Home | The Utility Room Renovation

 We’ll call this Gary’s Lockdown 3.0 project. It took the best part of two months’ worth of winter weekends and a battle with the plumbing, but the utility room has now been completely renovated. 

Technically, this started back in February 2020 when we had our kitchen done. When they were ripping out the old kitchen, we asked them to rip out the units in the utility room as well, and lay the same flooring we were having laid throughout the rest of the ground floor. It then sat – looking a complete mess – for the best part of a year. We quietly closed the door on it in those brief moments when we’ve been allowed guests round and resolved to get to it at a later date. Hitting the point felt like a bit of a milestone because it was always low on the list of priorities; we’ve made it that far down the list! 

We wanted to get the right balance between cute downstairs loo and utility room. It had to have storage, it had to include space for a washer/dryer and it just generally had to be practical. But it’s also a room with no natural daylight (there is a window, but it looks out into the garage) and the bathroom guests are most likely to use – and we ourselves will obviously have to use it on a daily basis – so I didn’t want it to end up some dingy room that you want to spend as little time as possible in because you’re worried about what might be lurking in the corner. I don’t think I have any pictures of the original room, but you can get a sense of the original work top and units by looking at the before photos from our kitchen renovation as they were the same. 

The image in my head was white and bright with splashes of gold & green whilst not losing any practical elements and keeping it all as cheap as possible. By chance, we had an almost perfect amount of white worktop left over from our kitchen renovation so that was our starting point. We hunted out cheap-but-nice kitchen units (including one for an integrated washing machine) which Gary eventually found in B&Q (one of their cheapest options but I don’t think you’d know) and I went on the hunt for gold door handles and pastel green tiles. I had images of a counter sink which, again, we managed to find pretty cheap and we spent far too long trying to hunt out a decent gold tap, eventually settling on one with a pull-out hose as we thought it could be handy with future kids/pets (countertop and tiles look pretty but are also easily wipeable). 

Gary did all of the installing and I will never not be impressed at the way this man can just start sorting the plumbing and tiling like it’s no big deal. I, meanwhile, focused on the finer details (we both work to our strengths), sourcing out a matching green hand towel, gold towel & toilet roll holders and artwork for the walls (including a round gold Oliver Bonas mirror which I love). We got two command broom grippers to go on the back of the door for our broom & mop and there’s just enough of a gap down the side of the units to squeeze in our small hoover and collapsible washing basket. I sourced a daylight-like bulb and an open ‘lampshade’ (again, gold) to try and bring in as much light as possible whilst Gary painted the room white. It definitely doesn’t feel dingy! 

All in all, we love it and I like how it feels like a nice surprise every time I walk in and remember that it’s actually a pleasant place to be in rather than a windowless necessity of a room!