Laundry Room Redo #4

 Oops, I forgot to take pictures of steps along the way. But it's boring anyway. I primed the crown and painted the room Sherwin Williams Really Teal. The most fun and most satisfying part was putting the wallpaper in. I used peel and stick from Lowes. I ain't gonna lie, it was not easy. I still had to size the area because it was drywall. Our small town was pretty much lacking in sizing products. And I didn't know anything about sizing, except that I needed it. I ended up finding one sad little box of Zinsser powdered wallpaper paste/wall sizing in an old small-town hardware store. Even the staff there didn't know they had it or what it was. The box had been opened and then taped shut. But I didn't care. I wanted my wallpaper on and I wanted it on now. 

The package says "easy to mix", but it was nearly impossible to mix. At first, I just put the powder in a bowl and added the water like the instructions say. But I quickly saw that was not going to work. It was like making a roux or gravy and just dumping the milk into the flour/butter mixture. Lumps galore. So I tried mixing it with my blender. Still didn't work. I decided to start over and add the water a bit at a time, like you would for a roux. But that didn't work either. I finally just stuck my hands in there and smashed the lumps the best I could through a sieve. I did finally get it smooth enough to use. The instructions also say to apply with a roller. What a mess that was. It was so runny, it was like just rolling on water. Drips everywhere.

I waited until the next day to start applying the wall paper.

Myy first piece ended up perfect.

Second piece and little corner piece turned out pretty good, too.

This corner was a bear. The ceiling has some old damage on it that made the wallpaper bunch up. But I soldiered on and, while not perfect, it still looks good. And, who's gonna be looking up in that corner anyway?

Husband helped me install the very heavy solid walnut shelf above the cabinet. I was able to store a bunch of jars on it that were taking up cabinet space.

The cabinet is an old pie safe, probably from the late 1800's/early 1900's. It's pretty rustic. But perfect for the room.

Next up, the pull-down closet rod above the dryer.

Now I have the dreary task of painting the cabinet doors. I'm trying to decide if I should completely strip them of the oil-based paint, or sand, prime and paint. I'm leaning towards stripping. I think they'll look better in the end.

Laundry Room Redo #3

I finished up the crown moulding this morning. There was just this piece and one other left to do. But it took all morning. To avoid going and buying two more pieces of moulding, I had to make what was called a scarf joint. I watched a few YouTube videos to figure it out.

First of all, on this piece, the left side has an angle in the wall that is approximately 16 degrees. I made no less than ten trips down to the barn to make just the right sample cut so that the moulding would fit together at that angle in the wall. It turned out that a 13 degree cut is what was needed to match up with the 16 degree cut that I had already cut and installed yesterday. 

This is the 16 plus 13 degree angle cut. Don't ask me why this worked. It just did. The ceiling has some old damage there on the left, which threw the moulding out of whack a little bit. Nothing a little caulking won't fix. I added a little shim on the top to keep it from shifting when I nailed it on.

Then I had to make the scarf joint cuts, which was both pieces cut at a 22.5 degree angle. That wasn't very hard. It's a thing of beauty when it turns out perfectly. Then I had to make the 45 degree cut for the right side corner. 

 

The moulding at the top of this cabinet was the very last piece to install. It had a 45 degree angle inside corner on the left, a scarf joint to the left of center, and a 45 degree angle outside corner on the right. The inside corner was a little tricky. It wasn't fitting just right, so I pushed the saw a little further than the 45 degree mark and that was the sweet spot for this cut. The outside corner was a perfect 45 degree cut. Figures...it was my very last piece.

Then it was time to caulk. Everything is done and it's ready to be primed.

Yay!

Laundry Room Redo #2

 I've been hard at work. 

It always gets worse before it gets better. I've sanded and primed everything with this grey Zinser Bull's Eye primer. Don't believe it when they tell you it makes latex stick to oil paint. I sanded the cabinets and washed them with TSP. But still the primer will just scratch off. I don't know what to do about that.

Grey primer on walls as well. I figured the dark teal paint that I've chosen will go better over a darker primer instead of painting over antique white.

I'll be leaving the door off of this cabinet and it will be open shelving. I didn't want it to look unfinished and to see all the junk on the other side. So I used a closet shelf that I took out of one of my reorganized closets, and happened to be exactly the depth that I needed. I cut it in two pieces and used it it as a new shelf wall. I'll prime and paint those, too. Just learning how to use husband's saw was a chore. He ended up cutting it for me. I guess he's afraid I'll cut my hand off or something.

