Behind every beautiful “after” photo is a hard-won lesson (or three). In this summer’s series, “Gutted,” renovators share the biggest mistakes they made on a recent project, how they fixed ’em, and more wisdom they gained along the way.
Back in 2020 when Valeria Jacobs and her family bought a 1960s home in California, she did what many a first-time owner would do: She jumped into renovating. “I was just so excited to start doing projects,” says Jacobs, who has a blog called Rebecca and Genevieve that’s dedicated to documenting her DIYs. Her original plan was to fix up the guest bathroom (“Because it was very outdated and smelled bad for some reason,” she notes), but then she thought, why not tackle the laundry closet, too? The washer and dryer were tucked within the hallway leading to the bathroom. To Jacobs, it made a lot of sense to spruce it up by removing the bifold closet doors, replacing the appliances, and cladding the walls in board-and-batten.
But not long after she made the upgrades, regret sank in. While the space looked good in pictures, the setup wasn’t all that functional. “Every time I was doing laundry, I was staring at the place, thinking: How can I make this better?” says Jacobs. So four years after the initial makeover, she and her husband—at this point, both seasoned DIYers—made some much-needed changes.
The Mistake: Open Shelves
As someone who is 5-feet-1, Jacobs is constantly thinking about how she’s going to reach things around the house. When it came to the initial laundry room reno, she assumed putting open shelves above the washer and dryer would make her life easier. But really, it had the opposite effect. “The second shelf was so high to the ceiling, I never used it,” she says. Plus knowing that all her supplies were going to be out on display, she decided to buy pretty glass decanters to give the space a more streamlined look. “I have three kids, I do laundry every day, and once the detergent ran out, I never refilled that jar,” she admits. So in reality, the little storage the shelves did offer never looked tidy.
The Fix: Closed Cabinets (and a Skirt)
Jacobs and her husband swapped the open shelves for two upper cabinets that they constructed from scratch. She admits that the lowest cabinet holds so much stuff (detergent, pool towels, the iron) that they have yet to actually fill the one above it with anything. Below the new countertop, where the washer and dryer used to be (more on that in a moment), she strung up a piece of fabric from Etsy with an Amazon tension rod. “I’ve used the same one in my kids’ bathroom for the shower curtain,” she shares. The skirt is simply folded at the top and clipped to make it look like a valance, no sewing required. “It hides random stuff that I don’t have a place for, but eventually, I want to have a laundry cart there,” Jacobs says.
The Mistake: A Top-Load Washer
While Jacobs loved the way her original machines functioned, the GE washer was a top-load, which meant it had to go next to the dryer. This arrangement left no room for a folding station. Instead, Jacobs would end up stacking things on top of the dryer or even on the family’s dining table, leaving her craving a clean, dedicated surface to wrap up the chore.
The Fix: A Washer-Dryer Tower
It didn’t take long for Jacobs to find a buyer for her old machines on Facebook Marketplace. This allowed the couple to invest in a new stacked combo from LG and build a plywood box around the appliances to help disguise them. When it came to constructing a solid folding surface, she remembered they had leftover plywood from their kitchen renovation handy and refinished it with a dark brown stain from Minwax. And for the days when she feels like air-drying (or steaming) items, she mounted a $30 valet hook nearby.
The Mistake: Trendy Board-and-Batten
At the time Jacobs made over her laundry space, board-and-batten walls were all the rage. She followed the crowd and painted them sage green. “I just wanted to make it look beautiful and share it on social media,” she says. The only real problem was, it didn’t feel like her.
The Fix: Playful Wallpaper and Moody Paint
She started anew with a dark floral Sandberg wallpaper. Her instinct told her to keep going with moody hues, so she painted all the plywood built-ins in Little Greene’s Ganache. Then everywhere else, she added bright white tongue-and-groove boards—each one is slightly imperfect, making the addition feel like it’s always been there. “I love how the space works now,” says Jacobs. “I think we found the secret sauce for our family.”
