A laundry room in the works

Helloooo everyone! Hope your week is going great so far!

Sooo, in September I talked about a laundry room we were planning in our basement...and then last month told you that the cost of doing the whole shebang made us decide to put parts of the project (like the floors and finished walls) on hold.

But we still really wanted to get the washer and dryer out of our entryway and into the basement. Because this just wasn't working for us:

We used a home design software the hubs bought to figure out a layout for the washer and dryer and a utility sink. Then, we had to clean up all of this.

Yikes!

The first phase of the laundry room project called for building out the studs for the walls, moving the plumbing and installing a pump, and doing some electrical wiring. I can't tell you any details about this, and you definitely wouldn't want any how-to tips from me about plumbing and electrical. Luckily, I have a handy hubs and father-in-law, who did all this work more or less in a weekend.

Pardon the blurry phone photo...

And, of course, the appliances had to be moved. We have a daylight basement, so instead of trying to fit the W&D through the basement stairwell, they took them for a little ride onto the front lawn and down to the basement door.

Here they are in their new home! True to my recent blog mission statement for the year, I'm showing you what this room looks like in its natural state, hampers and cleaning supplies and all. It's not pretty, but it's functional, and still in transition.

I looove how much space we have down here -- no worries about laundry piling up! A door here will eventually separate this area from the rest of the basement. It's so hard to photograph down here because it's so dark, but you get the gist.

In this space, we plan to put a storage cabinet we spotted at Lowe's. It'll hold cleaning supplies, hampers for clothes and have some space to hang things while they dry. You can see the drywall in the corner, waiting to get put up (hopefully soon).

We also plan to put a countertop across the W&D to keep things from falling between or behind them. And we'll put up a shelf or two above them for some storage once the drywall is up and painted.

And we hope to put in a laminate floor at some point too. This was the big budget breaker, even for a pretty affordable floor product, because the space is nearly 12 feet by 12 feet -- that's a lot of flooring! In the meantime, we're looking for a rug to put in front of the machines. 

I'm real proud of my hubby (and father-in-law) for doing all this work. He spent lots of time researching and learning about plumbing and electrical and all that jazz to make sure this project was done right.

But the real exciting part is the awesome closet we gained in the entryway (again, this is its natural state!).

We've got big plans for this space too -- not sure what yet, but I'm hoping for some hanging space, lots of shoe storage and a little bench. I can't wait to make this closet more useful. In the meantime, I'm totally enjoying all this space, and it's come quite in handy for when we have lots of people over. No more stepping over shoes to get to the door! No more moving laundry baskets out of the way to open the door! No more coats jammed into the tiny closet with no room for more! 

I even have room again for my river rock boot tray. It's been a great place to leave wet boots to dry this winter.

What have you been working on lately? Tackle any plumbing or electrical projects? I'd love to hear about them!

Our next project: Building a laundry room

Hey, all! Hope you're having a great week so far! Can you believe it's almost October? Where did September go anyways?

So, I have mentioned before that we are planning to move our washer and dryer from our entryway to the basement. It's something we've wanted to do from the day we moved in, but since it involves some plumbing and neither one of us knows anything about that, we've kind of procrastinated it. But, with another winter headed our way sooner than we'd like (see above, re: it's almost October!), the image of wet, snowy boots and gloves piling up in our tiny entryway has us again craving extra space -- and wanting to boot the W&D to the basement.

I know, it seems kinda crazy -- why make it so we have to cart laundry down two flights of stairs instead of one? Maybe some visuals will help...

Here's a shot of our entryway, looking from the kitchen. You can see it's a tight space. The door you see is our side entry that guests use, while a door not seen on the right is the garage entrance we use, and a pair of doors on the left hide the W&D. We also have a tiny closet around that corner where the cubbies are. Here's a better shot...

The door on the right is the closet, while the one of the left is the garage entry. You can start to see our dilemma here. We walk in through the garage, and when you're standing there, you can barely open that closet to put your stuff in, and since we're lazy busy our shoes just end up kicked off and left in the way. And in the winter, snowy boots just get left out here to dry, since the closet is too small to accommodate them, which means we're always stepping over them and getting our socks wet. Is there anything worse?

A much better option would be to use the twice-as-big closet where the W&D are. These doors are directly across from the garage entrance, and there's more room here to wiggle out of your shoes. And look at all that storage space!

And of course, another obvious reason to relocate these puppies is the inevitable laundry back-up. You know what I mean. We don't even have kids, and already on laundry day (or even not on laundry day...) our entryway starts to look like this...

Like our ghetto electrical- and packing-taped laundry basket, 'cause we're too cheap to buy another one??

See the shoes in the mix? Please don't judge me...

Can you grasp the situation now? This is not what we want guests to see when they show up. Plus it's just dang annoying to step over this all the time, and no fun to look at, and I'm sure our laundry piles will grow once we have kids. Yes, we could pile it all on top of the machines and close the doors, but then stuff would be falling behind the machines, and plus we leave our washer door open to dry before we close it to avoid a mildewy situation, which means the closet doors stay open too.

So, you hopefully can see why we're positively giddy at the thought of relegating this disaster to the basement, where we'll have lots more space for hoarding storing laundry, laundry baskets and the like. And we'll also gain much-needed closet space in the entry.

I'm not going to go into the details of the plumbing right now, mostly since that's what the hubs has been looking into, so I don't know much about it. For now, I'll just say we need to install a pump in the basement to help pump the water from the washer up to our discharge pipe and into our septic system, which will run us about $300. We'll also need to put in the valves, plugs, etc. that are currently in the entryway:

We'll be leaving these in the entryway, in case we sell someday and the next owners are really jazzed about first-floor laundry (I'm already trying to think of a cute way to disguise these once this becomes a closet...).

