Putting the Puzzle Together : Laundry Room Post 3

I probably shouldn’t blog during basketball. Or maybe, I should ALWAYS blog during basketball.

This isn’t a real design-y post, which is probably good because I am writing it while watching the Butler-Marquette Basketball game. So I am a bit distracted – and writing during commercials. Go Dawgs. Though, I really like Marquette. Any team that helps their opponent up when they knock them down gets mad props from me.

We decided to put crown moulding up in the laundry room for 3 reasons :

1) We weren’t sure if we could make the line of the wallpaper-to-ceiling straight, so we decided to cover it.

2) If the room is going to have a chandelier, let’s just go all the way.

3) We anticipate having to repair / add / replace crown moulding throughout the house, and it’s not something we’re super comfortable with. A laundry room seems a great practice space and something where mistakes will be a learning situation and forgiven.

We opted to use corner blocks to make it even easier, which feels like cheating but looks like awesome.

I also really like how it makes a nice border for the ceiling color. It classes up the crazy. It went up well, and the walls were mostly straight. We did have to go back and do some caulking and wood filler and touch-up paint, but it looks great.

This is the one room in the downstairs that has a short ceiling height – about 9 feet. It amazed me how thick the crown moulding seemed when I was painting it, but how small it seems up. When we do the 11-foot rooms, we are going to need 12-inch crown so it doesn’t look dumb. (Kind of crazy cool).

Marquette has a player that is blind in one eye. This fascinates me. Amazing.

I’m my own architect and designer, which has proven to be fun and effective up until now. I draw everything out using graph paper and make drawings of wall views and bird’s eye views and space plan everything. I’ve never changed a design after I settle on my final drawings – until now. We did a dry fit of my plan, and it was SO bad. Terrible. The dryer felt like it was in the middle of the rooms and the base cabinets were awkward. I didn’t like it at all. So, with the help of our friend Stephen, we moved everything around and tried some other things.

I asked Doug…. “So, how hard it it to move a dryer?” I mean, we had already had vented and put in the electrical for the dryer in the spot that I originally conceived. I was so scared to say that we had to move it.

“Well, it’s not easy. But this is the forever house. You have to like it. And this revised plan is better, so we’ll move it.”

Which involved cutting a hole in the house during the Polar Vortex. Whatevs.

Final dry-fit :

Also, here’s a picture of a monkey. I thought you might be missing this.

Seriously, Butler. WHY MUST WE KEEP ALL GAMES WITHIN 2 POINTS? Can’t we lead by 10 for always?

We also used salvaged wood to build the door trim. Yay for Salvage.

Doing the woodwork turned the kitchen into a construction zone. I won’t miss this when the room is done.

Time to hang some cabinets!!! (Which is way more fun than this basketball game right now. Butler needs to make some baskets. And Marquette needs to stop making baskets).

So Much Storage. I’m in love.

Our friends Edgar and Veronica have been with us every step of the way in this journey. Here, Edgar removes staples from the base cabinets with comically-long pliers.

And here, Veronica models where future shelves will be.

Cabinets are in and set!

Since we used salvaged cabinets, they of course didn’t fit perfectly. We are building open shelving to connect the two upper cabinets. I think it will look really nice. I hope I’m right. If not, I guess we can always demolish the room and start over. (kidding).