Thanks for all your brilliant ideas on the last post! You guys are geniuses, I tell ya. I haven’t made a decision yet. Still considering all the new ideas you suggested!
A couple years ago, Andy and I got a harebrained idea to try painting the ugly linoleum floors in our laundry room.
I’ll just be real: neither of us expected it to actually work. We were planning to rip out the floors and replace them, so we figured all we stood to lose was the cost of the paint, and we could still rip out the floors if it didn’t work.
It ended up being kind of magical, and working beautifully.
(See the whole tutorial on how to paint your floors here.) I still get a lot of questions about how the floors have held up, so I thought it’s time for a little update!
This is the whole laundry room today:
And this is what the floors look like now, about two years later:
For the most part, I’m pretty thrilled with them and would absolutely do this project again in a heartbeat.
BUT. We did have An Incident.
A couple months ago, our old cheapo washing machine decided it had had enough. It kicked the bucket — via a giant leak that spread across our whole laundry room floor. Panicked, we quickly unhooked the machine and dragged it out of the room. We were not careful at all. We didn’t roll it out of the room gently or use a dolly or do anything “the right way.”
We basically wrangled it out like two panicked idiots wrestling an alligator.
In the process of getting soaked and attacked by an out of control washing machine, a small portion of the flooring messed up. It’s that section right in front of the machine:
Up close, it looks like this:
Considering the amount of craziness that happened to this floor, I’m pretty thrilled that this is the only damage we sustained. To put it into perspective, when we first painted these floors and moved our washing machine and dryer back in, it took us a couple tense hours of very careful sliding using many thick layers of felt under the machines. This time, we just assumed the leak would ruin the floor and it would need to be replaced, so we dragged the old machine out, scraping it along the floor with no material underneath it for easy sliding.
When all was said and done, we were basically shocked at how little damage we had caused. The water didn’t cause the paint to run or spread, and a couple years’ worth of weekly soap-and-water cleanings haven’t changed the fresh, crisp lines in the slightest.
Granted, this is a low-traffic room for us, but I’d totally consider giving it a shot in a more highly-used space. As long as you’re not planning on scraping five-ton appliances across the floor, bull-in-china-cabinet style.
And while we’re updating things, let’s talk about the shelves. This is how the laundry room looked when I first posted it on the blog:
Then Better Homes & Gardens came out to photograph it for their magazine, and they brought all their own styling props and changed over the shelves to look like this:
(You can read all the behind-the-scenes from that photo shoot here.)
(I know what you’re wondering and the answer is yes, I do spend most of my days perched on the dryer like that.)
After the magazine came out, I got a very funny email from someone who had seen my laundry room in the magazine and was very concerned that we might be slightly OCD about germs, because of the giant stockpile of antibacterial wipes in the photo. So funny.
It’s been about a year and four months since BHG did that shoot, and this is what the shelves look like on a day-to-day basis. I didn’t style them at all (obviously) — just ran into the laundry room and snapped a couple quick pics.
We FINALLY just used up the last of the laundry detergent and antibacterial wipes that BHG brought for styling! We felt like we won the laundry detergent lottery jackpot.
You can see that I barely use the top two shelves at all: most everything goes in the cabinets. I still like ’em for looks though. 😉 The bottom two shelves get used a ton, because that’s where I keep my detergent.
And that little plant that BHG brought for the top shelf? You guys, I kept it alive for a like a YEAR. (she says, smiling proudly.) Here’s my post from when the plant and I got into a big fight. It finally just died a couple weeks ago, when I moved it to a part of the house where I never remembered to water it, and it retaliated by promptly dying. Obviously it was too needy.
(I’m not good with plants. )
Anyway: the flooring hack worked like a charm and the laundry room – with our new high-efficiency washer and dryer – is crankin’ right along. All is well in the VATW laundry world.
Except that we always forget to actually do the laundry, but Details.
Would you ever consider painting your vinyl floors?
