A Cozy Laundry Room

Another mini-upgrade is now in place in the laundry room:

Any guesses?

No idea what I'm talking about? Look down:

A new rug!

I've been struggling with the flooring in the laundry room. It's easily my least favorite room in the house. The ceiling isn't finished, the floors are dingy, and there are BUGS. I think I've made it clear how I feel about bugs in this post. I want to make it better, so I did a few small upgrades here to make it feel a bit more integrated and cozy. The floor is concrete like a garage, but it does have yellow paint on it (slightly visible in the upper left corner of the above photo). Yellow may have been the worst choice possible. It's so light that it's easily tarnished by paint droplets, dirt, and anything else that creeps it's way into the laundry room.

I consulted with my stepmom Tammy of Houpt's Carpet Outlet. We discussed possibly doing Flexitec in this room. Tammy informed me that it wouldn't be a good idea to put any flooring product (Flexitec or otherwise) under the hot water tank and heat system. I thought instead of doing flooring, I would do an epoxy treatment like you would do for a garage.

My friend Mansi had the fantastic suggestion to add a rug for some foot comfort without the commitment to covering the entire floor. I thought a 4x6 or 5x7 rug should do the trick. The one problem: I'm cheap. I looked at several places, including discount stores like TJ Maxx and found rugs ranging from $50-$300. This was a bigger financial commitment than I was willing to make for my laundry room rug. I wanted something neutral to match my curtains (seen in the corners of the above photo and on my prior post here and cheap, my #1 prerequisite.

While doing some Christmas shopping on Black Friday, my mom and I went to Big Lots. I have to say that Big Lots is one of my all time favorite stores. They were even having a promotion, buy $50 worth of products and get a $10 coupon redeemable in December. I found my rug for... wait for it... $19! It was a 5x7 rug for $19!!! Are you amazed? Me too. I thought my search for the perfect rug was doomed to fail. No, Big Lots you saved me. And I thank you. They had several other options for $29 as well, so if you're looking for a rug start with Big Lots!

That's the story of a tiny laundry room upgrade in way too many words. There's still more work to come in this space: added shelving/functional storage, epoxy treatment on the floors (I'll still probably do this at a later date), and finishing off the ceiling with a drop ceiling (?). More details on that as I get around to it... :)