Laundry Room: Before and After

So after the baby's room I swore I was done painting until after the baby came....but then last week I decided that the laundry room was small and thus should be really easy to do...plus we already had all of the paint in the colors I wanted...the only things I needed to buy were a cool vintage "Laundry" sign I saw online and a new cover for our butt-ugly ironing board. Well the room turned out to be more work than I thought, largely because I wanted to do stripes but we didn't have enough tape to tape them all off so I had to freestyle it, and because the space was very small and my belly is very big, making it difficult to manuever. Somehow I managed as you can see. Anyway, here are the pics:

Before:

(Pardon my big belly getting in the shot) As you can see there was nothing really "wrong" with the room, it was just very, very dark. My grandpa's house had dark wood paneling everywhere and a dark kitchen floor and I always thought it was very depressing, so I was trying to lighten up the room. It's kind of sad because the panel is kind of warm and pretty when it's cleaned, if you like that sort of thing. Oh well.

Intermediate:

This is where you say "What in the world are you doing painting when you're that pregnant?" and I answer "well obviously I am insane."

After:

The lighting is different in the after pics 'cuz of the time of day so it looks darker than it does in real life. Here is the pic I was using as inspiration from Better Homes and Gardens:

So they have way more light than we do, but our window looks out onto a covered porch, so there's not much light in there anyway. What do you think? Remember we are planning to replace the floor with something a lot closer to white than that ugly brown and yellow stuff they have down now...I think that will help alot.

PS:  Okay I think we figured out how to fix my pics so they'll blow up, but I don't want to reload them all since it takes so long.  However future posts should work. :)

PPS:  Okay I retook the first after pic in better lighting and added it with the new editor so it should blow up bigger now...not that any of you are re-reading this, but I just thought I'd say.