Hi, I'm Kelly. Glad you're here! This little blog is where I chronicle our efforts to fix up our beaten-down home on a tiny budget. We're not there yet, but here's a peek at the view along the way...
that is MINOR for what happened! it still looks amazing!
I would totally do it. I think your project came out very nicely and I prefer the machines spread apart to make room for the trash bin, rather than pushed together than BHG styled it. As soon as I find a vinyl floor to pain, I shall do it!
That floor looks fabulous. I would just put a small throw rug on top and call it good. Great job and looks wonderful.
Im impressed that your laundry room looks THAT good right at this moment. After I read your laundry post a while ago, I got a hankering and bought some awesome vintage wallpaper, slapped it up on the back wall, painted the walls, hung cabinetry and shelves, and it looks pretty great! (And when I say I hung the cabinet, I clearly mean my husband did it, but i will take full credit for it here.) mine has a large pile of laundry on the floor right now and crap stacked all over the pretty white shelves…. Kinda takes away from the whole appeal!
I find the best way to keep your laundry room clean is to just let the laundry pile up everywhere else, and not ever remember to do it until you’re on your last pair of underwear. The rest of the house gets trashed, but the laundry room stays spotless!
Yay! So glad to know they have stood the test of time and only had a knick from the “incident”. xoxo
It has held up so well. It still looks so good. It was so much fun to see how the styling has changed over time.
Ha. I love that someone was concerned about the disinfecting wipes, too funny. How great that they held up so well!
We don’t really do laundry either, so that makes me feel better 😉
Thanks for this post – I love updates like this… showing how things really work out when you try something crazy.
Wondering if you’ll talk about your new washer and dryer. I’m in the market for a new one and am also expecting our first baby (whom I plan to cloth diaper). Hoping you might have some good insight 🙂
I still just love this room. It’s adorable, and I’m such a stripe fan I would surely try them out in another room. Or every room.
are you sure you didn’t pick up dirty clothes off the laundry room floor before you ran in there and snapped that photo? Surely your husband dumps piles of laundry on the floor or looks for one thing in the dryer and leaves the rest of the clean pile on the floor and some still in the dryer right?? Not just mine?…
anyway, i’m glad the floors are holding up, even with a washing machine breakdown and rip out!
I’m in SHOCK! You guys leave piles of laundry on the floor? *Aghast!* (We leave our piles on the BATHROOM floor.) 😉
It’s true folks Kelly does in fact perch herself on her dryer on a near daily basis. I would too. Relive the moment and what not. Also pretty sure no one would look for me in the laundry room.
Don’t lie. We all know you sit there all day looking cute. I love to see updates of “experimental” DIY projects and see how they hold up.
Did just say you mop your laundry room floor WEEKLY? I’m not sure we can be friends anymore.
i think the way you had the room decorated looked better than how BHG did it! i just redid my laundry room and have big baskets on the top shelf that are empty. they just look nice and make me happy. i have the giant washer and dryer now too – i’m not sure i love them. they take a lot of clothes, but the washer gets out of balance easily and it takes forever for things to dry. oh, that and the fact they are so big (despite me asking multiple times in the store), do not fit through a standard door so we had to rip our door frame out. so i had everything neatly painted and ready to go, and now i have to do drywall repair on the inside and outside, and paint the new door and trim. not sure when that will ever get done. 😉
Wow I can’t believe how well it still looks after two years!
Good to know how they’ve held up! I may be painting floors in the future so thanks for the update (and for the great idea)!!
It’s amazing what can be done with paint. So simple and cost effective. Now I want to paint something! I’ve been thinking a lot about painting some of my Ikea sisal rugs.
We, mercifully, don’t have any vinyl floors in this house, but if I did have some I would paint them STAT. You’ve proven how well they can hold up, so why not?
After reading how your floor has held up, I’d totally consider painting a floor like that! (And congrats on keeping a plant alive for close to a year. The only plants I’ve managed to keep alive longer than that have either been weeds or — oddly enough — orchids.)
