it made sense to further visually connect them with the wainscoting.
Since the wainscoting we were trying to match was not something that could be purchased off the shelf (we checked), we did our best to recreate it.
Please ignore the squiggly lines at the bottom of the wainscoting. Those were practice pieces. We needed a lot of practice.
Wood is too expensive to waste, so we installed the practice pieces where they would be covered by trim. Only you, me, and the rest of the internet know this little secret.
Now, you might be wondering what the back of our wainscoting looks like.
You weren’t? That’s okay. I just needed a segue, so pretend you were curious for a second.
You’re looking at the back of our wainscoting! It’s hiding in plain sight in these pictures.
The wall on the other side of this new wainscoting is the kitchen with the original wood wainscoting. When we ripped off the bad drywall, I saw how pretty the back of the wainscoting looked. Given how deep this wall just so happened to be, I knew it was a sign that we needed an inset shelf or two.
Inset wall shelves would give us additional storage. We live in an old house and extra storage is what you get excited about when you’re an adult. Try not to be jealous, kids.
Speaking of kids, before you yell at me about having laundry products on a shelf so low to the ground, let me reassure you that I do not have young children or rambunctious pets.
The only time my kids are going to get into the laundry detergent is when they are doing their own laundry.
I have discovered there are some perks to having older kids.
We took down a large hanging rod that was in this laundry room because it was blocking the view out the window.
If I didn’t want to block the window, the only available wall for a new hanging rod was behind the washer and dryer.
While I do hang up something to dry with almost every load, I don’t actually need a ton of hanging rod space. I opted to install, just to the side of the washer and dryer, a smaller, wall-mounted hanging rod that gave off fancy yet modern vibes.
Oh, hey! Another thing to add to the list of reasons why this modern country laundry room is modern.
This gold hanging rod will also fold flat to the wall when not in use. That seems like a trick just to show off because I don’t know where the hangers go if the rod is folded flat to the wall. I have extra storage but not that much extra storage here. Sheesh.
Oh, and thank you for noticing my gold metal hangers.
I really do feel fancy now while I’m doing laundry like Cinderella.
I may not have glass slippers but I do have a prince who made my modern country laundry room dreams come true!
We are thrilled that our modern country laundry room is complete.
We are very careful about the changes we make to this old house. It has plenty of character, so we don’t need to go out of our way to add unnecessary flourishes. However, we do want to put our stamp on this home. There are some opportunities, like with this laundry room, where it feels like we can finish the work someone else started.
You’d never know that our laundry room wainscoting is newer than the kitchen wainscoting. It looks like it always has been there and that makes us happy.
What do you think of our modern country laundry room? I’d love to know. (Unless you hate it, then mums the word!) You can always comment below, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.
Products Used In This Modern Country Laundry Room
Wainscoting Color: Khaki shade by Behr in semi-gloss
Baskets: Thrifted
Art: Thrifted
Rug: Old, HomeGoods
Washer and Dryer: LG TurboWash 360
Clear 1/2 Gallon Jug For Detergent
Glass Canister With Lid: Old
*affiliate links in this blog post*
Thanks for reading today’s blog post! I know you’re busy so it means a lot that you took the time to read all the way to the end. If you’re sad to go, I have another blog post you might enjoy.
The Age Our Kids Start Doing Their Own Laundry Plus A Hamper Makeover