Laundry Room - Restore to the Resuce

Our laundry room is moving right along.  

It's time to start figuring out how to make it look pretty!!

The first problem are the two sides of the folding area. 

 I don't want to see the lines where the cabinets meet the wall or MDF.  

Obvious option was to fill it in with wood filler or caulk.

But that would quickly crack and show a line.

Les suggested we cover it with a grid work of trim.

But I didn't want to dust all those little ledges and wasn't sure our lines would work out in an even pattern.

I wanted something smooth like wood veneer, but of coarse, I didn't want to pay very much.

So, I did what I always do, went shopping at the Restore.

I know you are thinking it's a long shot!!

But hey, if you go with and open and creative mind you will almost always find something that will work.

I took Les with me because two heads are better than one!! 

(Plus it's better to bounce our crazy ideas off each other.)

Believe it or not we found two 4x8 sheets of real wood veneer!!

Unfortunately they were already sold and waiting for pickup.

Major bummer!!

It would have been better to find nothing!!

But we didn't give up, we just kept digging around.  And then we found something that looked like a sheet of plexi glass.  They were covered in dirty protective paper.  We peeled a corner back to find a grey linen looking texture.  We talked through how it would and wouldn't work.  Les wasn't sure about it, but in my mind I was already changing the paint color scheme.  We searched through the stack to find a second gray sheet!!

(If you don't already know, the Salt Lake Restore will give you a discount on your next purchase if you bring in a photo for them showing what you did with a Restore purchase.)

With our discount for bringing in a photo we paid $5 for our find and went home happy.  

Here is a close up view of it.  

What is it? 

 It had a sticker on it that said Knoll Textiles Imago.  I did some on-line research and came to the conclusion that it is made by a company called Knoll Textiles.  Imago is fabric sandwiched in between layers of resin.  The result looks very much like linen with a fairly smooth plastic feel. 

I am loving it.  

Now I changed my color scheme from blue cabinets to gray.  

When you do things the cheap my way you have to go with the flow!  

I change details depending on what I find.  

OK, first we cut each panel to fit each side wall.  We just used a jig saw.

Our next challenge was,

 "How to get it to stay on the wall!"

I didn't want screw heads messing up my awesome linen looking walls, so that meant some sort of glue. 

Off to Lowe's we went with a sample of this material in hand searching all areas of the store for glues and adhesives.  We pretty much asked every Lowe's employee what they thought would work.

(Pretty sure the people at our Lowe's think we are total weirdos and run when they see us coming.)

We came home with a few ideas for me to try out. 

 Enter my sample board.

I painted a small board with the paint I was going to use as a base, glued on three small samples; clamped them and labeled each one with the type of glue I was using.

White School Glue

Wood Glue

Adhesive Caulk

After letting it dry for a day we tested the sample for adhesion and color.  

All three glues were stuck on and couldn't be pulled off.  As for color, the wood glue looked yellowish.  The school glue and adhesive caulk both retained a nice crisp white.  

We decided to use the school glue because we thought it would be easier to apply on  a large surface in a short amount of time.  

Next time I'll show you the process of gluing it up and how it looks!!

Thanks for stopping by!

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