A BEFORE and AFTER Post!!! :-D

UGH!!!  This is Day 3, I think, of my hostage situation - me stuck in the desert of the Real World!!  If I don't get to break free of this soon, I'm going to go CRAZY!!!!  Today I had two appointments I had to be at, one for my husband at the dentist, and one for my son at the optometrist.....both of those appointments were late because both of those doctors were late, so I spent all of the morning, and half of the day, waiting..... Like I said, UGH!

There is relief in sight, however -- tomorrow life is going to be back to normal!  We are going to Lowe's (for my wood and maybe a paint sample - I've earned it! :-D), and maybe Hobby Lobby, and then I'm going to come home and do something.....Yay!.....but I don't know what yet!! LOL   That's ok, I'll make a list! :-D

1. stain my new wood boards (for my cabinet - that's what I'm getting a Lowe's!)
2. sand the last few stencils
3. paint my island (with the sample I'll get at Lowe's!)
4. finish painting the blue cabinet
5. put the small piece of trim board on my new kitchen wall
6. clean the craft room

There's the things that are exciting for me tonight, it could change in the morning!  I really want my cabinet to get started, but Brian's mouth hurts (from the dentist today :-P), so I'm not sure how much hauling, sawing, and nailing he wants to do!  He might surprise me, though! :-D
And cleaning the craft room is really a "probably not" item, because every time I've gone in there to start organizing, I see some of my crochet projects that start calling to me, and I don't want to get all caught up in crocheting anything until I get a few more of my important projects DONE!

Now for my Before/After pictures......
I want to show what we accomplished in what WAS our back hall -- it's one of my favorite changes that we made!!  First, I had this vision for my laundry room for over a year before we even found this house....I saw it in a magazine, and knew I had to have it!  Even when we were looking at houses to buy, I always checked out where the washer and dryer were, and if it couldn't be remodeled the way I wanted, it was a strike against that house! LOL  Of course, I never told my husband that, because I'm sure he would have thought I was being too picky!  But it didn't matter in the end, because we found our Perfect home!! :-D
Here is the magazine picture......

That is all beadboard above the counter, and a curtain hangs under the counter so you can close it and hide the washer and dryer.
Here is one of the hallway they have....

.....the curtain is closed on the right, and I loved the trim and hooks beyond the door on the left!

Now, of course, I didn't have that much room, and I wanted my back hall to end in a pantry, not a door out, so I was willing to change some things up, but I wanted the basic look!

Here's what we started with - BEFORE.....

That's me standing in the middle of that back hallway and taking a picture of either side....in the bottom picture, the doorway on the left enters the kitchen (notice the hateful white plastic floor!)
Here's the view from that kitchen doorway.....

In the top picture, you can see that we already added wood for the floor (that I painted)!
Here is where Brian framed the middle of this hallway to build the pantry....

Here is the beadboard going up.....

Here is the new pantry door that is hung in the new wall Brian framed.....

Here is how he removed the outside door that was then enclosed in the pantry room, framed it and covered it up....

We added new siding out here too, and painted it brown (that's a whole other post!)

And now for the AFTER!
Here is the laundry room.....

 You can see the pantry door on the right, I painted it (and all the trim) Old Village Rittenhouse Ivory (color-matched at Lowe's) -- GREAT color!!
Here is the other wall.....

I am going to put iron hooks on that trim board, just like the magazine! :-D  And you can see that we hung beadboard on the bottom, but on the top of the wall, I used textured paint (from Lowe's) -- you roll it on with a spongy roller, let it sit for about 5 minutes, then you use a putty knife to "push" down some of the texture!  Here is what it looks like up close.....

I LOVE it!!  I used it on the walls in the pantry, too!  I need to use antiquing glaze on it, to bring out the texture better (and to "age" the wall), but I'm waiting until I do it in the living room first, so I know what I'm doing! LOL
And here is the pantry.....

The wood paneling along the back outside wall (where the door used to be) is a terrific barnboard that I found at Lowe's next to the beadboard panels - it looks SO real, and has great texture and color!  I left it unpainted in here, and I LOVE it!!  Also, the tall blue cabinet is built in, and holds all of our kitchen gadgets that I won't let anyone keep on the counters! LOL
And don't mind the mess....this is a hard-working pantry!! :-D  Those are all my canning jar boxes, I store the empty jars in them to use next year!

PHEW!!!  This post took me about 2 hours! LOL  I hope you guys liked the pictures!!  That's about my favorite space in the house so far! :-D  And it was sooooo exciting to watch it all come together!  Now, if only I could get the REST of the house together! ^-^