Laundry Room Makeover

We just finished redoing the laundry room. Before:

And after:

 
What was involved?


 1. Remove old, cheap, cabinets. Discover the McVicker method of finding the studs in the walls.

2. Get rid of the white paint. I remember when I first thought about a pink laundry room while wandering through a WalMart one night, wasting time during the middle of a hot summer evening with friends. It's probably been three years. I don't know why pink, but what other room can you paint bright pink? The laundry room is only for us, and it's a room we pass through every day (since it's off of the garage) and pink is bright and fun, which laundry, everything laundry is not. The pink is actually Market Flower, a Valspar paint from Lowe's. We've only used Lowe's for paint, because we've had such great results, and the colors are usually fresh and bright. This is in the flat enamel.

3. Replace the light fixture for something that does not cost under $6 at Lowe's.


http://www.lowes.com/pd_74457-43501-FJ05-023WHT_4294925666__?productId=3389244&Ntt=light+fixture&Ns=p_product_price|0

4. Nate pulled apart the exhaust fan and we determined that the outlet was getting electricity, but the fan motor was dead. The fan also looked like the 1986 install, so that's not too surprising. We bought a new exhaust fan at Lowe's. Nate installed it in under two hours, and now we can pull out the hot air the dryer makes during the summer and keep the whole house cooler.

5. Install new, clean shelving, stretching across the whole room.

6. Put the room back together and enjoy!

Things that didn't get completed this go around:

1. Baseboard. We measured for baseboard and will probably buy and paint soon.

2. Flooring. We haven't settled on a new floor, yet, but we will definitely peel up the laminate. At that time we'll also install the new baseboard.

3. Paint the doors and frames with fresh, white, alkyd paint. A must.

4. Replace the door to the garage with something less frightening.


5. Paint the curtain rod. We decided to keep the curtain rod in this room, since I hang so much of my clothing to dry. But, to make it fresh, I'm spray painting it purple. It should be done by early next week.

Home Office Update

Our mission this weekend was to fix our office area. We repainted the room back in March or April, sometime last spring. It's a soft sage-y green with a bit of grey in it to match the living room. The problem wasn't the walls, though, it was the furniture and overall layout of the room.

This room has exactly one wall of any uninterrupted length. So that's were we put our desks. But it looked like a mess.

Admittedly, the chair on the ground is part of a refinishing project of mine, and it will have legs again, soon. But the desks were two different designs, neither of which really worked. Neither desk had any drawers, so we had to stick everything in plastic drawer units that will never look pretty. It worked, but it also didn't work - it was ugly and everything was cramped and there really wasn't any desk space to work in. How a desk can lack work space and drawers and still be a desk and not just a table is beyond me.

I will add that one member of our family liked the desks--Jill love the two little caves she could crawl into, right where our desks chairs would go. She spent a lot of her time asleep under there:

So, we went were all young people with a little money, a willingness to do a little work, and a hunger for Swedish meatballs go - IKEA. We picked out stuff from the AMON desk collection - for $51 we could get a desk top 116 inches long. One long, uninterrupted work surface. And then for lots more money we could get some of those desperately needed drawers.

We ate a quick lunch at IKEA and then brought our purchases home.

We did the drawers first.

Jill immediately went to her old spot on the carpet once we moved the old desks away.

Then we put the legs on the tables and set the desks up.

The last phase was putting together the shelves with drawers to go above.

Everything's up and in place now.

Maybe 5 hours of work, with a little more time spent moving the old things to their new places, but we're very happy with the result. Thanks, IKEA!