So, today I thought I'd learn to cut crown moulding. Ha. It's so tricky. Who ever figured out how to do it is a genius. I've watched multiple videos trying to learn how. You've heard "measure twice, cut once". Well, try "measure 15 times, flip the moulding over 10 times, readjust miter saw 6 times. Cut moulding and still get it wrong.

It's hard to tell, but this was my first attempt. It was a hair long, so I took it back to the saw and shaved a bit off the end. I was pleased with the outcome and it fit well. But after I cut the inside corner for the next piece, they didn't fit well together. I finally figured out that the corner is not exactly square. So at this point, I am frustrated and need a break. I'll need to figure out how to adjust the miter just a tiny bit so that the corners fit together.

Oh, hullo, peel and stick wallpaper. Just arrived in mail today. I love it. Guess where it's going to go?

Laundry Room Redo #1

So like I said, my laundry room needs a redo from the old 1970's decor. It has to be on a budget, so it's really DIY.

The room is a weird, sort of triangle shape because my house is sort of an arc shape and the laundry room is positioned at the transition or bend in the house. When we remodeled the house, the laundry room had a window to the outside "breezeway" to the garage. When we enclosed the breezeway, which we still call a breezeway, we made a doorway between the laundry room and breezeway. When we did that, we had to move the dryer to the wall opposite of the washer.

So, here's what it has looked like for the past 16 years, sorta unfinished. I don't think I even painted the door frame and there's some missing baseboard.

The dryer side, clothes rod above it is too high for me to reach comfortably, but also the clothes hang down in the way of the dryer. So I'll put a pull down rod above there so the clothes can be up out of the way, but the rod still accessible to me.

The room looks kind of big in the pictures, but it's really not. It's a fairly small space, but has lots of built in cabinets, which is nice. They're stuffed, so part of my task is to clear out of lot of things and paint the insides and outsides of the cabinets.

The dryer side from another angle. See, the room is so small, it's hard to get a picture of the whole thing in one shot.

And this shelf, oh my goodness, the things that accumulate on an open shelving unit over the years. Ugh. "I'll put this here for now," really means forever. I found a new home for this shelving unit in the garage. And the room already looks so much better without it.

Eek! Sixteen years of accumulated dirt and dust. I'm embarrassed. And the 50 year old cracked linoleum has to go.

After clearing out the room (except washer and dryer because the room still has to function during this redo), the first order of business was to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. It only took me a couple of hours.

Today's task was pulling up the linoleum. I've read that I need a heat gun to scrape up the glue layer. I don't have a heat gun, but will be getting one ASAP.

I'm Back!

 Whew. It's been a long haul. I exhausted myself with all the BOP, DOJ fighting.

Suffice it to say that husband is home. He was released from the halfway house in July of 2022 and has one more year of supervised release. And we're STILL in the midst of the legal battle. Our case went all the way to the Supreme Court. They declined to hear it, which was no surprise. So now we have a Habeas Corpus in the works. And we're waiting on a ruling from that.

For now, he has to work full time, so the farm is suffering from his lack of availability. I do what I can. Mowing seems to be my life right now. The hay fields have been reclaimed by the weeds, so we aren't getting much hay, even if he did have time to cut, rake, and bale. But the fields still have to be mowed. So I've been doing that with my riding mower.

I'm not milking goats this year. We're still raising them, but have cut back on the number of goats we have. Husband and I don't use a lot of milk these days, so there's really no need for me to store milk for the year. Plus, it really hurts my hands. I need a young'un to take over milking duties. We do still slaughter the meat goats, though. We had six this year, so the freezer is stocked.

I didn't put in a garden this year either. I intended to, but the weather didn't cooperate and I was just so busy. So, I'm glad I didn't because there is too much work on the farm for me to add to it.

BUT, I've started a new decorating project that I'm pretty excited about - the laundry room. It's been a long time coming. When we moved to the farm, we remodeled most of the house, but not the laundry room. It still has the original 70's linoleum and popcorn ceiling. I need a creative outlet. All work and no play makes me a dull bird. So, although, this project IS a lot of work, my mind's eye is on the finished product, which gives me joy and satisfaction. I have to do it as cost effectively as I can since we're still under the government's thumb and still have legal bills. So I'm DIYing it as much as possible. I think I'll be able to do everything except the floor. I want to have brick pavers, but I'll have to wait an undetermined amount of time for the floor since it's a big expense.

More to come on this project.