What a coincidence. The sheet vinyl flooring in your “before” painted floor shot looks very familiar. Actually, (many) successive tenants have never said that they don’t like the flooring…
One very conscientious couple that wanted to clean the white vinyl really well bleached the entire floor, right up to and seeping into the adjacent wall-to-wall carpeting — in every room. Perhaps they could have done better painting the vinyl white.
Apparently some carpeting is not completely resistant to bleach stains
..
I kinda wish we had linoleum floors just so I could do this project!
I found your blog close to a year ago thanks to Virginia over at livelovediy.com. I have been unimaginably impressed with your floor painting experiment and it has given me hope that I could pull off something cute for my horribly ugly bathroom floor. I have old, outdated, UGLY linoleum floors in my master bathroom. I made it WORSE (I didn’t think they could get uglier but I managed it somehow) by putting down those peel and stick 12″ x 12″ vinyl floor tiles. The problem with those is that they did not lay flat and so they got bent and broke in the corners and I tried pulling them up and have patches of adhesive (which now collects my and my pets’ hair). Oh and I didn’t get the edges or around the toilet so it wasn’t ever even complete. Atrocious.
So my goal is to redo my bathroom with lots of paint (the counter top, the cabinet, the walls, the sink, the trim, the medicine cabinet, and the floors). I don’t really have the budget for new flooring (if I did – I’d tile that sucker in a heartbeat). But I can spare $20 or so on some paint.
When I get unlazy I WILL get it done. (First step is to use a heat gun and get the peel and stick tiles up – I’m not looking forward to that).
Anyway, just wanted to finally stop by and say that you’ve inspired me to do several projects – painting my linoleum bathroom floor, doing the “floofy” duvet cover (btw – I have a cat that I refer to as floofy on a daily basis, so yes, I think it’s a real word – and a great word), and the herringbone art using paint and tape. (I finally bought acrylic paint the other day).
Maybe I should rip out the tile, install linolium and paint over it!
And oh, for washer dilemas! Our old set barely fit and when we were shopping for new high efficency ones, realized that if we did get them… the door won’t be able to shut. OY VEY.
Time to get creative… someday.
That floor is gorgeous! We had considered painting our hardwood floors when we moved into this house (125 year old Victorian fixer upper), but we chickened out at the last minute. I think that if we buy a house in the future with linoleum floors like you had, I would ABSOLUTELY consider doing this. Awesome! 😀
I’m in love with this blog! I’ve been dreaming in having my own home exactly how I want it. I live in a rental, and I don’t have much freedom too make changes. One day… one day…
xoxo,
Gabi Barbará
Barbaridades!
Love the floors and your laundry room looked WAY better before BHG came and styled it. 😉 I’m really intrigued by the idea of painting my laundry room floor, but I wonder if the paint will hold up to steam-cleaning with a Shark?
I’ve read a few of your posts and really enjoy your blog, and your husband is AWESOME… let me just say how jealous of both of your skills I am.
I’m a newish fellow blogger (http://thenewdaybringshope.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-most-viewed-blog-posts-of-all-time.html) and my projects never come out quiet perfect like yours seem to!
I first saw your original post forever ago and seeing how long the floors have held up I’m actually considering doing the same thing in my laundry room… once I decide on colors! Finding the right color is such a challenge, because you never know how it will look on the wall until you paint the WHOLE wall… painting a section isn’t the same I’ve found out!
That floor looks fabulous. I can’t believe it holded up even after you dragged a washing machine through the floor.. I have concrete flooring for my laundry room since it holds up a way long better and to avoid risks of wear and tear. I had it polished last year which actually enhanced my laundry room’s overall look. I will definitely try that strip paint idea once I am exposed to a vinyl floor.
Hi! I love how your floor turned out. I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing our kitchen and mudroom flooring due to stains and wear and tear, but it just isn’t in our budget. I can across your post and am going to paint our soon. My question: can you use a steam mop on the painted floors and what type of floor cleaner do you use?
How long does it take for the paint to dry? I want to do a hallway.