The Laundry Room - Part 3

All the chaos about the laundry room was driven by a deadline.

We hosted a party here today (Saturday) and the mountains of laundry needed to get dealt with beforehand.

After all the painting during the week, I stalled the cabinets yesterday.

Fortunately the floor is pretty close to level, so the installation went pretty easily.

Now I can call to get the counters measured. I'm not sure how long it will take to fabricate them, but we've done without them for 8 years. Another couple of weeks won't really matter in grand scheme of things.

We've already purchased the sink and faucet that will function as the laundry tub.

And the artwork will get hung at some point in the future.

And there's a story behind the cabinets, too...

We'd ordered them at the Big Orange Box just after Thanksgiving and were told they'd take 4-6 weeks. We promptly forgot about them knowing that they'd call us when they came in.

(Segue to what appears to be an unrelated story for now...)

I wanted a new workbench and my mother-in-law funded my purchase as a Christmas gift. I found the one I wanted at the Big Orange Box. I checked their website and they had several in stock at a local store just after the new year. The store associate couldn't find them where the system said they should be. After following him around the store for a bit I asked about the "Store Pickup" option on their website. He said that in that case they'd locate it and call me when it was ready for pickup at the service counter.

So I used my phone to place the order and told him I'd be back... ;-)

Later in the day I received the text that my order was ready for pickup.

Knowing that it weighed 150 pounds, I took SWMBO with me to help load it in the car.

We drove to the store and talked to the lady at the service counter. As she was pulling up my info she mentioned that she was just getting ready to call me to say the order was ready. I was impressed.

She said she needed to have it brought up from the loading dock and that if we needed anything else we could go get it and she could process everything at once.

So we went and ordered the blinds for the kitchen and grabbed some other stuff we needed. When we came back she rang us up and gave me the pick-up receipt. When we walked up I hadn't seen anything that looked like the box I was expecting for the workbench (6ft x 3ft x 6-8 inches - some assembly required), so I asked where our order was.  She replied, "On the flatbed cart behind you."

I turned around to see a cart with 5 or 6 big boxes on it, not what I expected. Puzzled, I started to ask why the workbench was in so many boxes, then paused while I looked more closely at the pick-up receipt...

It slowly dawned on me that these were the laundry room cabinets we ordered a month before.

So we pushed the cart out to the parking lot and...

None of the boxes would fit in our SUV.

So I trudged back into the store. And asked the lady at the service desk about the other order I was there to pick up. After looking it up on the computer she said, "No problem. I'll have them bring it out from the back"

I said, "Thanks, and have them bring it over to rentals, please. I need a truck..."

$20 and 20 minutes later - me and my girl are high-stylin' it in a Load-N-Go F-250 with a big orange logo on the side...

The Fishbowl Is No More

SWMBO always wanted to have window treatments in the kitchen. There are four large windows and it feels a bit like a fishbowl, especially after dark.

After some thought, we decided that blinds would be the best option to allow light in, but still allow for some privacy when it's appropriate.

The blinds arrived last week and I installed them over the weekend without any challenges.

Also last week, the cornice boards arrived. Once I finished installing the blinds I started on the cornice boards.

As with many things, there is a story behind these as well. Or I should say, there's a story behind the fabric.

The fabric is a custom pattern from a friend (Hi Schu!) who owns Miss Chiff Designs. She offered to design something for us and we went back and forth for a bit. SWMBO loves cheese and the theme was settled upon.

There was some more back and forth as we were working on colors and what the design should actually look like. At one point she tried another option and sent it to us, saying that she wasn't sure we'd like it.

Of course, we loved it...

And she put it up on her website so we could order a sample.

Within minutes the design was attracting a lot of positive attention and quickly became her most popular design.

I'm still thinking we should get a royalty check every once in a while... ;-)

The Laundry Room - Redux

 (Dramatic music plays in the background as our hero once again rolls the large stone up the hill just to see it roll back down,  Lather. Rinse. Repeat...)

Way back... I scrambled to paint the laundry room before the new appliances were delivered.

The color scheme was carefully chosen by SWMBO.

After everything was in, she informed me that she didn't like the color...

(Fast forward to last fall as the kitchen is wrapping up.)

For a variety of reasons - mostly that we needed to chase mechanicals up to the attic and therefore punch access holes in the laundry room walls - we never purchased and installed the rest of the bits for the laundry room. The laundry tub is one example.

After completing the kitchen, finishing the laundry room was next on the list.  I'd already fixed the holes in the walls while doing other repair work this summer. And we already had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, so went to the Big Orange Box and ordered the cabinets, sink, faucet, and countertop. Everything came as promised and is sitting in the garage waiting to be installed because...

The laundry room needed to be repainted...

SWMBO and our designer consultant came up with a plan and a sketch.  The plan incorporated the colors of the appliances, the window treatments, and countertop.

After creating a 2x2 foot sample board implementation, no one was happy with the original design.

So I repainted the sample board with the new design. Everyone was happy. At least I only had to repaint a 2x2 sample board... So I started painting the room.

• Repaint the ceiling to white.
• Repaint the walls to Ivory Tusk.
• Wait 24 to 48 hours for the paint to cure so that I could...
• Tape off appropriately for the red stripes.
• Paint the red stripes using a foam brush.
• Remove the tape.
• Free-hand a paint pen with the black highlights.

When I got halfway around the room, I asked SWMBO to come see the results...

There was disapproval (hers)...

And then gnashing of teeth (mine)... And lots of bad words uttered...

She had a suggestion about what to do and I encouraged her to give it a try because I was frustrated...

The left portion of the photo is the result.

More disapproval...

More gnashing of teeth and bad words...

Because now I know I have to re-paint this d*mn room again!

After I took a sanity break and erased the sample board, I had an idea...

And created a new sample board.

And got approval.

The new idea meant I needed to repaint only half of the room because I could salvage the parts where there were red stripes, but I hadn't done the black accents yet. There were still multiple steps involved though.

• Repaint the base color on the wall.
• Wait 24 to 48 hours for the paint to cure so that I could...
• Tape off appropriately for the red stripes.
• Paint the red stripes using a foam brush.
• Remove the tape from alternating new stripes and re-tape alternating existing stripes.
• Use a foam brush to paint over alternating stripes with black paint.

After all the tape was removed, we ended up with this...

And from another angle.

Success was declared because SWMBO is happy!

(For the record I'm not entering this room with a paint brush or roller ever again!)

Zoom in on the window treatment.  The pattern on the fabric is French maids doing laundry.

To the left of the window is a drying rack that folds out from the wall.

Now, on to the cabinets!