Laundry Room Makeover-5

Finally the finale of the big house re-do.
Because you have waited sooo long :)

 

The laundry room freshly painted and utilities in place. There is one thing I failed to mention to hubby and I guarantee if I didn't say anything now, he would never have noticed...

 

The measurements were so tight that no one remembered the width of baseboards until all of the drywall and painting was done. On the right wall we left the existing board in place so to compensate the baseboard on the new wall was run up to the washer and stopped there. You wouldn't have even noticed if I didn't say anything. ;)

 

 

DETAILS

 

I have wanted for such a long time to put my girls' special outfits displayed in shadow boxes.

I just wasn't sure where to hang them. I didn't want them in their rooms.

 

 

I thought the laundry room was a cute and perfect place to display them.

This is the only thing on the new wall.

I loved every line.

 

 

 

BEFORE & AFTER

The bathroom was fun to update. It is a little more "grown up" we keep saying. :)
I seriously was nervous that hubby would think I made it look like a granny bathroom.
When I told him my color scheme I could instantly detect his distaste.
I was much more hesitant to reveal this one to him.

DETAILS

 

I walked past this 'Be Silly Sometimes' pictures a couple times while browsing Target. I kept glancing at it because it matched my color scheme but kept reminding myself that I was going for a "sophisticated" look.

But let's face it.

A lot of times I need a reminder.

Slow down.

Take time to enjoy the little things, the little moments, make silly memories.

In the past few years I had a hard time just chilling out and being silly.

I went back and grabbed this picture when I realized all of this.

Every day when I look at myself in that mirror now, I see the little reminder overhead.

Slow down. Enjoy the day. And soak up the memories.

I will never get these days back.

 

Yellow and white chevron curtains that started my whole inspiration.

I saw some on Pinterest that I loved.

But I grabbed fabric and sewed these ones up myself.

 

Target never fails. Although my rug looks matted now, it is super cute. Babygirl enjoys dancing on it in front of the big mirror. So I don't think it will ever return to it's fluffiness.

 

 

{Also, I know I don't really have a 'before' pic for the bathroom but just pretend that white on the left has a doorjam and a handle. Wah-Lah! Before pic!}

 

BEFORE & AFTER

 

Laundry Room Makeover-4

Why yes.. Yes I am still dragging these house posts out :P

After the final drywall work was done we had to paint. But I decided I didn't want to paint the bathroom unless all of the wallpaper was off all of the walls. When hubby and I painted before we just painted over top of the patterned wallpaper. Three of the walls were covered but not the wall with the toilet. When the new wall was built the drywall guy scraped the paper off the half existing wall for me. Thus leaving 2 smooth and 2 patterned walls in the bathroom.

We set out to scrape the rest of the paper off. A few months ago I decided to paint the space beneath the upper kitchen cabinets after I peeled the border off the wall. I looked online at home remedies to remove wallpaper. Warm water and fabric softener. 

Funny thing is, I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned that last part to hubby. Ha 

Babygirl decided she wanted to be a big helper :) She loved that mommy let her do grown-up stuff. 

We did not have a paper scraper and I was too cheap to purchase one after dying of a heart attack over the amount I spent on paint. So we improvised. 

Why yes... Yes that IS a pizza cutter. 

No one will ever want to eat pizza at my house again! :)

Finally after 2 days the wallpaper was fully scraped off. The floors were swept, walls wiped down, and painting was able to begin! 

Once again I Iet Babygirl help the grown-ups. She loved painting with us. I had to keep my eyes on her the 2 days it took to paint because she would randomly grab a brush or roller and start on her own. 

I screenshotted the last picture from snapchat since I didn't have any pictures of myself painting. 

Laundry Room Makeover-3

I had to wait out until the next week in order for the drywall work to be done.

Since the first guy had to do his job in two days instead of one it knocked me down on the priority list. The drywall guys had other jobs scheduled.

Perfectly fine. I understood.

 

Didn't mean I wasn't frustrated.

