Sooo… I didn’t initially intend to spend my entire weekend sorting out the laundry room / mechanical room in our basement. It all started because my lovely neighbour was over for tea, last week, and I happened to lament to her that I was sick of the mess in there.
Now, as you already know, gentle reader, I have a dirty little habit of painting stuff black (you’ve all been introduced to Dirk). Yet despite my usual perverse penchant for breaking out the trusty old Rustoleum, for some reason this time, it never occurred to me to paint the ugly duct-work in our laundry room?!
My brain was stuck along the lines of boxing the mechanical stuff into a cupboard, or at the very least cladding it in an insulating jacket. Why oh why did I not think of painting it?!
Any time I have a brain-fart these days, I simply blame the menopause…
Thankfully, my neighbour — who happens to be a realtor — pointed out the obvious, suggesting I do my usual paint hack. Which, short story long, brings us to how I spent the weekend in the dungeon at my house!
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When Mr Maximalista and I bought this house, every single room was painted beige. Walls. Ceilings. Everything. Beige… Except for the mechanical room, which was left in the builder’s grade white. Along with, for some unclear reason, some random green shelves?
For the past 18 months, I have gone to great effort to un-beigeify my house. So the supreme irony is not lost on me that when the time came to paint this room, we chose to paint it… BEIGE!?
The house came with all the appliances, not including a washer and dryer. Which was fine with me, because I had been in love with the black pair we had left behind when we sold our old house in Wisconsin, and was therefore thrilled to purchase the same set for our new house.
Winning at adulting!
Even though the laundry room is an entirely utilitarian space containing the important mechanicals for the house, I didn’t want it to be ugly. We don’t hang out in there for leisure — we aren’t complete weirdos — yet it is a room we admittedly pop into a dozen times a day; I need it to be organized, I want it to look nice.
And yes, I wanted a chandelier in there! Because who doesn’t want a chandelier in the utility room? This particular pendant was on clearance for $30 at Home Depot. Not exactly Baccarat or Murano, but it’ll do.
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In 2024, we put the batten boards up, painting them khaki. (Which is just another word for dark beige.) Mr M extended those existing green shelves so we had a bit more storage, and I painted them black. He also put up the maple cupboards which used to be in our garage in Wisconsin.
Guess what? I painted those black as well.
so at least I have something pretty to look at whilst folding the laundry!
PS I’m loving the new shelf that Mr M put up
I had one gorgeous roll of vintage Brunschwig et Fils wallpaper in black and white, which I think pulls this little room together, and fits with the rest of our house.
As usual, I went shopping around the house to find things to hang on the walls. A cross-stitch sampler I had sewn, many moons ago, alongside some of my grandmother’s stitch work. The little wood-framed mirror Mr M’s grandfather made, which now hangs over the utility sink.
My favourite hack in this room is the hinge I attached to the back of the pin board: a useful way to disguise the ugly metal junction box door, so that it is hidden yet accessible, for those seldom occasions on which we need to flip a switch.
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One of the (many!) little things driving me bonkers in there was the chaos of the open storage shelves. The cleaning supplies, vases, dog food, etc, were as organized as I could get them, nevertheless were an eyesore that royally bugged the snot out of me.
I decided to simply hide the contents of the shelves by hanging curtains. Thankfully, lo-and-behold, I miraculously just so happened to have a spare pair of chambray black-outs that had been folded up and forgotten about for years, waiting patiently to be repurposed for just this project!
My only out-of-pocket cost for this part of the project was $2.94 each for the two curtain rods. Oh, and the elbow grease required to iron out all the creases. Which was a real PIA, but worth the effort.
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The top of the washer and dryer is a surface which becomes a natural dumping ground for all kinds of detritus. So Mr Maximalista very kindly — after many months of nagging!! — got his arse around to building a shelf to store our laundry essentials. Thank you, darling!
See below for a gallery of the end result. I love how it turned out!!
Lots of love,
M xo
The English Maximalista 
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