How long can a family of three go without a washing machine?

Because everyone loves a "BEFORE" picture, here's our laundry room (mine comes complete with a husband and a toddler in a sink)

We use it as a catch all when we come into the house from the garage.  We store coats, boots, reusable grocery bags and a host of other things in this room.  Oh and we do laundry there too.

When we bought this house the owners were adamant about keeping their washer and dryer.  We had never had to buy any new appliances in our last house, so we were kind of pumped about buying a major appliance that would suit our needs rather than the needs of previous owners.  The laundry room is 8x6 with a sink so we figured we had carte blanche when it came to finding the right size.

You know what happens when you assume?  Well I'll tell you.

Remember how I mentioned that the old owners did some "creative problem-solving" when it came to home repair? The laundry room is no exception. In one corner there is a strange built out area.  There is some floor trim that runs from the floor up the wall and terminates in a weird built out box.  I'll be frank with you.  We cannot figure out what the purpose of this trim is.  We suspect it is concealing some sort of horror and neither of us wanted to open that Pandora's box.

The strange trim takes up just enough space that the washing machine could not fit snugly into the corner (you can see how much it jut out in the first picture). Given how we use the room it made sense to put some effort into it.

The solution seemed simple enough: ditch this eyesore of a sink and put in a new smaller one that would allow enough space for the washer to be pushed all the way back.

For your viewing pleasure I present the old sink:

Note the pipe cleaner  child-proofing improvisation (actually effective, if you can believe it)

When we removed the old sink we discovered this underneath it:

Peel'n'stick tiles that covered this vinyl faux-tile flooring.  The peel'n'stick tiles weren't in good shape as it was, and with a smaller sink, the vinyl would be exposed.  We I decided we my husband should tile the floor, in spite of the fact that neither of us had ever tiled before.  On top of that I decided I wanted a back splash behind the new sink.

 

Up it all came:

 

But what to put down?

Laundry Room Inspiration Board

The tile in the upper right corner was what we bought originally.  It reads very tan/beige in that photo but in reality it is a very cool grey.

By the time we had painted two coats of Benjamin Moore's November Rain we realised the tile didn't quite go.  The wall colour was so perfect that it actually made more sense to lug 200lbs of tile back to Home Depot than it did to repaint a small room.  I just knew I would kick myself later on if I didn't listen to my gut.

 

Benjamin Moore's November Rain

 

Without further ado I present to you these beautiful glossy tiles that so perfectly matched November Rain the tile guy at Home Depot was actually astounded (I may be slightly over-stating his reaction to the match).

Ahhhh... much better.  As you can see, we've already laid the tile.  Come back again this week for an update everything that went right and everything that went wrong with it!

Happy DIY'ing!