The laundry room - before and after

It's hard to believe that just six short months ago our new laundry room was our sole bathroom and looked like this.

And it got much worse looking as the reno went along - like when they had to tear out the walls and the entire floor and the ceiling in the kitchen below due to the woefully under-supported beams.

And we won't even mention the hideous old laundry room down in the corner of the basement, with its 6' ceilings and big furnace trunk that you had to duck under.

Oh, and the floor that forced you to rewash anything that you were unlucky enough to drop en route from the washer to the dryer. Not to mention having to drag the clothes down two flights of stairs, from the front of the house to the back, and then to the front again. It was as inconvenient as it could possibly get.

Now, we have a bright, clean space for doing laundry - on the floor where all the laundry is generated, no less. I'm so happy that I didn't listen to Alan when he protested about moving the laundry out of the basement and up to the second floor.

One unforeseen advantage to reno'ing this room was the upgrade to the trim surrounding the doors at the top of the stairs. While we had beautiful wide colonial moulding all around the main floor, like in many old houses it didn't continue into the private spaces on the second and third floors. The casings around the doors and windows were plain, narrow, and kind of banged up.

Now they're much more substantial and match the casings on the doors and windows on the main floor. And replacing the old doors with pocket doors was a great space savings idea.

We tiled the floor in the same grey slate tile that we used on the bathroom floor. The doors to the two rooms are adjacent at the top of the stairs, so it was important that they match so it didn't look too busy with three different floorings in a small area.

I whipped up a couple of simple panels for curtains, and used rings with clips to put them up on the rod.

We'll probably never close them, but they add a splash of colour to the room. 

I can't decide what's the most amazing part; the new machines that wash and dry so much more quickly than our old ones did, the new 8' long counter to use for folding as soon as the clothes come out of the dryer, or the fact that there's no more lugging clothes up and down two flights of stairs.

I'm so thrilled with how it turned out. It's almost a pleasure to do laundry now!