At this point we were at one week of construction.

I was tired of my house being torn apart!

I lost all motivation of cleaning.

The rest of the house fell to pieces and turned into a train wreck.

I didn't care.

I was over it.

 

In my mind, if the whole house couldn't be clean then none of it would be. 

 

The drywall took 3 full days.

Then came the fun of painting and decorating.

I love that I can keep dragging this process out. ;)

Laundry Room Makeover-2

 

This was how the worker ended day one. Uhm no.

This wasn't what I asked for. I wanted the door removed and a wall put in.

He tried telling me I chose to go with the other option of leaving the washer and dryer how they were and just creating a way to open up that door into the master bathroom.

 

No thanks mister.

Please return tomorrow to fix what you messed up.

 

I had a major cry/fit meltdown out of frustration.

The guy had already told me he was going to charge me $50 more than he quoted me.

This was before I told him he wasn't doing it right.

 

I was tired.

Tired of doing this on my own.

Tired of trying to deal with people while my hubby is away.

This is his job!

He's the one who's supposed to schedule/hire people to work for us.

He's the one who's supposed to negotiate.

 

I was mad, sad, frustrated. Everything.

 

So needless to say..

He returned the next day. Moved the waterlines over to where I wanted them and framed the doorway for drywall.

Laundry Room Makeover

After having some electrical work done a few months ago we were left with a small hole under the fuse box. We had ancient circuit breakers and it would be so expensive to replace if anything were to happen with them. So we went ahead and replaced the whole box and all the fuses.

After coming to realize that there wasn't a wall behind the counters separating them from the laundry nook, we decided to go ahead and have some drywall work done.

These are all the BEFORE photos.
I had to clear out all of the bottom cabinets in order for the plumbing work to be done.

 

The refrigerator had to be moved. This isn't the normal location for these furniture or appliances.

 

 

This was the small hole that needed fixed.

This was the beginning of 2 1/2 blah weeks.

The Floor Project

After a month long project

It's finished!!

Well, kind of.

We still need to install the baseboards.

But I think we deserve a nice long break from home improvements. =)

Back story:

   I didn't take a picture of the carpets before we started ripping it out. I'm not entirely sure I would've shared the photo anyway. It was gross. In December 2008 there was an awful ice storm in the midwest and our power went out. We stayed at my parents house for 3 days (over Christmas) and then one day our bipolar Indiana weather decided to be 48 degrees. Fabulous. All of the ice melted and it was water puddles everywhere. Our neighbors house sits about 5-6 feet higher than ours and so the land slopes down toward our house and all of her down spouts were pointed directly at our house. 

   Long story short. Our house flooded. It was a disaster. Water flooded about 6 feet into our back room, all through our garage and about 2-3 feet into the living room. We had cream carpets. After the cleanup and drywall fixes, we had beautiful brown and orange permanent stains on the carpet. Throw in 2 small dogs and you've got yourself a rainbow of a floor!

We were so blessed to have numerous people help us in this project. It seems almost every night that we had hard work to do, someone new was willing to help. 

We started the project a few days before hubby had to go away for 5 days for Army training. This left me and babygirl in a pretty torn up house. We had to block off the back room and entertain ourselves in the back half of the house and a very small living room. 

The back room was finished first. My brother-in-law and I finished it up while hubby was away. I was so excited to have some of it done! It was a HUGE transformation and it made me so excited to keep working to finish the rest. 

This was what was under the carpet in the hallway. 

Some really ugly white tile. 

Our house was built in the 50's.

Let me tell ya, they had some weird decorating ideas!

Isn't the wood grain in the boards beautiful? If you're reading this, you're probably thinking. Uh. It's a floor. Ok?

But to us!!! 

It is a HUGE and dramatic change and we feel so much cleaner having babygirl run and play on this new floor. Plus it will add a great value to our home when we sell it. 

Which hopefully, will be in 2013 after hubby returns from his deployment.

Fingers crossed!

Let's just say I was a little more than thrilled that we were finished.