Laundry: Done

She Says:

The last project for the Laundry Room is the laundry line- fairly straightforward and easy to do:

1.  Wooden dowel and wood shelf bracket from the hardware store

2.  A Forstner bit to drill the holes

3.  Mount the brackets under the cabinets

4.  Caulk with Alex Caulk - not a necessary step, but we like the finished, built in look

5.  Paint - Again, because it's wood and because hangers are going to be sliding around on it for all of its life, I used our trusty oil based paint, in Spice Delight color.

And with that, the Laundry Room is done!

The whole project is here.

DIY: Basket Storage

I am always on the lookout for extra storage space, but I also like to put our little stamp on things to make it uniquely us.

We had some extra space in the laundry room and decided to add some cabinets.  We went back to our old faithful cabinet shop and found some small wall cabinets that fit perfectly.  These are the size and shape usually used above the fridge, but we used three side by side to create the look we were going for.

We mounted them flush to the ceiling using cabinet screws.  

Then we cut a piece of 1/4" furniture grade plywood to make a bottom for the cabinets:

and trimmed them out with a simple cove molding.

For the paint, I used Sherwin-Williams ProClassic oil base, just like on the laundry riser.  

As I started painting the cabinets, I realized I didn't want a monolithic block of cabinet doors and experimented with this basket I had on hand:

I liked the look of it, so I headed to Michael's to find some matching baskets and these stenciling tools:

and labelled the baskets with things I keep in the mud room: garden, auto, lights and misc:

I kept the doors on the either end to add a little interest.  And there you have it!

DIY: Washer Dryer Riser

She Says:

As I've mentioned before, one of the things on my laundry wish list was a custom riser for our washer and dryer.  We looked at buying the factory risers, but they were soooo expensive, and just didn't seem to be that useful.  After some web surfing inspiration, we decided to design our own.

The first step was actually the most fun... shopping!  I found three of these laundry baskets (one for lights, one for darks, and one for reds) at Target, and we designed the openings around them.

He Says:

Washers and dryers are heavy.  I chose a 1" thick hardwood ply for the project.  It's a big box with internal dividers, not too difficult.  Like all the cabinetry we're doing in the house, it's a ply box then faced with a poplar face frame.  The face frame is assembled with pocket screws and glue while clamped in a simple 90 jig clamp, then finish-nailed to the front of the cabinet box.

She Says:

I filled in the nail holes and other imperfections with wood filler, then sanded the whole piece with 120 grit paper and my beloved Mouse Sander.

Then I took a tack cloth over the whole piece, and brought out the paint!

Here's one point where HoneyDo and I disagree.  I love to work with oil based paint.  For anybody who doesn't know the difference, oil base is more forgiving on the application side (it goes on smoother and dries more slowly, so you have more than one chance to lay down the perfect brush stroke), and it takes everyday wear and tear much better than latex- no chipping.  It's a must for cabinetry, and really any wood furniture that anyone will be living around.  HoneyDo, however, despises it because it takes so long to dry- 24-48 hours to be able to touch it, and I like to give it a good week before i really test it out (say, placing a washer and dryer on top of it).  If you couldn't already tell, HoneyDo is, well, a Do-er, and he always ends up in the wet paint I am patiently watching dry.

Anyhoo, over the course of a couple of days, I gave the riser two coats of paint.

We used our trim color, Spice Delight from Olympic, but again, since I can't get oil based paint from Lowe's and Sherwin-Williams is often more helpful anyway, I got them to color match it.

We then had the obligatory fight over whether or not the paint was actually dry, and finally put the riser in place.  I will let him tell you about getting the front end washer and dryer up on the riser...

He Says:

It was freaking hard.  I think I pulled at least 3 or 4 somethings in my back.

She Says:

And here she is!

Very useful: brings the washer and dryer up to waist height, so I don't have to bend over or kneel down to transfer loads (renos are hard on the knees, so every little bit helps!) and I've got a great place to hide dirty laundry (or clean if I just don't feel like folding it, which is *always*).

