Laundry Room Demolition and REplanning

"Demolition" makes it all sound pretty serious...  For our laundry room, it was actually pretty simple.  To prep for cabinet installation, we had to rip out some of the floor moulding as well as a laundry shelf.


First we pried up the quarter round with a crow bar.  It wasn't caulked in or anything, so it came off easily.

Then we used our oscillating tool  to cut the caulking away from the baseboards.  This tool is awesome, but it's super loud.  Will definitely woke up multiple times while we were using it... whoops.  (But also, extra snuggle time with the baby Sir... can't complain about that!)

After the caulk was gone it was easy to pry the baseboards like we did the quarter round.

Then we cleaned up that darn, tiny laundry shelf and got to work on it.

We used the oscillating tool in the same way that we did on the floor, removing all the caulk.  Then we pried that sucker off the wall.  Hoorah.

We were left with this board that acted like a bracket for the shelf.  Same deal.  Oscillator, pried, done.

We got a little hasty with the last board and ended up with some torn drywall.  Nothing a little spackle and paint won't fix down the line.  Then we set to work on stacking the washer & dryer.  I was pretty stoked about this part.  Stacking the units meant that we'd have a lot more storage space.  Remember, our plan looked something like this:

The stacking was simple.  We bought a kit meant for our specific units online for less than $10, and they came with simple instructions.  It looked great...

Until we got some of the cabinets in as well...  And all of a sudden, you were in the chokey... (Not familiar with the chokey?  Shame on you...)  The laundry room felt way too shallow with the units stacked plus the cabinet on top.  The cabinet was almost touching the light fixture as well.  Not so cozy.

So I gave up my dream of stacked units.  Boo.  This is my disappointed face.

Because I was really looking forward to being able to stick my whole head in the dryer to smell the clean clothes while standing.  Such is life.

So we reworked the whole room.  We'll leave the pantry cabinet in the same place, have three cabinets on the top (all different widths because that's what came with the set), with a section on the far left for open shelving, and then a sink cabinet below with a custom pull-out cabinet on the far left side (to fill the extra 12 inches that were leftover on the bottom).

We also played around with the idea of tearing up the linoleum and laying down a tile floor.  After 2-3 weeks of indecision and no forward progress in the room, we gave up on tile and moved forward with what we originally planned.  

Next up: Cabinet Installation

Laundry Room Planning

We have a great sized laundry room, but it has zero storage.  We've brought in a plastic shelving unit to help out, but the Willister can reach the bottom two shelves, which significantly limits the type of items we can put there... (we're talking unopened tissue boxes, toilet paper, and shoes... that's it).

We've been dreaming and pinning (look here for our laundry pins so far...) and although the mental picture of our finished room is by no means finished, we started in on the plans anyway.

I measured the the height and width of the room and drew up various layout ideas.

There is already plumbing for a utility sink on the far left of the room so we're planning for that.  The hook-ups for the washer & dryer are just right of center in the room, so we're sticking with the easiest plan and putting them as close to the hook-ups as possible.

We've decided to stack the washer & dryer to allow for maximum storage space.  We rarely fold clothes in the actual laundry room, so counter space wasn't too big of a deal to us.  We've also decided to add a pantry-like cabinet to store the vacuum, broom, mop, etc.

After all the rough sketches, I drew up a scaled version of the whole room.  (Feeling pretty proud of myself at this point...)  The right side will be the pantry, then the washer-dryer with a cabinet above, and two sets of cabinets on the side, with the far left cabinet holding the utility sink.  The skinny bar on the left was where we originally planned a rod to hang clothes, but we decided against it.  We tend to hang our clothes upstairs anyway, and we decided we'd rather have extra cabinet storage in that spot.

Then I priced out the cabinets at a few stores.  Any home improvement store will provide pricing and planning guides for cabinetry- easy cheesy.  

Pricing estimates for the five cabinet sets pictured above:

Home Depot: $609 (for basic, unfinished cabinets; toe kick, crown moulding not included)

Ikea: $1037 (for finished STAT cabinets; legs, toe kicks, crown moulding not including)

Those were the prices even before we nixed the hanger bar and decided to add another cabinet. Not terrible, but not what we were hoping to spend.  

We toyed with the idea of building the cabinets from scratch... but decided it wasn't worth the time and stress.  So we headed to one of our very favorite stores in hope of a steal: Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

The ReStore is basically a thrift store for home improvement that benefits the Habitat for Humanity organization.  They stock sinks, light fixtures, furniture, doors, trim, tiles, paint, hardware, and of course, cabinets!  They have rows and rows of cabinets, some individual, but many that are whole sets of old cabinets taken from kitchens and laundry rooms under renovation.  We scoured the lot of cabinets looking for a set that we could make work in our space.  We found the perfect set; it even had a pantry cabinet.   We had to rearrange a few of the measurements so that it would all fit correctly, and we ended up purchasing an individual unit to round out the set, but we made it work. 

