When we bought our house in Indiana there were a lot of little projects we undertook to make it feel like home. Mostly painting and decorating. No major overhauls to speak of.  Except maybe the laundry room. The glorious place where I discovered the joy of pneumatic nailers.  Yes, that's right, I just dropped the words 'pneumatic' and 'nailer' - I am so cool.

Now I had never before heard of a pneumatic nailer. I had no idea what a pneumatic nailer was. In fact, not less than a year before this I had to call my friend Jackie to ask how to take a door off the hinges while my husband was at work. I'm not proud of this fact but it it is the truth. Luckily, I've come a long way learned a little in the past year.

But back to the nailer.

Erik bought one for about $75.00 at one of the local hardware stores and taught me how to use it. And I fell in love all over again.  Thanks to the nailer, a lot of elbow grease and some fighting with a miter saw in order to get the cuts right on some of the trim pieces, we were able to take our laundry room from this...

To this...

To back up a few steps I should probably start by telling you why we decided to make the transformation. Most people would LOVE a first floor laundry and probably think we were crazy to get rid of it. However, the way the room was set up barely allowed us enough room to open the doors to get into the room. Trying to actually do laundry in that tiny little space was nearly impossible.

So, we (I) decided it was time to make a change. We started by selling the washer & dryer (that came with the house) on Craigslist. Then we had someone cap off the plumbing and electrical and run the proper lines into the basement for our new laundry room. Then, in a moment of pure stupidity, I decided it would make great sense (insert sarcasm here) to redo the ugly vinyl industrial tile floor with something that looked a little nicer. I figured if we were going to do this, we better go all out. So I bought some of those groutable stick-on tiles, measured, cut, placed, got pissed off at myself for deciding to do this project in the first place, grouted, waited 24 hours to clean it and then admired my work.

I'm not sure if you can see it in the above photo but there is a slight bump out just below the window. So we decided to put up beadboard and build a shelf in order to give this room a little more of a finished look. Up went the beadboard and the 2x4' along with trim pieces that took us FOREVER to miter correctly.  Thank goodness quarter round is cheap is all I have to say.

I should probably mention that we didn't actually get the nailer until it was time to put up the shelf and the trim. Thank goodness we did because I think it saved us from a lot of potential fights due to my husband's desire for perfection and my severe lack of patience. Great combination when it comes to house projects!

Luckily we made it through and ended up with a pretty awesome end result, if I do say so myself. There was just one other roadblock that we had to overcome.  The hooks for the wall. Initially my vision was to have them on either side of the window. But with the new, pretty shelf in place our coats and other hanging items would've covered it and completely defeated the purpose of having a decorative shelf.

Plan B. Hooks on the walls that run perpendicular to the back wall. Worked much better and look awesome. At least we think so :)

So, that's it! Operation move the laundry room to the basement and create a mudroom in its place was a success!

The added bonus to this project are the ah-mazing washer and dryer we scored from Best Buy. On clearance. With an additional coupon that Erik got in his e-mail.

Did I mention they are slate blue? I'll admit I wasn't thrilled with the color at first but didn't care because they were such a good deal. Now I think they're might perty.... And the pedestals were basically free with the savings we received on these bad boys. It's ok. Be jealous :)