Project 26: Painting the Utility Room

I don't think I will ever get over what a big difference painting a room can make. This past weekend I finished painting our laundry room and now ever time we walk in there both LJ and I tend to call out "It just looks SO much better!" to the other person. The pictures just don't do it justice. This room was that dingy old yellow. And in such a small space, this shade just made it feel dirty. 

The first wall I worked on was the accent wall. I know, how many laundry rooms have an accent wall, right? Well, ours does. And it was supposed to be one shade darker than the kitchen. But when they were mixing the paint I saw some of the blue die spill out the side and I feel like it must have been just enough to change the color, because what I bought looks almost identical to what is already in the kitchen.

But I went ahead and used it anyways. I painted this wall blue because it can be seen through the kitchen. Making it a darker color and the other walls lighter help it seem farther away, which makes the room look larger. Here's the room with just the accent wall done (ignore the washing machine in the middle of the room, you'll find out about what happened there in another post).

Next it was time to prime the walls. I went ahead and used the same primer that I used for the nursery dresser. It was oil based but I wanted to save money.

The frustrating part is that whoever painted this room last didn't really pay close attention. There was yellow paint on the metal fixtures:

And yellow paint all over the top of the base boards:

This means when I primed and painted I had to cover the yellow. So, if you ever come over and look closely and it looks like I spilled paint on to the baseboards, that was just me covering over the last person's errors. I plan on repainting the baseboards someday anyways (we'll see if that actually happens though).

The hardest part about priming was reaching around the water heater. It is really close to two walls. Here I am reaching behind it. You can see the roller peaking out from behind the heater. Great fun!

I used primer because I didn't want to have to do like a million layers of white paint to cover the yellow. Here's a good shot of what the walls look like with just primer (right) and both primer and the first layer of paint (left).

And, like usual, Mandy had no choice but to come over and help me.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out in the end. Like I said before, the pictures just don't do it justice. It just feels SO much cleaner now!

Before:

After (look! no more weirdly placed pencil sharpener!):

Before:

After:

Project Cost: $15 for the quart of blue paint. $34 for the eggshell white paint (I didn't add any color, I uses pure white). I already owned all the painting supplies and the primer.

Time: Two weekends, but only because I did an accent wall first and then had to prime before painting the walls. Even with primer it took three layers of white paint.

Difficulty: Walk in the park (except for painting around the water heater... but I don't think that's a normal problem)