A laundry room redo - making progress

We have been busy working away on this laundry room makeover.  You may remember that we have this really awkward pantry in our laundry room that we have decided to convert into a mudroom type bench area.   After doing some cleaning and organizing in our kitchen and storage room, we decided we can easily live without a pantry.  So, we got to work ripping  it all down.

Here's the best "before" picture I could get.

The door that opens into the laundry room from the garage opens so that you walk right in to the washer and dryer.  Since the idea is to now have a mudroom bench, we wanted to change the direction that the door opens so you walked in to the bench area instead.  And, since I try to do as much as I can spending as little as I can, we just turned the door around instead of buying a new one.

Here's the before

Here's the after.

I can't believe the difference it made in the flow of the room, and somehow added more room. 

When tearing down the wall, we found that the studs ( the wood) was totally exposed and needed a bit of sheetrock to cover it so the wall would be flat and smooth.  So, off to Home Depot for a bit of sheetrock.

Before

Sheetrock is now in place and the wall will now be smooth and even.  Now all we need to do is tape and mud. 

I built a bench and added some cubbies for shoes and stuff.  My girl has already begun to put hers to use.

We have a few things that still need to be fixed before we begin mudding and taping and painting.  For instance, when the wall was torn down, we noticed the floor had been laid around the wall, so we have to patch it.  Luckily we found some vinyl at the store that matches this perfectly that we can use until we decide to tile. ( I don't hate this floor enough yet to want to rip it out and replace it)

And in one spot, I got a little too excited when knocking the wall down and accidentally punched a hole in the sheetrock.  So a bit of patchwork needs to be done. OOPS!

But for now, it has to stay like this.  We are off to the Lake for a little R&R for a few days.  And then.......it's back to the remodel.  Stay tuned for the finishing touches.  I can't wait to see if it all turns out.