The reason I had black paint in my life to begin with:  I wanted to makeover my laundry closet with huge black and white stripes. Tyson went out of town . . . again. I got out the black paint . . . again. (Where will I attack next!?)

My hair, apparently:

It’s possible that I put on a baseball cap and went to Target like this. And Ace Hardware. And Home Depot. And the grocery store. And I’d do it again.

Our laundry room/closet sits off an (undecorated) hallway behind these double doors. I liked the idea of the doors opening to a big surprise.

BEFORE: Blah.

DURING: The taping extravaganza occurred on a Saturday night, and Puddinn’ and I went back and forth via text over who was the sorrier soul: she alone in bed watching movies with wine, or me on a romantic date with Kermit the frog tape. I won, because I ordered pizza for dinner so I wouldn’t have to leave the house. #MissPiggy

But in the morning, I woke up to the AFTER:

Isn’t it fun?

I kept walking down the hall, opening the double doors, and pretending to be surprised – like I was on a TV show and there was a big “reveal” and the camera wanted to catch me in a squeal. (I dislike the word “reveal” used as a noun, by the way.)

And clearly, I should not be left at home alone.

THE DETAILS: To accessorize, I dragged out a random assemblage of bits I had tucked in the garage and in cabinets, unused. I hoard strange things. Last weekend, for example, I bought a vintage lucite cowboy hat.

For my equestrian fantasies, I added two horse bit hooks I found on clearance at Anthropologie a few months ago, thinking my clothes closet needed some Polo flair. Much better here: they can suspend things that need to hang dry. The hooks were $32 each, but I paid $8 – and lucky you, they’re still available online. The bamboo hangers were left over from a client’s decor project. They’re from Cost Plus World Market, about $12 for 4-5 hangers.

What, don’t you have pumpkins in your laundry room? I keep OxyClean and Borax in these pretty glass jars – look for these at Hobby Lobby or HomeGoods/T.J. Maxx/Marshalls. I’ve had them for a few years – it’s a good upgrade from store packaging.

My laundry baskets are vintage fishing baskets I dragged home from an antique store on 7th Avenue.  They previously lived in a sad corner of the garage, holding books that I still need to take back to the library.

The silver hook holding the blazer below is an actual boat cleat, inspired by this photo gallery idea I cribbed from the Pottery Barn catalog. In theory, it will hold more line-drying clothing instead of the blazer my sister wore to compete in Miss America.

I unearthed those weird wooden leg forms from my pile of discovered treasures. (Lucite cowboy hat? REALLY?) They’re actually vintage stocking blockers — used once upon a time for knitting stockings, or molding pantyhose, or somesuch. I found them at Grey House Antiques in Tucson. I liked them in the laundry room because they reminded me of walking into my Granna’s lavender bathroom and seeing her pantyhose wrung out and dangling over the shower door.

My Granna was a NUT about laundry.  She folded her sheets to fit perfectly on her shelves and kept her pillowcases in ordered, tri-folded rows. I had lessons in these things, but sometimes, when people come over unexpectedly, I gather  all the piles of clean laundry waiting on my sofa to be folded and shove them back into the dryer to hide.

Probably, she’d consider that inspired.

What do you think of my makeover?