The Home Page | Laundry Room Inspo and More

This edition of The Home Page was originally emailed to subscribers on March 31, 2024. To receive Sarah Sinclair’s real estate newsletter in your inbox each Sunday, sign up at independent.com/newsletter

I visited the beautiful two-story Spanish cottage above on Thursday’s broker caravan. It’s nestled in one of my favorite neighborhoods: the sweet part of West Valerio between the Mesa and the Westside that’s recently been dubbed the “Mesa Annex.” (Thanks, Kyle Richardson!) We’ve all seen secret bookcase doors in movies. In this stylish living room, there’s a laundry room stashed behind the bookcase! You can see it in the right-hand corner of this photo:

There’s even a little cat door for the kitty cat to get in and out in case they linger too long curled up in the laundry basket. The rest of this two-bedroom, one-bath home is charming, as well, with plenty of wrought iron and Saltillo tile accents. Located at 1423 West Valerio Street, it’s listed by Mike Richardson Realtors for $1,695,000.

Over on Houzz, I stumbled across this article with even more laundry room ideas. The example above — designed by Kindred Interior Studios — especially caught my eye because of its small space with splashes of color. Their stated intent was to make doing laundry more fun for their client. Their advice: “Don’t be afraid to go bold and dark with a small space.” My washer and dryer currently claim a covered outdoor space in my backyard, so an actual laundry room is on my list of home-improvement projects to daydream about.

You may remember from last week’s newsletter that I was on vacation visiting Fort Collins, Colorado. If you were paying really close attention, you might have noticed that the newsletter was sent out on Saturday rather than Sunday. I hope no one was setting their calendars by my newsletter. Not me; I was on vacation. Fort Collins is absolutely adorable. The downtown is walkable, majestic mountains are a short drive away and completely accessible, the people are friendly, the restaurants are lively, and the houses are — by Santa Barbara standards — reasonably priced. Here are a few that I admired as we strolled around Old Town. I didn’t capture details — because vacation! — but I was enamored, so I wanted to share.