DIY: Chalkboard Camoflauge

The fuse box in the laundry is a bit of an eyesore, as well as wasted wall real estate.  So we made this:

It camoflauges the fuse box while giving us a great space for notes, both of the love and grocery variety... here's how we did it:

1. Paint greenboard with chalkboard paint:

I used greenboard because that's what I had lying around.  Plain drywall would have worked, or any paint grade wood, but the greenboard was a leftover scrap and was therefore free-ninety-free.  

First I rolled the paint on with a roller, but I didn't like the texture, so I then used a brush.  I alternated horizontal and vertical strokes with each coat of paint to give it a linen look.  I probably did 6 coats or so; they dried quickly so it didn't take long.

    

     

     2.  Build and paint the frame:

HoneyDo built the frame out of pieces of 1x2 and trim moulding we also had lying around.  I painted it Olympic One Spice Delight, which matches the rest of the trim and cabinets in the laundry.

     3.  Hang the frame:

We used a piano hinge for this- you can get them in various sizes in the hardware section of Lowe's.  

HoneyDo also installed a magnet in the edge of the frame and then simply added a screw at the right point in the wall just to make sure it would stay shut.

    

 4.  Mount the chalkboard:

The board fit very snugly in the frame, so we just used a couple of finish nails to toenail it in place.

That's it!  I use the board mostly as a grocery list- I just snap a photo with my phone on my way out the door to the store! 

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Organize! The Fuse Box

She Says:

When we first moved in, we had a very small, and very confusing fuse box.  Eventually, we had an electrician come in and replace it with a larger one to accommodate our reno, but in the beginning, this is what we had to work with:

The "labelling" left a lot to be desired.  It consisted of a penciled-in chicken scratch to the left of the breakers.  

I'm not asking for professional calligraphy here, but this is kind of important... legible would be nice!  Okay, I can read "sewer," and I guess "Garibige DS" could be interpreted garbage disposal, but "Ger LT"?  I have no freakin' clue! And some of the few that were legible were actually mislabeled!  But I digress...  

We're going to be flipping breakers on and off throughout this reno, and we need to know what goes where, so we took an hour and figured out where everything went.  Here are our tools:

My handy-dandy cheapo Label Maker        and              a Non-Contact Voltage Tester

That's it!  We turned off all the breakers, then flipped them back on one at a time to test which plugs and wires were live.

Green means it's dead, or safe, Red means DANGER, live wire!

Then, one by one, we labelled each breaker:

Simple and safe!

He says:

If you watch any DIY shows, you've doubtless seen people yelling across the house "is it off?!"  "I don't know!" "Ouch!  It's not off!", etc.  Let's just avoid all that by labeling the fusebox once and for all.  It's important to be thorough, every plug and switch in the house should be tested to know for certain which breaker controls it.  Don't overlook any, or you'll be doing the yelling sooner or later.

Note that the non-contact voltage testers are fantastic tools, but they are too sensitive.  I'm sure they have to be for liability reasons, but rubbing the tip of the tester against a dead wire or outlet generates enough static electricity to trigger the indicator light.  This type of "false positive" test will confuse you unless you take the time to really familiarize yourself with your new tester.  Take a piece of dead, unconnected wire and rub the tester tip on it to learn what false voltage positives look like, and ALWAYS treat an unknown wire, switch or circuit like it's live until you have proven quite conclusively that it isn't.  

Also, you should consult and hire pro electricians whenever needed but DO NOT listen to their stories about getting shocked.  It is universal across the electrical industry to act like 120V circuits are not dangerous - they are.  Listening to your electrician talk about how many times he has been shocked with house current can make you complacent.  Be vigilant around electricity and you will minimize your chances of being hurt.  

Last thing, if you examine the white fuse box in the above photos, you will see that it does not have a master switch for the house incorporated.  When we had it replaced with the nicer, newer, larger grey one you'll see in other posts, we gained a master switch inside the new panel....and because I wanted it, I also had a Master OFF switch for the entire house added to the outside wall.  Now I can turn off all of the circuits at once inside, and I can turn off the entire panel at once from outside.  I like this arrangement a lot, maybe it's overkill, but now we never have to ask "is it off?!" anymore.  We know when it's off.

