I’ve been making some changes to my laundry room since my dad built a pedestal for my washer and dryer.
I showed off some of those changes last month, in my laundry room makeover post. In that, I mentioned that I had a creative idea for covering up the electrical panel in the laundry room.
Well, it’s taken me a month to finish that little project, and my plans changed.
Originally, I had planned to make a fabric covered metal bulletin board using sheeting metal, inspired by something I saw on A little of this, a little of that. Easier imagined than done. I couldn’t find cheap-o joist sheeting at my local hardware store, or at least not in a 36-inch length, which is what I needed to cover the electrical panel in my laundry room. So the project was put on hold.
Until two serendipitous things happened. I was reading my friend Suzy’s blog, Worthing Court, one day and saw how she’d transformed a plain bulletin board with fabric. Then, just a few days later I nabbed a brand new bulletin board at a yard sale for 50 cents! As luck would have it, the bulletin board was 36 inches long — perfect for my space.
As luck would have it, I also had some pretty cotton fabric, purchased on a whim at JoAnn’s a few months ago. It was the perfect choice to add some color and brightness to my laundry room. And a project was born:
Because the fabric has a white background, I used white spray paint primer on the bulletin board. I didn’t care about coating it completely, but I did want to knock down the color a bit so you wouldn’t be able to see the cork underneath the fabric.
Next, I painted the frame in CeCe Caldwell’s Blue Montana Sky. I had just enough left in my sample jar to give the bulletin board frame two coats.
Next, I ironed my fabric and cut it slightly larger than the bulletin board. I affixed it to the cork using spray adhesive, being careful to smooth out any wrinkles.
I used my rotary cutter to trim the excess fabric.
Next step: choosing the trim to cover the cut edges. I tried many different colors of ribbon, trim and even some twisted nylon clothes line cording.
I finally settled on a combination of a blue crocheted trim from Pick Your Plum and a yellow pom-pom trim from Stampin’ Up. The blue trim was self-adhestive, which made it really easy to apply. I hot glued the tiny yellow pom-pom trim on top of it and didn’t burn my fingers once. Miracle.
Here’s a closeup of the trim:
The finished project looks pretty hanging in my laundry room. And it’s easily removable should we need to access the electrical panel. Now, I just need to work on filling it up with important papers and keepsakes and artwork. The next time I show you the laundry room, I’m sure it will look much different than this!
Linking this yard sale treasure up at:
