Happy Halfway!
Most people wait until after the fact for some good soul confession, well what can I say, I have a lot on my mind! For starters how has it already been 4 weeks! You go about living your life and someone decides you are too comfortable so cranks up the speed !! Well on the bright side, humpday couldn't get here any faster! With a full-time job, kids, school work, and life in general the renovation has been steady but slow progress. It's something I would never trade, I look forward all week long to get working at it, which is usually on Fridays or the weekend. So how has it really been going?
What am I talking about? No worries, I understand how busy life can be; Here is my previous post, you are welcome to check out all the detailed goodness.
As always, be sure to subscribe so you can follow along every week. Don’t forget to follow on Instagram and Facebook for behind-the-scenes stories.
Once again, a huge thank you to Linda Weinstein, the founder, and organizer of the amazing One Room Challenge™ and Better Homes and Garden for being the media partner for this year’s event.
Our current laundry room
Week1| Breaking Bad
Our original plan was to do an easy and quick update. For instance, the half-tiled wall around the room was going to be covered up with some MDF Board and finished with board and batten.
Needless to say, the wall came down by end of the week1. The wisest decision we ever made was to cut the drywall out instead of breaking up the tiles. Clean and simple!
Week 2 | Every silver lining has a cloud
We noticed most of the space was taken up by the dryer vent which was on a sidewall and went all the way around. In order to make room for storage, we decided to swap the machines. We were able to have our plumber move waterlines, add in a laundry box and a shut-off valve for the dryer gas line. However, in our hustle to get the drywall back up, we did not consider the electric work that was needed for the new light fixture. So that is added work we will have to pick up this week. Confession numero 1, not ideal but thankfully not setback by a whole lot!
Now on to the floors, which took the longest to decide. Our laundry room and hallway from the garage have the same traditional 12 x 12 ceramic tiles. The rest of the spaces have waterproof laminate wood planks which I personally enjoy. There was no time like now, to replace the flooring. The effort spend to rid the tile didn't help my case since we had concrete underneath. Finally, after days of dispute, we decided to reach out to HomeDepot to see if we could get matching floors, get an estimate for materials, tools e.t.c and we were amazed to learn it would cost us only a couple of hundreds more ($250 to be exact). If we were to hire a contractor, this project would have been easily in the thousands! That and the fact we could get seamless flooring throughout overturned the verdict. The first conundrum was resolved.
At the end of two weeks into the reno
Week 3 | Unstoppable
So there I was, on the laundry floor on my knees, hammering out my tiles! Teeth clattering, sweat running down my goggles, having dry shampooed the crap out of my third-day hair with concrete dust. Yup! It was all going to be worth it in the end. The bigger the tile I was able to rip off, the more gratifying the whole process had become. There was no stopping now, we were set into a rhythm. We switched to cleaning and bagging the debris after every 2 to 3 hours.
Laundry Room ready for some new flooring
Once I finished the room itself, the hallway was a cakewalk. By evening, my excitement was peaking high and my energy stooped low. Completely tapped out but Luckily we were done. We had one more round of clean up but I had to take a break. And then we noticed that tiny corner where the seal had come off, our jacobean floor had turned white. So confession #2 for those counting, tape more than you think you need. The rest of the week we spend cleaning up all the dust and resting our sore arms.
Hallway at the end of three weeks reno
Now that we have the floor finalized, I can liberate my mind to wander about the finer details. I personally believe a home should have a sense of flow from room to room, not just in function but also in style. I love to carry forward an element of color or feature to ensure that the spaces look connected; subliminal cues through the home to maximize the feeling of space without increasing square footage.
If you like visuals, here is a simple picture of what I have in mind. I love the simplicity of the design and the details of the vertical paneling which I adore from Vanessa's Laundry.
Plan for the new laundry room
As for color, I have an obsession with neutral, thankfully AJ doesn't disagree. Adding more earth tones is something I have been introducing around our home these days. But I am concerned if it will fall flat, I hope as we get closer to the finish, the hue conundrum isn't holding us back.
Coming Up Next
Oh, I can't contain my excitement on this one! The floors are going in!! I repeat the floors are going in! Once that is done we plan to add wiring for additional light and plug back the machines. We still need to deal with the situation on the other wall, ugh! yes, our dirty laundry secret! At this point of the journey, I have learned that if you can't change what you don't like, embrace it! And you, my friend, will just have to wait until next week to find out exactly what we mean.
Until then, check out how other challengers are doing. And follow these hashtags on social media to see their transformations:#oneroomchallenge and #bhgorc.
Thank you for following along and leaving a comment. Much appreciated!
I am impressed with your tenacity and can’t wait to see the final reveal!