And most importantly, the price tag was awesome.  We got all of the cabinets for just over $250.  Score score score....  We piled them into the trailer, (and the trunk... and the back seat...) and took them home.  

Right now we're in the process of paint prep.  Some of the cabinets were pretty greasy, but with some goof-off and a bit of elbow grease, we've cleaned them up.  We'll be replacing the drawer and cabinet pulls, but keeping and painting the hinges to save money.

I'm so excited to see how it will all turn out.  There are still a lot of decisions to be made: paint colors for the walls, hardware for the cabinets and drawers, and how to organize all the new storage that we'll have!  Hoo-hoo-hooray!

Any brilliant ideas we should include in our design?!

Best Friends (who don't know us...)

We don't think of ourselves as particularly creative people.  We rely on other people to make awesome things and then copy them shamelessly...

Okay, so it's not quite that simple, but sometimes it comes pretty close.  We do a lot of "inspiration research," (aka blog stalking) to find homes and ideas that we like.  Then we find ways to apply them in our own home.  So today, we thought we'd introduce you to some of our "besties."  These are our best friends who happen to not know that we exist...

Centsational Girl:
Kate is the boss over at Centsational Girl and we oogle over her DIY wood staircase and wainscoting.  She does a lot of DIY as well as crafts and recipes. We're also oogling over pretty much everything in this picture:  upholstered headboard with nail trim, stenciled wall, etc.

Apartment Therapy:
This website covers lots of different things.   We love their home tours and their focus on DIY in small spaces, with small budgets, and small people (kiddos that is...).

Ana-White:
Ana-White is amazing.  She is building a "mom-plex" for her mother and mother-in-law to live in and documents it all on her blog.  Her website features lots of plans for simple carpentry projects (like our upcoming farmhouse table!) which is why it's a must see.

Young House Love:
Sherry and John at Young House Love are our kindred spirits.  They're just crazy kids starting a family and creating their own home (like us!).  So while we enjoy the projects and tutorials and what not, I think I mostly keep reading because they've become my friends.  Maybe, one day, they'll agree... hah

 Houzz
This is the go-to website for dream homes.  Oh man, we get lost looking at all of the crazy fancy homes on this site.  Want to look at kitchens?  Click the kitchen button and you will have enough amazing faucets and backsplashes to drool over for hours.

House Tweaking:

We love Dana's style over at House Tweaking.  We love it so much that we copied some of her paint colors (thank you!).  And we love the idea that your home is never finished, that there is always some tweaking to do.  

Pinterest:

This comes last, but certainly not least. Pinterest, while great for finding inspiration, is also especially useful for inspiration organization.  Sometimes we repin other people's pins, but often we pin from Houzz or Apartment Therapy to remember what we liked.  We try to type exactly why we liked that particular photo, but it doesn't always happen.  It's also useful for figuring out room layouts.  Instead of moving furniture around a bunch of times, we'll look at pictures of rooms with the same elements and decide which looks best.

What are your inspiration go-to websites?  Any we should add to our list?!

The Projects Board

We like home projects.  We like home projects so much that we decided to give them their own blog.  At any given time, we have 5+ projects in progress, 10+ in the planning stage and ENDLESS in the dreaming stage.  In an attempt to clear our brains a bit, we made a project board.  We bought this Ikea easel/chalkboard/whiteboard last year for Will's birthday party.  $15.  Sweet.  He's not quite big enough to use it yet, so we stole it.  We wrote down all the projects we want to do and wrote them down on half of a notecard.  (Of course, we thought of lots more later...) Then we prioritized them... roughly... to help us get a handle on where we are, where we want to go, and how to get there.

On the left side are projects currently in the works.  (Except for a few we missed... darn those ongoing projects).  We have all the equipment for these projects, the just have to get done.  Like the seat cushion for the second wingback chair... Never mind how long I've been working on that...   We also have a trailer that needs sides.  (We've sent one too many giant water barrels barreling across busy roads because of lack of trailer walls...).

On the right (and middle) are all the projects in the planning stage.  For example, hang pictures.  We've lived in this house for a year and have yet to hang any pictures...  Fail.  Well, minus one.  We have one picture on the wall...  These are projects that we have a fairly good vision of, just not many details for. We could start any of these projects now (if we only had the time... sigh).

 On the back of the board are all of our dream projects.  These are projects that we want to do, but that simply aren't in the budget, or aren't very high on our priority list right now.  For example, additional (and better) storage in our master bedroom closet is a must-have.  But since nobody sees our scary, messy closet except for us, it's just not worth planning yet.  Kitchen countertops and cabinets... oh man, we have big dreams for those.  But budget... still saving.

So many projects, so little time.  (And occasionally, so little motivation... hah)