The Laundry Room - Redux

 (Dramatic music plays in the background as our hero once again rolls the large stone up the hill just to see it roll back down,  Lather. Rinse. Repeat...)

Way back... I scrambled to paint the laundry room before the new appliances were delivered.

The color scheme was carefully chosen by SWMBO.

After everything was in, she informed me that she didn't like the color...

(Fast forward to last fall as the kitchen is wrapping up.)

For a variety of reasons - mostly that we needed to chase mechanicals up to the attic and therefore punch access holes in the laundry room walls - we never purchased and installed the rest of the bits for the laundry room. The laundry tub is one example.

After completing the kitchen, finishing the laundry room was next on the list.  I'd already fixed the holes in the walls while doing other repair work this summer. And we already had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, so went to the Big Orange Box and ordered the cabinets, sink, faucet, and countertop. Everything came as promised and is sitting in the garage waiting to be installed because...

The laundry room needed to be repainted...

SWMBO and our designer consultant came up with a plan and a sketch.  The plan incorporated the colors of the appliances, the window treatments, and countertop.

After creating a 2x2 foot sample board implementation, no one was happy with the original design.

So I repainted the sample board with the new design. Everyone was happy. At least I only had to repaint a 2x2 sample board... So I started painting the room.

• Repaint the ceiling to white.
• Repaint the walls to Ivory Tusk.
• Wait 24 to 48 hours for the paint to cure so that I could...
• Tape off appropriately for the red stripes.
• Paint the red stripes using a foam brush.
• Remove the tape.
• Free-hand a paint pen with the black highlights.

When I got halfway around the room, I asked SWMBO to come see the results...

There was disapproval (hers)...

And then gnashing of teeth (mine)... And lots of bad words uttered...

She had a suggestion about what to do and I encouraged her to give it a try because I was frustrated...

The left portion of the photo is the result.

More disapproval...

More gnashing of teeth and bad words...

Because now I know I have to re-paint this d*mn room again!

After I took a sanity break and erased the sample board, I had an idea...

And created a new sample board.

And got approval.

The new idea meant I needed to repaint only half of the room because I could salvage the parts where there were red stripes, but I hadn't done the black accents yet. There were still multiple steps involved though.

• Repaint the base color on the wall.
• Wait 24 to 48 hours for the paint to cure so that I could...
• Tape off appropriately for the red stripes.
• Paint the red stripes using a foam brush.
• Remove the tape from alternating new stripes and re-tape alternating existing stripes.
• Use a foam brush to paint over alternating stripes with black paint.

After all the tape was removed, we ended up with this...

And from another angle.

Success was declared because SWMBO is happy!

(For the record I'm not entering this room with a paint brush or roller ever again!)

Zoom in on the window treatment.  The pattern on the fabric is French maids doing laundry.

To the left of the window is a drying rack that folds out from the wall.

Now, on to the cabinets!