House Art in the laundry. I took Nadine's advice and hung her Purple House in the laundry where it makes me smile while I'm washing clothes and feeding cats. I can also wave cheerfully to it as I make my way to the back door to let the dog out ...again...
Monday, April 11, 2011
Hanging the Art: Laundry Room edition
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Laundry Reveal
Shussssh! Don't tell the master bathroom but I'm cheating on it with this room. I find myself in here more often than is necessary - and for reasons that have nothing to do with laundry...
If I find my hands are a little dirty I'll run here to wash them - even if I'm at the other end of the house and have to pass a bathroom (or two) on my way. There's something about this Grohe K4 faucet that keeps me going back and stroking it every single time I go in the room. Lest you think I'm a crazy sicko, Nancy at the marble fabricator's office also has a fetish for it. It reminds her of a baby's bottom...
Speaking of marble, this is the same marble we used in the master bath and I just want to LICK it, it's so gorgeous. This piece over the Bosch undercounter washer and dryer will be finished when the fabricator cuts me new backsplashes - the installer used the long piece to make a 2" backsplash for the vanity upstairs - oops!
As for the Ikea Applad cabinets, they hide everything neatly away - including the vacuum and the ironing board - behind the softclose drawers and doors. At the moment most of the cabinets are empty but the plan is to use this as a mini-kitchen while we are undergoing the kitchen remodel. Oh, yes, I did just casually throw that out there; no stopping us now - we're on a roll!
Friday, March 12, 2010
Marble Madness
The bids for the laundry room countertop came in - Carrara marble beat Group D Corian by over $300 which amazed me. It's the same stone we used in the master bath and fits in the overall color scheme of the house. But still, it really isn't what I envisioned for the laundry room. So for all the times I have ridiculed the overuse of marble and granite in home renovations, I APOLOGISE!
Obviously, we were trying to keep things simple. I could have gone completely crazy and picked one of these grey-toned beauties.
Or changed the color scheme to incorporate the red Porphyry or yellow Giallo Antico marbles.
At least we are stopping before the house looks like this!
All images from last month's visit to the Room of Colored Marbles in the Getty Villa where you can also find this very handy guide to the different marbles used in the room. Click to embiggen!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
No More Dirty Laundry
There is one other reason why things have taken a little longer than we planned on the primary bath front. We decided to take advantage of the fact that the trades were in the house and finish a few projects that had been neglected over the past few years months, like the laundry room.
This is how we left it on May 12 2008 - new appliances, lighting and upper cabinets. We were waiting for a revelation regarding the kitchen/mudroom floor before we installed the base cabs. If we decided to go with tile it made sense to do it all the same, including the laundry, yes? Well, grand procrastinators that we are, we failed to make any choice over the succeeding months except we came to realise we didn't want tile - stone or porcelain - in the kitchen. But I do think it's the most practical choice for a laundry floor. So as I was ordering bathroom tiles over the holidys I made a spur-of-the-moment impulse purchase at Porcelanosa. The conversation went something like this:
Emily at Porcelanosa: "Did you want anything else"?
Me: "Do you have anything in a 12 x 12 or smaller on sale? In a gray tone or a neutral"?
Emily: "I have this" (page 108)
Me: "I need enough for an 6' x 11' laundry room floor"
Emily: "Would you like to take a sample home"
Me: (knowing how that was likely to turn into another six-month long indecision fest) "No, just add it to the order"
I know! Totally out of character for me, right? But just like that another renovation was underway. The base cabinets are in and after deciding against wood or laminate countertops I'm just waiting on quotes from the Corian Guy and the Marble Guy - and the electrician to move and add an extra light fixture so we can get the door on the high cabinet. Then we can wrap up another room.
Friday, May 30, 2008
And on the home front
We haven't been ignoring the house this week. A couple of chores were crossed off the to do list. This guy came down. We haven't had a cover on it since the cabinets went on the wall because I didn't allow for the door opening when I went for the extra long boxes.
