Laundry room project, Take 1

Today I began stripping wallpaper from the laundry room, which made me think of my childhood.

When I was a kid, my parents and my uncle jointly owned some property in the southend of the city---a house and a small apartment building.  I remember spending what seemed like oodles of time watching my parents paint walls when tenants would move out of the apartments and cut grass.

The house they purchased was in serious disrepair---as in there was a giant hole in the floor on the 2nd level which my brother and I were forever instructed to, "Stay away from."  As if we had any desire to break both legs plummeting onto the wood flooring below.  And whomever had owned the house had never, ever removed wallpaper before putting new wallpaper on top.  I can't scrape wallpaper and be anywhere near white vinegar without remembering helping my parents pull like 7 layers off.

There was exposed electrical wires everywhere on top of everything else, which made rubbing rags soaked with white vinegar and water a dicey activity.

It was with these memories floating through my head that I began one of my 2011 goals:  the laundry room redo.

We have lived in this house almost 10 years, and I put the wallpaper up shortly after closing.   Aside from being tired of it, it is just too cute for my personal taste.  Ten years ago I was a wee babe of 27--a person changes a whole heck of a lot in a decade, and choice of wallpaper is no exception.

I have slowly made practical/efficiency changes to the room--the bench, the shoe cubbies, the cabinets.  But now it is time for an aesthetic change.

This is the wallpaper, which is on one wall, and the border goes around the room.  It is country/cutesy and has to go.

This is the flooring.  Um, those 2 designs do not mesh well.  And it only took me almost 10 years to realize it.  I had thought about replacing the flooring, but that seemed an awful lot of expense.