When we last left off, we had just installed the peel and stick flooring in the laundry room.
New Laundry Room Floor
This weekend, we tackled one portion of the wall. It had exposed studs so we had several options on how to make it more “wall like”.
- Dry wall: This would be preferable and possibly a good first place to tackle drywalling, but neither of us wanted to tackle it at this point in time. Plus, we wouldn’t be able to fit drywall sheets in the car and we would need new power tools.
- Large faux beadboard sheets: This was what we headed to Lowes to look for until we realized these wouldn’t fit in the car either.
Feeling defeated, we walked around Lowes for another 10 minutes or so until we came across another beadboard option that came in narrower plank sheets. They were similar to hardwood floor planks in that they had a tongue and groove locking mechanism.
We did some quick math and estimated that we needed 4 packages. At $22 for a package of 6 planks, they certainly weren’t as cheap as drywall. But not having to buy new tools and knowing that we could probably install them easily was worth the price differential. Plus, we wouldn’t need to prime and paint!
Anywho, this is how the walls looked on Saturday morning. We removed the rickety old cabinet and the pencil sharpener.
Despite the packaging stating that this product should not be screwed directly to studs, we decided not to heed the warning. Since we’re only dealing with the laundry room, we don’t need heavy duty walls and we didn’t care that the walls might sound hollow.
One of the beadboard planks
These were very easy to install by the way. We used liquid nails to initially stick in place and then nailed directly to the studs using finishing nails.
Faux Beadboard Walls
We used our jig saw to make some cuts to get around an outlet and support beam:
It just over an hour for us (and by “us” I mean Brian) to hang up all the boards:
Insta-walls!
Now that we have walls on 3 sides of the laundry room, we need to figure out how to disguise all the exposed plumbing, an oil tank, and our water heater. We also need to install trim around the baseboard and around the door. The latter will hopefully be done by next weekend. The former….well, if you have any ideas let me know! I’m currently lusting over this picture on Pinterest. We also have exposed pipes in the ceiling (I’m dreaming of a dropped ceiling….probably not going to happen in the near future!)
Have you tackled a similar project lately? Or seen something on Pinterest that I might be able to try out? Comment below!
So I totally had to leave a comment (even though I know this post is old) – thank you sooooooo much for sharing this transformation with the public – I found you by googling “unfinished laundry room” or something similar – while my wish would be a laundry room like the ones posted on pinterest…sigh, my contractor brought me back to reality when he said it would cost over $10k (not including a new washer and dryer – which we need). So that led me to try to “finish” our laundry room DIY style and on a budget. Our laundry room looks very similar to your “before” picture – messy concrete floors, brown studded walls – unfinished ceilings.
Love what you have done and it is perfect for my family’s needs :)
Thanks again!
Megan
That’s so sweet of you Megan! In the end, a “partially” finished laundry room really is a better option in terms of accessing plumbing, electrical etc. Our pipes have been leaking on and off all year so thank god we didn’t have dry wall to have to cut through!! :-)
OHH so pretty I love the beadboard can not wait to see the whole room when you are done!
Looks wonderful! Great idea for how to cover the cross beams. We have a similar problem in every closet in our house! Don’t think we’d need something that looks as good as yours, but this is certainly inspiring to get going on our closets!
Looking good so far… can’t wait to see the next stage!
Thanks Robyn! I’m excited to have a room I don’t dread going in to!! :-)