Laundry Room Progress: Paint and Cabinets!

So much has happened in the laundry room the last few weeks, I'm excited to give you an overdue update. Last time I shared the renovation progress with you on the blog (Sidenote: I have started sharing quick project updates on instagram when I don't have too much time to blog--which has been frequently, lately. Do follow me there @chrislovesjulia!), we had just removed the walls to our former 4th bathroom and moved the washer hookups over here, vented the dryer out the roof and patched the floors.

Since then, we have drywalled and patched everything (although the center ceiling line where the wall used to be still needs some work), added recessed lighting, painted the walls, trim and door, and installed 3 of 4 cabinets!

Let's break it down a little bit, starting with paint. Once we had the drywall up and the walls patched--which was a doozy!--I went to town picking a paint color. This room, along with the master bath and Greta's bathroom, are the only rooms in the house without a giant window flooding the space with light--it doesn't help that I took these photos at night--but I really wanted to choose a light color for that purpose. Initially, we thought to just paint the laundry room the same color as the adjoining great room--Ben Moore's Hazy Skies. But, a test spot proved it was much too dark. It's the darkest green-y looking color in the photo below--not at all what it looks like in the great room--but, still a great lesson in showing that paint colors appear different in every space. It was clear Hazy Skies was not for the laundry room.

I also tested out Clark+Kensington's Richland  (the lighter green-y swatch) but I just felt meh about it. I started picturing the room as a whole and realized, there would be very little wall space showing. Plus, we have a stainless washer and dryer coming, beautiful wood countertops, a punchy rug in place--a warm white paint seemed like the way to go so some of the bigger elements could shine.  I actually chose the same white I color-matched to Ikea's Bodbyn cabinets--Valspar's Soft Wool in an eggshell finish for the walls and semi-gloss for the trim.

While I painted the walls, Chris painted the yellowed door with our paint sprayer (our one true love!) leading to the garage Ben Moore's Onyx in a satin finish--you may have caught that mesmerizing video on Instagram. What a difference that made! It looks like a brand new door and added a little drama to the room. I kind of think every room needs a little, or a lot, of black. We replaced the old doorknob with a simple black one to finish off the look.

As for the cabinets, we are using Ikea's new Sektion line and are so far, very impressed! We put the upper three cabinets together in 30 minutes--and hung them in another 20. We have one 15" wide base cabinet to install once our washer and dryer get here.

The only bummer is we misplaced (or didn't receive??) a set of cabinet door hinges--gah!! So, use your imagination for a minute on the right side. ;)

We opted for 40" tall cabinets with 30" cabinet doors so there's an open shelf along the bottom for quick grab things like dog treats and dryer sheets. Once we add the crown molding and trim out the sides, it will be seamless to the walls and ceiling.

There's always someone who asks if we can really reach up there. Yes. ;)

Since we are due to get the center lights for the ceiling today (!!), I'll hold off chatting about the recessed lights until we have those installed--I'll be back with that update later this week. Can you believe this same angle used to look like this?

I might just end every laundry room update with that picture--it's just the most exciting thing to see this vision come to fruition.