Backyard: Herb and Vegetable Garden 2010

Two weeks ago Nate and I were finally able to tackle the backyard - and all its problems. One of the basic changes we wanted to make between last year and this year's layout was the placement and shape of the herb garden. Last year I documented the building of the herb spiral. The spiral had a couple of faults that became apparent after two or three months of use:
1. We had placed the spiral in a part of the yard that was too shaded by the live oak. Most of the herbs planted never got enough sunlight and died after two months of struggling.
2. The plan to use straw instead of soil didn't work. This might be because we have both more rain and higher temperatures. With the exception of the rosemary, nothing planted in the spiral ever rooted well.
3. The squirrels that live in the live oak loved to eat the herbs - and there was no easy way to protect the plants from squirrel invasion.
4. We realized that the spiral was in the way. There's some, but not much, space between the back of the house and the fence. With that huge live oak centered between the two, there's even less walking space. And as Nate and I start figuring out the patio, we realized that the herb spiral would be in the way.

I had started thinking last year of doing something with the beautiful rocks from my parents' lot, a cascading river of herbs. Almost everything planted in the vegetable garden last year did really well, even though it was unusually hot and dry. Knowing that we were going to have to expand the vegetable garden, Nate and I figured that we should move the herb garden somewhere near. We settled on bricks rather than rocks, because we had the bricks from the herb spiral, and once we agreed on a basic shape, we started stacking our bricks on a piece of cardboard.



After a couple of layers of bricks, we started adding in some soil. Once we had a feel for the space with soil, we added another couple of brick layers.





Eventually we decided on three levels - one two bricks tall, one three, and one four bricks tall, with a back wall five bricks tall. We ended up needing more soil than we had anticipated, but are happy with the shape. There's an overall sloping to the structure, which we wanted since it rains so much we didn't want anything to get flooded (some of the plants on the lower level of the spiral got flooded).



We planted the herbs, from the top going down: basil, dill, sage, oregano, thyme, and mint. I'm leaving a little bit of room for something else, perhaps lavender.



The herbs two weeks later:



We only just started on the vegetate garden this weekend. We planted onions and peppers in the front left corner, two rows of okra in the back left corner, two tomato plants in the back right corner, and peas and jalapeno peppers in the front right, along with a pineapple sage that had survived three or four years now. It came back earlier this month almost without either of us realizing it. On Sunday we almost pull it out as we were pulling out weeds and picking up leaves until I broke off a bit and tasted it. I don't know why we haven't used this plant more often - the flavor is earthy but definitely sweet.

The garden layout:



No labels:







The remains of the herb spiral (and the enormous monster rosemary plant):

Shed

Back in January we constructed a shed in the backyard. We bought a vinyl one from Costco, and it's roughly 7.5' by 9.0' We had to make a pea-gravel foundation to raise the structure several inches above the grass; we had to make a foundation anyway, since the poured foundation that was in the backyard was not level and damaged. We built a wooden frame out of 2 x 4s and placed it on top of the bad foundation. Then we poured pea-gravel into the empty frame and leveled the whole.

Front of shed:



Side of shed:




Inside of shed:





Once we built the shed, we filled it with all the gardening supplies from the garage. We then cleaned out the garage and installed a tool bench, and a tool rack. Unfortuantely we forgot to take pictures during the construction process, but it was a fairly easy job.

The tool bench with miter saw and tool rack:







Having built a shed, we then started thinking about what would be the easiest way to mow around it. After talking with my mom we decided to build a "porch" in front of the doors, and then make a gravel bed all around the edges. The gravel bed is something we know we should have done before - it will better anchor the foundation by providing support from the outside to keep everything in place.

The porch part was a little time consuming. Nate killed most of the glass where we planned to lay the pavers two months ago with Roundup. Then we pulled away the dead grass and moved the dirt/mud around to make it angle away from the shed. Once that was close, we added some sand and placed the pavers. We worked on two pavers at a time, from one door to the edge, and then from the other door to the edge.

Dead grass:



Pavers set out on the grass:





Placing the pavers:





Leveling:







Aftwards we placed sand on the top and I swept it into the cracks. The sand was somewhat wet, and I've found that it needs a couple of applications to settle all the way between the cracks. We are happy with the result.









We still need to finish the edge next to the shed, and fill that with gravel. I'll add those pictures once we've finished the project.