The ceiling was primed and we had just enough left-over paint to give it the three coats it needed to make it match seamlessly. Then the new fixture went up and we can now open the cabinet door. Ta da, another problem solved.
We took part in the annual slaughter of the carpenter bees. They only seem to be over the porch this year (so far, anyway) but they've already managed to drill two new holes that will be really difficult to fill unless we get a bigger stepladder.
Things we have to do this weekend: repaint the back door, sand and paint the bottom of the garage door, sand and stain the holes the woodpecker made, stain the new frame around the kitchen door.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Laundry Update: Cabinets
I wrote this post before I went walkabout:
Some weeks ago I promised an update to the failed initial laundry room plan. I drew and redrew the plan and eventually came up with something I could live with: 2 x 24" cabinets over the washer/dyer, a high cabinet next to the dyer and oak countertops. On the adjacent wall there will be one 18" and one 24" cabinet next to the laundry chute. Underneath the laundry chute a 15" cabinet, next to it a 24" sink base and then an 18" pull-out drawer unit. That will mean we only need a 2" filler, so no wasted space, and I ordered 39" tall wall cabinets so I'll have lots of room to store cat food.
The floor will have the same porcelain tiles we are using in the powder room. They are really low-maintenance, as easy to clean as the white Applad cabinets we've chosen. It should be a breeze to get this room finished.
Unfortunately, when we went to Ikea to buy the cabinets the high cabinet was out of stock so we ended up just getting the wall cabinets, which we have had neatly stacked in the garage for a month now. The plan was to make one cabinet per evening in the hopes we could have hung them by the following weekend but plans tend to get postponed in this house. Sometimes indefinitely.
Then I came back from Boston and to my great surprise I found:
Boxes assembled
and boxes on the wall. With doors. And handles. I'm totally impressed, maybe I should go away more often.
It's looking very shiny and clean, and much bigger than before. I can't wait to get the rest of the laundry room finished.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter = ikea
A trip to Ikea to buy some cabinets to finish the laundry room was a big fat bust. I had everything planned out, wall and base cabinets from the Udden range in clean, mod, white and stainless steel, plus a Mossby stainless shelf but, as so often when we get to the store, we started to second-guess the plan. To replace the existing sink countertop where the cats feed happily away from the ever-hungry dogs who would otherwise devour their treats, we could have either a free-standing unit with a single sink that would leave enough room for the cats to feed (just) but there would be a 9" gap at one end and that would be really annoying (you try scraping dried-on cat food out of a space that size)or a unit that would fit exactly that comes with a double-sink meaning the cats would have to eat in the sink. Rats. Thwarted once again.
So we came home empty-handed and cleaned the laundry which didn't make me feel even the teeniest bit better about the waste of time and fuel.
My mood wasn't made any better by listening to a segment on NPR about chocolate for Easter and hearing Chocolate Dinosaurs were a big seller. Because now I want a chocolate dinosaur and I didn't even get a little egg.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Laundry countertop redone
I'm really impatient to put in some new cabinets in here. All it takes is time and money. Unfortunately both of these are in short supply at the moment.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
More makeovers
I finally persuaded Steven to put a coat of Benjamin Moore Cloud White on the ceiling and it took him, oh I don't know, maybe 30 minutes to finish. Then he spent two hours in the pool recovering.
I spent that time undergoing a change of my own. I left the house blond and returned a brunette. All this house makeover stuff must have rubbed off on me because it wasn't a planned thing at all.
Today I put the primer on the countertop and tomorrow I'll give it a coat of Rustoleum. If it doesn't work, it's no big deal, it's a temporary thing. The new hair colour, on the other hand, is a keeper.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Reflective
I still have to paint the old laminate countertop but it already looks a gazillion times better than it did before.
