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photos by ISO photo studio, Jacqueline Zema
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photos by ISO photo studio, Jacqueline Zema
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photos by ISO photo studio, Jacqueline Zema
The Summit County center-hall colonial was built in the early 1990s with a laundry room that was little more than a pass-through from the garage to a back hallway. But Katie Heinz, owner of Interior Design Studio in Medina, found the couple now living there was using it as a de facto drop-off point for outerwear and anything they and their two sons happened to have in their hands.
“It was a cluster of disorganization,” she recalls. “It’s a big space, but it’s got this window in the middle of one wall. The only closet you saw in there was to the left of the sink. … And the tiny closet was being used for the vacuum, the cleaning products, that kind of stuff.”
Heinz converted the space into a well-appointed “landing zone” with updated decor that complemented the interiors being installed in the rest of the house. She describes some of the room’s highlights.
The wallpaper: Heinz covered the walls, which a previous owner had sponge-painted in splotches of pink, mauve, gray and green, with a gray paper boldly trellised in white “to create some excitement.” “It’s a vinyl-coated wallpaper, so it’s super durable,” she adds. “You can wipe it down.”
The cabinetry: The existing pickled-oak cabinetry was painted the same bright turquoise found in an abstract mural in the neighboring kitchen, and the color pops in the space. “Even though the wallpaper is very graphic, it’s still neutral — there’s no color in the room,” Heinz says.
The built-ins: Contractors built a coat locker and shelves to place laundry baskets in dead wall space, then painted them a clean, crisp white. The family uses drawers underneath the shelves to store workout gear and the dog’s leashes, the gray canvas bins in cubbyholes above to stow seasonal gear. “We added a bench below the window so they could [sit down and] take off their shoes,” Heinz says. “Those [wire] baskets under the bench … are for either their shoes or hats and gloves.”
