Welcome back friends! It’s Week 3 of our Laundry/Mudroom Renovation that we are doing in conjunction with the One Room Challenge!
Before we dive into this week’s post, let’s make sure you are caught up on the previous two weeks!
Week One was all about the “before” and inspiration for the room. We partnered with Lowe’s Canada and you can find the entire post HERE. You can also watch our first episode in this challenge posted on our YouTube page HERE.
The second week, it was all about demolition. I shared how things went from a simple upgrade to a complete gut job and all the crazy things that ended up happening to got us to that point. Check it all out HERE. We were so swamped that we are currently still editing Week 2’s episode, so make you know what that means? There will be TWO episodes coming out this week to get us all caught up! Stay tuned for those!
Ok, so now that you are all caught up, let’s get into Week 3 of our laundry/mudroom renovation! And this week, we are SO delighted to have Blanco Canada as our partner for our laundry sink and faucet!
In the very first post for this challenge, I talked about having dreamt of a beautiful and functional laundry room since I was a child. One of the most important features in those dreams was always the sink.
You see, over the years that we’ve had an unfinished laundry space (often in the dark corner of the basement), we always had those builder grade utility sinks with the most basic faucets. You know how ugly those sinks are and how gross they can get over time, right?! We would always use that sink to wash all our paint brushes or anything heavy duty and I found that no matter how hard I would scrub, it could never got those sinks clean. And then once it became really dirty, I never wanted to do any handwashing of my delicates in there. It just never worked out for me and yet again, I would always find myself daydreaming of the day we could have a proper laundry sink!
Well friends, TODAY IS THAT DAY!!!
I can’t even begin to express to you just HOW gorgeous our new Blanco Liven Laundry sink is, with it’s beautiful partner, the Artona Faucet! But before I get into the specs, let me say how we decided to go with this specific sink.
Originally, I’ll be honest, we wanted a farmhouse sink, otherwise known as an apron sink. Blanco has some seriously gorgeous options in a few colours and I was dying for the white one! But it wasn’t in the cards for us and here’s why: once we measured the space, we realized that it was just too small to fit the farmhouse sink. The space where the sink goes is right beside the washer and dryer and all of that is in between two walls: the outer wall of our home and the wall to the hallway. So there’s no wiggle room here…we couldn’t break down those walls and widen the space, we had to work with what we had.
So we went back to the drawing board and found the Blanco Liven sink and man is she ever a beauty! For starters, it does remind me of the builder grade sink ONLY in it’s size and function. That’s why it’s genius…you don’t loose any space…the sink is massive like a traditional laundry sink, but SO MUCH NICER! I mean, there’s absolutely no comparison.
The Liven laundry sink is made of natural granite composite material so it’s very durable and has a non-porous surface. It also has a repellant material in it so it doesn’t absorb liquids, acids or stains! So the main issue I’ve always had with our laundry sink will never happen to me again with this one! #praisehands! It also has exceptional resistance for heat, scratches and impact.
It was actually fairly easy for Chris to install as the sink comes with a paper template for you to trace out in order to cut the countertop to size. We will cover that in the YouTube video soon!
Ok, let’s move on to the Artona Faucet! I love the look and shape of this faucet! First of all, it’s the perfect match to the Liven sink with a similar slightly speckled look on the white part of the faucet. I love the side handle for both hot and cold water. And my favourite feature has got to be the pull-down DUAL spray! This is what laundry room dreams are made of people!
You might be asking about the cabinet and countertop as well, so let me briefly touch on that. The cabinet is pre-fabricated, in-stock Arcadia cabinet from Lowe’s. It’s the basic base cabinet with sink which you can see HERE.
For the countertop, Chris actually built that himself (I know, he’s pretty awesome) by combining two pieces of square timber slab with a live edge timber slab using pocket holes and pocket hole screws.Once they were joined together, he sanded them smooth and finished them with a Minwax wood stain. Once the stain dried, he sealed it all with a polyurethane coating.
And there you have it friends! Week 3’s update! I want to say thanks Blanco Canada for partnering with us on this! We are so thrilled with how the sink and faucet look in the space…it’s really starting to all come together!
Make sure to come back next week to see more!
Love & Blessings,
Christine
