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ORC Week 8: A Laundry Room In Progress

It's Week 8 of the One Room Challenge and all around the world, DIYers are revealing their beautiful, finished rooms. Everyone except us, that is.

If you're new to Rambling Renovators, welcome! My name is Jennifer. I help people create functional and beautiful homes, I help brands create digital content strategies, and I've been writing this blog since 2007. I live with my husband and daughter in Toronto, Canada in a centre-plan, colonial style house that we've infused with the fresh traditional style we love. We DIY all our renovations and have a fondness for architectural details, built-ins, and classic decor. See our home renovations here.

Catch up on Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7

This weekly post is a few days late and it should be no surprise, but we didn't finish our laundry room renovation on time. Correction - our laundry room BUILD and RENOVATION. Because we built a friggin' room, people! From scratch. From cement levelling to framing to drywall to painting to flooring.

Sean and I have never built a room before but I honestly thought "No problem. We can finish that in eight weeks". I seriously underestimated the millions of steps it would take. Construction professionals make it all look so easy, don't they? Having been through the hard part now, I give carpenters and drywallers the utmost respect. None of it was easy.

Building A Laundry Room


So before I show you where we are, let's revisit where we started. Here's the view of the large laundry space. It had a utility area at one end and a laundry and exercise space at the other.

The room had size going for it but little else. The ceiling was a mishmash of drywall and particleboard, ductwork and exposed joists. The walls were textured, stained, and featured exposed plumbing and electrical work.


laundry room before, basement laundry room, laundry room renovation

basement laundry room remodel, laundry room renovation, diy laundry room remodel

And this is the much cleaner but smaller laundry room now. Essentially, we've built a room within a room. We added new framing to three of the four walls so this new laundry room is compact in size, about 11'x10'.

The white wall will be covered in the same peel and stick wallpaper we have on the left wall. The wall on the right will be clad in cabinetry and shiplap. For this reason, we used drywall and OSB panels as our substrate. 

The OSB acts as blocking and provides a solid surface for the cabinetry to screw into. The drywall won't be visible behind the shiplap and washer and dryer so we didn't waste any money or effort to finish it with mudding and taping. 

glucksteinelements wallpaper, peel and stick wallpaper home depot, peel and stick grasscloth wallpaper

Peel and Stick Wallpaper


The GlucksteinElements peel and stick wallpaper went on like a dream. I prefer the texture of traditional wallpaper (paste the wall wallpaper is the easiest kind to work with) but for a quick, easy, and budget friendly solution, you can't beat peel and stick wallpaper.

glucksteinelements wallpaper, peel and stick wallpaper home depot, peel and stick grasscloth wallpaper

We've installed lots of wallpaper and each kind has its pros and cons. I'd use peel and stick wallpaper:
  • when you need fast installation
  • when you need just a basic pattern
  • when installing in a wet or moist area
  • when installing in a high traffic zone and need a washable wallpaper
My most important tip - when installing any kind of wallpaper - is to have two people do the install. One person can be measuring and cutting lengths of wallpaper while the other person is pasting and adhering the paper to the wall. 

For peel and stick in particular, it also helps to have a second pair of hands to hold the bottom of the paper so that it doesn't accidentally adhere to itself.

Basement Laminate Flooring


Can we show a moment of appreciation for these laminate floors? We first installed this flooring back in 2018 when we renovated our craft room. At the time, the flooring was kindly gifted by Beaulieu Canada and they provided us enough to do our future basement living room as well. We had used Beaulieu Canada's laminate in our previous home and loved it and I knew I wanted it in this basement.

But life gets in the way and so we didn't finish the rest of the basement until 2020. The laminate sat in a closet for two years until we had time to create our coastal chic basement.

basement laundry room remodel, laundry room renovation, diy laundry room remodel


Which brings us to 2022. When we were planning this laundry room, we discovered that we had five full boxes of flooring left which is about three boxes short of what we needed. We also discovered that the flooring pattern had been discontinued!

I didn't let that deter me though and was able to track down the last three boxes of this flooring in existence! Installation went easily (see my tips for installing laminate flooring here) and it thrills me to see consistent flooring throughout our entire basement.

Laundry Room Layout

Let's swing around and look at the other side of the room. Here's how it was at the beginning. Along one side, we had ample room for the washing machines, a folding table, and even shelving to store our paint. We used the other side for our treadmill and mini freezer.

You'll notice how much of a disaster the ceiling was. The air ducts and hanging lines for the air conditioner created an overhead jumble. We even had a laundry chute duct in the ceiling to contend with. Additionally, the dryer vent, plumbing stack in the corner, and a vertical duct on the wall really gave this room a confusing shape.

laundry room before, basement laundry room, laundry room renovation

But look at it now... everything has been hidden away behind clean drywall on the ceiling and walls. I don't want to tell you how much time we spent figuring out angles, heights, intersections and how to actually build this ceiling. It was A LOT. 

basement laundry room remodel, laundry room renovation, diy laundry room remodel

basement laundry room remodel, laundry room renovation, diy laundry room remodel

Though we have a slightly lower ceiling with three different ceiling heights, it feels much better. Not bad for our first time framing a ceiling and doing drywall!

So what's next? We'll finish the last of the wallpapering and move onto cabinetry. Cabinetry and shiplap will cover both of the remaining two walls.

basement laundry room remodel, laundry room renovation, diy laundry room remodel

basement laundry room remodel, laundry room renovation, diy laundry room remodel

The assembled cabinetry (Hampton Bay from The Home Depot Canada in Edson Grey) is on site and ready to go. Since the cabinets are assembled and finished on all sides, installation will be as easy as putting them in place and screwing them to the OSB. It should be done fairly quickly and will be a big factor in finally making this space look like a laundry room.

laundry room checklist

The list of To Do's is getting shorter and shorter. Yay!

Now hop over to the One Room Challenge blog and see all of the amazing finished projects.




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