One Room Challenge / the laundry room week 5

Its week five of the One Room Challenge and I can't wait until reveal week next week! If you are just catching up, Linda of Calling it Home hosts a challenge where bloggers redo one space in 6 weeks. Its a fun way to have accountability to finish a project and a great way to get your fill of design inspo. Check out WEEK 1, WEEK 2, WEEK 3 and WEEK 4 to see our laundry room which started out with holes to our crawl space below the house and open studs on one wall that we lived with FOR A YEAR. Too long I know.  

Sooo we are actually done with the laundry room. I know- I'm way too much of an overacheiver (NOT). We actually got done with the space early so Sophie could come photograph it and have time to edit the pictures. What really happened was me begging Sophie to help me and she graciously offering to save me since this room gets no natural light and I am not a good photographer by any stretch of the imagination. Side note: If you are just hearing about Sophie stop everything and go stalk her. She's an incredibly talented photographer and I've known her for a really long time -her older sister is one of my best friends and has been for 15 years.  Sophie is the type of girl who you meet and immediately want to be best friends with, she is so genuine and love and joy just ooze out of her. She takes all my pictures of the twins and makes me weep with how beautiful all the images are.  

But this week I am sharing about two of my favorite DIY projects that we did for this space, the DIY Dutch Door and the DIY electrical panel cover. 

So this is the door we started out with. A hollow core door from the previous owner that I painted black. It also had a cat door in the bottom since she kept her cat food in the laundry room (I guess?). We don't have cats so I was ready to give that door the boot. I started thinking about a DIY dutch door. I loved the idea of being able to put Rowan (our golden retriever) up when guests come over. I thought a dutch door would be perfect so she could still see out and I could keep an eye on her - and it turned out even better then I saw it in my head. Don't you love when that happens?

So we checked our local salvage yard and found a door for $15. We cut it in half and flipped it actually (originally the larger panel was on top). Luke put a 2x4 in the top part of the bottom panel for support and we caulked and sanded. It was actually an easier project then I thought it was going to be. I procrastinated on the hardware and ended up finding all the parts on Amazon Prime.

I used this doorknob, this latch and this ring pull all in black and it all looks great together.

 The other project I was so excited about was the DIY electrical panel cover. This is what we started with, yikes. 

I had seen on One Kings Lane (via pinterest) where they used a frame and a hinge to hide a thermostat and I decided to try to design a panel along the same idea. We ordered a MDF patterned panel from Outwater and Luke built a frame for it. 

We inserted the patterned panel and put a 1/8" hardboard backing and used a hinge to attach it to the frame. I painted the same color as the wall color and it adds such a fun little detail. 

Little details like this make me SO HAPPY. 

Hide ugly electrical panel, check!

After finishing these two projects over the weekend the rest of the room came together really fast with art and accessories that I had been buying and (impatiently) waiting to place. We love the finished product and I can't wait to show you next Thursday!