Upcoming Projects & A Nearly Complete Laundry Room

Now that our living room is nearly complete (still deciding on all the trim), we have a lot more time to focus on other projects in the house. And right now, we're kind of juggling a few because that's apparently how we do things.

Our biggest priority is getting our upstairs laundry room done, and we're so close. We could potentially have this done by next week if we really push. But more realistically, we're looking at the end of September because we have to build out some shelves, and we also leave for vacation very early on Saturday and I don't think I'll have the time to get them all stained by then. We also ordered the flooring for this space, and it's not scheduled to be here until right before we leave, so it may not be meant to be until after we get back from Martha's Vineyard (yay for the ocean!).

But if you remember, our new laundry room, which is really more like a laundry closet, is part of our upstairs bathroom installation/new guest room project that we started earlier this Spring. We had one big guest room that we chopped up into a smaller guest room, bathroom and laundry room. Currently, our laundry situation is a downstairs half bath/pantry thing off the kitchen, and the toilet sits so close to the dryer, that the dryer door only opens less than halfway. It's been fun! And since Josh does most of the laundry, he's so motivated and excited to get this done. I'll do a quick before and a current status photo for you so you can see where we're at.

The laundry closet was an actual closet in the guest room - the size was perfect for our washer/dryer, so very little framing work needed to be done. Demolition work, however, was another story.

Laundry closet is drywalled! We'll be painting it this weekend, and then we need to build some shelving, and actually move our washer/dryer up the stairs (that's the part I'm stressed about). 

And our guest bathroom project took a back seat to the laundry and living rooms because it's not completely necessary since we still have our master bath and our downstairs half bath. But having a dryer door that opens is necessary, which is why we pushed the laundry room up in priority. But, the guest bath has plumbing, electrical and a tub! And the double vanity we picked out also got delivered a while back, which has been sitting in our garage, waiting for me to paint it. So, I'm kind of thinking this may not get done until right around Thanksgiving, which is a lot longer than we thought, but it's all good. I've learned that things always take about three times longer than you originally think and I'm a much more patient person (kinda) than a year ago when we started this house renovation stuff.

Finally, on our radar is the second phase of our kitchen. This is kind of unplanned, and we just decided last night, spur of the moment, that we were going to tackle it. I was getting really tired of our ceiling, so for the past two weeks, I've been thinking of ways to upgrade it so that it went with our new white cabinets that we painted last summer. I had a lot of "for now" ideas that I liked and were quick fixes, but ideally, we both wanted a wood-planked ceiling with pendant lights. All the ideas we came up with were only temporary, so after a lot of back and forth, and examining our current ceiling's structure, we just decided it was time to completely revamp the existing ceiling into the one we truly want for the long haul. Thankfully, the project is very straight forward and it can likely be done in a weekend if we get all our prep work out of the way (as in, cutting and staining a bunch of wood pieces). But, it's so exciting because it'll really pull our kitchen together and finally look like a cohesive space (as opposed to an updated white kitchen with some old, outdated elements scattered throughout).

We also decided to replace the oak doors for our pantry and half bath, which are off of the kitchen, and that'll rid the space of all the remaining oak, which is what has been driving us both crazy (me more so than Josh, but still).

Lastly, we decided to cut out the current backsplash and paint it white. Replacing the countertops, sink and backsplash are just not in our budget right now because of the upstairs projects we have going on, but the sandy beige backsplash just bothers me. And last night, around 9 p.m. we just started to rip it out - and it felt amazing. We'll have to patch the wall with some joint compound and sand it down because the adhesive that was used on it tore up the drywall a little. But oh-my-god, it'll look so much better.

Here's what our kitchen ceiling and backsplash currently look like:

I started to prime the beams as part of one of my other for now plans. SO happy I don't have to do that now.

Our current countertops have that little ledge that goes up to the backsplash, so we can't take that part off.
But we can take the rest of it off, which is our plan for now.

So excited to have a plain white backsplash soon!

And here's our inspiration for our kitchen ceiling:

Photo courtesy of Christina's Adventures. Our ceiling will likely be a little darker,
and we'll be doing glass pendant lights with some recessed lighting, too.

Our five-year plan for the kitchen is to install white quartz countertops, a white apron-front farmhouse sink and a white subway tile backsplash. Then, then, our kitchen will be complete. But I'm really excited about these small little updates will make a pretty big difference without breaking the bank.

So, like usual, here we go again!