Friday, July 06, 2007
First Frost in High Summer
It truly wasn't my intention to do this but I'm sure that this is the same color that was on the wallpaper in here in 1970. I think I might have chosen it because subconsciously I'm worried that we are taking too much of the original feel out of the house, but my original intention was to get a clean, reflective tone into a windowless space. This is just the tinted primer so we will have to suspend judgement until the top coat has dried. I'm going to paint the formica countertop while I'm about it. Hopefully the Rustoleum will do as great a job on that as it did in the medicine cabinets in the boys' bath. Those babies look brand new. This will be a temporary fix until we do the kitchen and put in new countertops and cabinets in here as well. But I want a nice space to do the washing in until then.
I've had to stop for today because I took a brushful of primer to the right eye and as we had to use oil-based primer because of the weird stains it took a while to clean it up. And it's nearly martini time.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Exposed plumbing - a trendy new look?
We are now a week passed the "absolutely has to be finished by" deadline and we still have this charming hole in the laundry room and its mate, the lovely new wastepipe in the downstairs bathroom.
Still no word from our lovely handyman on his poor knee so no chance of repairs to the drywall, or tiles for that matter but apparently we will have an installed vanity in the bathroom by Tuesday morning. Then, if I'm smartish, we may get the bathroom plumbed before we leave for a week of music and mayhem in Tennessee at the end of next week.
May. Might. With a lot of luck.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
We're very proud of ourselves
It's been an entire year since we first looked into replacing our 30 year old dryer and 26 year old top-loader with energy saving models that actually get clothes clean. We know it's been that long because the local appliance store had its annual sale last night and it was at the last one that we nearly had a stand up fight in the kitchen department about the amount of space needed to accommodate a front loading washing machine.
This time we had had it with the old appliances. I was fed up standing ankle deep in water every time I wanted to load the dryer (a slight exaggeration, but only very slight) and Steven was mad that every t-shirt had to be washed at least twice to get stains out. The final straw was having to dry every load twice because the tumble dryer was acting up.
Now the procrastination is over, finally we have made a decision and stuck to it long enough to place the order and hand over the credit card. This is a major achievement for us and we were so pleased with ourselves we celebrated with cocktails at our favorite Huntington Bar.
Of course it would be better to wait to do anything in the laundry room until the handyman has been back to repair the wall we cut a chunk out of, and optimally we would have torn up the floor, re-jigged the plumbing and put in new cabinets before we purchased new appliances but that won't be happening this side of summer so before the Bosch machines arrive next Thursday we have to remove the old appliances, paint the damaged walls with oil-based primer, paint all the walls with a cheery colour (that we haven't chosen yet) and put up the shelves. We have a four day holiday to achieve this, plus three extra evenings. What could possibly go wrong?
Friday, May 11, 2007
Good news, bad news, and a mystery.
The good news is that it rained really badly this morning so the handyman couldn't work on his other, outside, job. Actually, that's probably not such good news for his other client but great news for me because last night he phoned to say I would have to wait for another 10 days to get the hardware installed and this morning he decided he's rather be dry working on my baths.
He installed the Motiv towel bar, robe hook and toilet roll holder in the boys' bath. That means we can officially call that bathroom the winner in the first to be finished stakes as the girls' bath still needs a piece of trim and he didn't have the correct saw to do that today.
Then he filled a hole in the back door lintel that had rotted away and patched the ceiling in the downstairs bath. It was when he moved on to patch the wall in the laundry room that we realised we had a problem. The wall was more than stained, it was damp if not actually wet. After staring at it for a while and running upstairs to see if we could see a cause we decided the best option was to cut a hole and try and discover the source. I was imagining water pouring through the walls when he opened it but behind was bone dry. Huh.
There is a wastepipe there but it doesn't appear to be damaged: it's not green or damp, there are no beads of humidity anywhere but the sheetrock had just about dissolved and was definitely goopy to the touch. So we are leaving the nice hole in the wall until he can get back to us again (the week before Memorial Day, he promises) and I'll run the toilets, showers, baths and sinks upstairs to see if anything causes a leak. Otherwise when he shows up next time, he'll put in a piece of sheetrock and we'll pretend the whole thing never happened.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Setting a new timetable
It seems my suspicions were correct and Steven didn't make time to arrange delivery of the shower base while I was away because one call to the bathroom accessory store this morning and 10 minutes later I had the MTI shower base in my garage. I wonder how long it will be before it finally gets to the bathroom?