Floor to Ceiling

She Says:

Initially, we were going to lay tile in the laundry/mud room.  One of the structural changes we made to the room, however, was removing the door from the laundry to the kitchen and widening the pass through.  So even though they are two distinct rooms, they really flow from one into the other, so we decided to start the hardwood flooring in the laundry that will continue throughout the rest of the house.

We have a great local flooring liquidator here, and found this on special:

It's handscraped birch from Toscana- in Coffee Brown.  It's really rustic and has a lot of character, plus, you really can't tell when you've left a big scratch on it while installing the washing machine (ask me how I know)!

A word or two about installing hardwood flooring... I love it!  It's sort of like putting together a puzzle, and it's pretty tough to really screw it up.  You only need a couple of pieces of equipment- a small portable air compressor, which we already own, but you can pick one up for $100-200, and this little beauty:

It's a floor nailer, and we got ours on Amazon for $89!  You can rent them as well, but since we'll be doing the entire house, it was well worth the investment.

He says: 

This Bynford nailer gets good reviews on Amazon, we're not planning on going into the flooring business so it should be fine for one house.  Note that the shoe is set to one arbitrary height, which would be correct for a 10mm thick floor plank.  Our floor is 1/2" thick, so I had to glue a linoleum shim onto the shoe to set it to the correct height for our floor.  This modification is well addressed in the Amazon reviews so I knew what I had to do before we even received the nailer.  Works well, no issues through about 700 sq ft.

She says:

Here we are in the middle of the install:

The charcoal colored stuff is the underlayment- a thin layer of foam to help with sound dampening and a bit of insulation.

And here's the finished product!  (Along with an exhausted husband after wrangling the washer and dryer into place... more on that later...

And now, for the ceiling!

I have to give my In-Laws credit for this one- they built their dream home in the 80's, an old 19th century farmhouse that they completely renovated (I guess it runs in the family).  Anyway, my Mother-In-Law designed a country kitchen with a tongue and groove pineboard ceiling.  HoneyDo and I have always liked that look, and so we incorporated it into our plans as well.

Since there was already a perfectly good drywall ceiling, we didn't need to use real pineboards for this part of the house.  Instead, we found this:

Tongue and groove, stainable, pine paneling!  We get the same look without spending the money on full thickness pine boards, and without the mess of tearing out the ceiling.

Although we could just put them up bare, we wanted just a hint of stain to match our trim color, Olympic's Spice Delight.

I made a simple stain using equal parts oil based paint and mineral spirits.  Since Olympic doesn't really make oil based paints (at least, that's the line at our local Lowe's store) we took our paint chips over to Sherwin-Williams and had them do a color match.  That way, I could make my stain using oil based products.

Staining is a fast and fun procedure:

1. Make your stain by mixing equal parts oil based paint and mineral spirits in a separate container (make sure it is mineral spirits safe so the spirits don't eat through the container!)  We wanted a very light stain so that the woodgrain really showed through.  To make a more opaque stain with more color, simply change the ratio by adding more paint.  Just remember your ratio so you can make more!
2. Wearing gloves, dip a rag into the stain and wipe the board, coating it lightly but completely.  Because I was using such a thin stain in such a light color, I didn't need to go back and wipe off the excess.  This also made for a pretty quick drying time for an oil based product.

   3.  Let boards dry.  Finding places to lay out all those boards was the trickiest part of this project!


 
   4.  Affix boards directly to the ceiling using tongue and groove, a little construction adhesive and a finish nailer.  Stagger the lengths of the boards so that neighboring boards don't end at the same place.  This is to maximize the strength of the joint, and because it just looks better that way.

That's it!  Installing the boards is pretty much a two person job, just because the boards are so long and unwieldy to hold over your head and nail at the same time.

He says:  

We lucked out that the existing ceilings were in excellent condition.  The 5/8" drywall ceiling was an excellent base to glue the new planks to, which allowed us to the lightweight, cheap 1/4" thick pine planks.  After the glue had fully cured (we used Liquid Nails "project" adhesive in our caulk gun) we marked and drilled for recessed "can" lights in strategic places.  The pine planks cut cleanly using the specific can-light holesaw in our rechargeable drill and the results make me happy.

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