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Today I have a fixer-upper house makeover project to share.

It's part one of our laundry room makeover!

Our laundry room is in the basement and it was ugly. While some may not care because it's just a laundry room, I like pretty (and functional) spaces... even closets and laundry rooms!

Check out my other laundry room makeovers:

Laundry Room Redo - Final Reveal (The first makeover at my old house)

Laundry Room Makeover - The Details (The second makeover at my old house)

Laundry Room Makeover Reveal (This was a makeover of Tobin's laundry room before we moved in together)

For this room, we removed the old, dated brown linoleum and brown rubber baseboard molding, pulled out the old cupboards, patched and painted the walls, and installed a new penny tile floor!

Laundry Room Makeover - Part 1

I have a video of this project for your viewing enjoyment, then you can scroll down for more pictures and read about how I almost died 😁

Let's look at what this room looked like when we bought the house.

It looks ok here but once we started moving in, we found out just how "not ok" it was!

They had apparently had issues before with the washer hose that goes into the wall backing up because the paint behind the washer was bubbled and chipping off. We had the same issue right after moving in and the plumbers found it was clogged with cat hair.

The cupboards that we pulled down had big stains inside them but the main reason we took them down was that with our new washer and dryer pedestals that we scored on Facebook Marketplace for $50, they would no longer fit under the cupboards!

Also, I don't know if you noticed but the light sconce next to the door made it so you couldn't open that cupboard door all the way, or without danger of breaking the light!

Once we pulled the cupboards down it instantly felt larger and airier! I'll be adding some open shelving in their place in part two of the makeover.

I can hardly wait to get those shelves up and the room functional, organized, and decorated but my first order of business is this hideous floor!

We... or I should say I chose penny tile for this room. The floors slope down to this drain so I thought the small format of penny tile would work great. Regular-sized tiles would probably crack.

We used the Satori Hudson Brilliant White Glossy Porcelain Penny Tiles and the Satori Hudson Carbon Matte Porcelain Penny Tiles.

We scraped up as much of the old adhesive and linoleum backing as we could and then I tiled. I purchased a few sheets of black penny tile to make the flower design I wanted.

Let me tell you...

I almost died... 😱

No seriously... this project almost killed me, if I ever talk about using penny tile again, please slap me.

I can't even imagine what it would have been like if the room were any bigger!

It took me three days to do this little 8' x 8' room. Oh, laying the actual 12x12 sheets of tiles wasn't too bad but I could barely stand straight or move my neck after being bent over all day.

Then came the excruciatingly loooooooong process of figuring out the spacing for the black flowers. I almost curled up in the fetal position and started rocking. Thank goodness my perfectionist boyfriend figured it out... after THREE. MADENNING. HOURS!

So we started popping out all the little white tiles where we wanted a black flower.

Then I had to "butter" the back of each tiny black tile and put it in place. I can't tell you how many times I put the adhesive on the wrong side of these stupid &$#*& tiles!!

Finally, it was time to grout. Once again, I naively believed that this part would be easy... I had watched YouTube videos where some annoying contractor who does this every day, all day lead me to believe that you just trowel it on, and wipe it off with one wipe of the sponge... wax on, wax off! Easy enough, I got this!

But nooooOOOooo, I wiped and wiped, the water bucket had to be emptied and refilled like 80,000 times, and it felt like it would never come off the tiles.