Yesterday we agreed to revise the order of work for the on-going remodel. It now reads:
1) the boys' and girls' baths will be done simultaneously - whatever part of the project is less hassle (requiring the fewest runs to the hardware store) will get done first
2) the downstairs bath will get its facelift: new vanity, sink and faucet, plus new towel bar and toilet roll holder.
3) the master bath
4) the laundry room
Depending on how long the first three take we may do the laundry room with the kitchen remodel - that's the big project for 2008.
It's funny how things can quickly change, though. This morning we woke up to 3" snow so I reached for a dog towel in the laundry and tore the sliding door off the last remaining cabinet.
The revised, revised list goes:
1) boys' and girls' bath; depending on number of tiles we use there we may have enough to tile
2) the laundry room floor, making this project #2.
3) downstairs bath facelift
4) master bath
Either way it is going to take much longer than we thought to finish this part of the remodel and I seriously think we need to increase the gin budget.
Friday, December 29, 2006
More demo
We couldn't do anything else to the boys' bathroom in the way of demolition so we moved on to the laundry room. Actually I take no credit for this, the "we" was all "he". He cleared the room, unsrcrewed the upper cabinets and resorted to the sledgehammer when the were unresponsive. Then he carted it all out to the dumpster, which is now full.
I'd like to clean up the walls and hang new cabinets but he thinks it will be better to wait until the kitchen gets replaced in 2008. My original thought was to do this room and use that s a makeshift kitchen while the big room is being done. But I can see the benefit of waiting - that way we can go throughout the kitchen, mud room and laundry with 18x18" tiles, and get a clean, continuous look.
The only question is whether I can live with a half-demolised laundry room for 20 months.
Santa? No, the demo man
I knew it was only a matter of time before he "personalised" the car but on our own driveway? The morning after he filled the dumpster? How is that possible?
Anyway, the ceiling is now down, we can see where the hole in the flashing round the vent pipe caused the water damage, and the assessment is that it's not too bad. The biggest relief is that there is no longer any smell of mold or rot in the room so I think we can change the cruddier insulation and start putting things back together again.
Next on the list: change the wastepipes to PVC, upgrade the fan to a quieter model, install a light over the shower and a GFCI circuit.
Friday, November 17, 2006
I want my recessed ironing board
I have spent days pouring over the blueprints for the house, discovering a few interesting things along the way. On the original blueprints the entry way had a flagstone floor. This made perfect modernist sense: the path to the front door was also flagstone so the inside and outside flowed together. I am actually quite glad decided to floor the entry and great room with parquet as it's warmer and is great for working out: put on a pair of socks and glide as if you are on a Nordic trainer.
The carpet in the downstairs powder room should have been ceramic tiles and when we have saved enough money to redo the kitchen it will be tiled at the same time. The windows originally were all 6'x4' units but some were changed to smaller 4'x2' rectangles. The duo square windows in the master were planned as rectangles and we may change them back as it will be $500 cheaper that way. Most notably different was the living room, or as we call it, the den. On the blueprints the floor is level, no raised platform dividing the room into triangles. I really want to talk to Mr Geller to see if this change was incorporated after the first blueprints were drawn up and if there is a structural reason for keeping it. If there isn't, I'm thinking about removing the platform altogether.
Anyway, I thought I'd identified all the differences between the blueprints and the house we live in until today. I asked Atlantic Blueprint to scan the plans onto a CD rom and I spent an hour or so carefully examing them. It was as if I was looking at them with a new eye, things jumped out at me: The kitchen cabinets had been planned differently and the wall of windows became a half wall of windows and a sliding door. But it was when I came to the laundry room that I got really excited. The plans called for a recessed ironing board. How neat is that? I checked out the wall in the laundry room but there is no trace that it ever held such a contraption. I don't iron but I'd love to fit such a thing in the space.