And while we could just do the plumbing and plop the W&D in the basement, we decided we'd like to make it more of a laundry room -- separated from the rest of the basement, with lots of storage and places to hang our drying clothes, since we hang a lot instead of drying it. So we'll be putting up some walls, installing flooring and picking out some storage options. The room will also include a utility sink (another reason we need the pump), for the hubs' brewing operation -- in case you don't recall or are new here, the hubs makes his own beer, with most of it happening in the basement, and the sink is a big part of the process. This way, he won't have to cart all of the stuff up to the kitchen and make a mess, yay!

And here's the corner where the laundry room will go. And yes, it does still look like that. You can see our work is cut out for us.

It's not a great pic, but the W&D will be up against that concrete wall on the left -- you can just see at the very top the bottom of the white discharge pipe we'll be hooking into. We'll build walls from that wall to the pole and beyond to separate it from the shelving and storage you see in the center and right of the picture. It'll be about a 12' x 12' space.

Ready for some inspiration pics? I know you are!

I love the counter over the W&D, and how it includes a sink as well (although ours will be an ugly utility sink, not a pretty sink). The cabinets above are just what we need too.

Source: alkemie.blogspot.com via Mindy on Pinterest

Here's another one that includes a sink. I love the cabinets' built-in look and that bar to hang things...genius!

Source: houzz.com via Mindy on Pinterest

Also really digging this pedestal to stow laundry baskets...we may be making one of these!

Source: theshowandtellblog.com via Mindy on Pinterest

I'm really liking this one -- and it has a utility sink, so it's a better representation of what we'll end up with. I'm loving the vertical storage on the side and cabinets along the top. We've got space for vertical storage on one side too, so we'll probably do something very similar to this. And that wall color? Gorgeous!

Via Manolo for the Home

Not sure what colors we'll end up doing down there, but we did start to look at flooring, to begin pricing it out and seeing how much this project will cost us. The floor has to be somewhat durable, since it will get wet, more than likely, but we're not looking to drop a big chunk of change, so affordable is also a must (oh, and though utility is more important here, it really does need to be easy on the eyes). 

After some research and a chat with the Home Depot flooring guy, we're leaning toward resilient vinyl plank flooring by TrafficMaster. It's pretty durable, easy to install and can go over concrete, and it's only $1.79 a square foot. We thought about laminate flooring, but since there's a possibility of water, the guy said we'd risk water getting between the cracks and warping the boards. The laminate was only 70 cents a square foot, but since it also requires a vapor barrier that was about the same price, it's not really a better deal in the long run.

After reading reviews that said the dark colors show up lots of lint and dust, and since the laundry room won't have a window, we've decided to go light with the flooring. We're liking the blonde maple:

and the bamboo:

So that's our laundry room plan. First up will likely be building the walls and then putting down the floor before moving the W&D and hooking them up. Oh -- actually, first up is cleaning up the basement so we actually have room for the stupid things. And we'll also be figuring out how to do plumbing. I'm kind of scared for that one... Since we're trying to do this on the cheap, we're also planning to scour our local ReStore for some cabinets, countertops and other storage solutions we can find. I love a good thifty hunt!

Our pipe dream for the entryway is to knock out that tiny closet and open the space up a bit, but who knows when we'll get to that one (since it will include relocating baseboard heating, outlets and light switches, and probably putting in new flooring since there will be gaps in the tile floor from where the walls used to be). For now, we're focusing on getting the laundry room done enough to at least move the W&D before wintertime -- which will be here before we know it....

Wish us luck! You know how good we are with finishing projects (remember that office redo?? Yeah...me neither :) ). 

P.S. I'm on Pinterest now! I'm still figuring out how to use it, but come and follow me and watch me muddle through... :)

Taming the basement

A couple months after we moved into the house, one half of the basement looked like this:

Terrifying, no? As we worked to clear boxes from the living areas, we simply deposited them onto any empty floor space we could find in the basement, and very quickly it became a barely navigable maze of boxes, bins and other random objects.

We soon realized we needed some additional storage, so, the hubs and I took a trip to The Home Depot for some lumber, and walked out with this (for less than $100):

The next parts were mostly my husband's doing -- but I did help hold the wood while he screwed it in. And I took some mean pictures. :)

He put up studs for the shelves, attached directly to the wall and ceiling beams. He measured out the placement of the shelves, leaving some space underneath for sliding big boxes and some smaller shelves above perfectly sized for smaller plastic bins. 

He even put everything onto the shelves all on his own. When he called me back down to check it out, I found this:

LOVE. Let's see some before and afters, yes?

All that storage is perfect of getting almost everything off the floor. Plus, it cost way less than buying shelves that would have filled the same space. Okay, it's not quite as pretty -- but hey, it's a basement. Maybe if I feel inspired someday, I'll paint them a pretty color and buy some cute baskets and bins for storage. (Apparently Michaels is having a half-off baskets sale this week -- score!).

Organizing them is still a work in progress; we have boxes we need to sort through and other decluttering to do. And we still have a pile of other stuff that needs to be taken care of. 

But we'll save that work until the spring when the basement is warm enough to work in comfortably. I think so far, so good! (And yes, that's another set of shelves my husband built for our old apartment. They need some organimization too!).

Oh, and the other side of the basement? It's the hubs' brewery. Seriously, he uses it to home brew. And while it's not super neat, it did also get a good dose of declutter.

Not the same angle, but you get the idea. Someday we hope to finish this half and turn it into a fun hangout room. And the hubs would surely call me out if I didn't mention that the chest freezer in the background is his own DIY project: a homemade kegerator, complete with taps! It's the first beginnings of the man cave...

I'm linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick's Organize It party. Stop by and see all the clutter everyone is tackling! 

Have you tamed your basement lately, or are you waiting for spring cleaning?