The Final Room

Since July of 2010, we have slowly but surely have been working on our little house room by room. On Sunday we can finally say we are done with the last room. Oh don't be mistaken, we still have a kitchen remodel to do, add shelves to all the closets, and don't even get me started on the exterior of the house, but the laundry room was the last room that needed to be sheet-rocked, sanded, painted and trimmed.

TA-DA! Isn't she pretty? (If rooms had gender, I think this one would be female)

So the laundry room has always been a little bit of a weird duck. When we first moved in, the room was only accessible through a side opening in the bathroom. 

One of the first things we did one angry night was create an opening in the wall of the closet in what is now Greg's man-cave. 

I really wish we had had the forethought to take pictures because it was really a site to behold! Greg and I took out a lot of aggression on that wall. We used some karate chop action with our hands and occasionally some hammers. Dust, sheet-rock, & bits of wall all around us, but let me tell you when we got to the wall frame it was seeing light at the end of the tunnel... beautiful. Greg removed the studs with his saw and we were able to finally access the laundry room properly.

*I do have to give a note of precautionary guidance here. If you plan on taking out a wall, first make sure its not load-bearing. No one wants the house to cave in. Thankfully, our wall was not and was the back end of a closet. It was already framed out for us at the front of the closet, so it was a natural opening. 

We eventually took up the task of closing up the opening through the bathroom. This was one of Greg's first sheet-rocking experiences in our house. I was very proud of the job he did.

Laundry room side                            Downstairs bathroom side

We left it like this for quite awhile, as other projects took more precedence. Finally, last weekend, with some newly-found free time we decided to start on the laundry room. First, there was some areas from the wall we removed that we had to finish up. There was also a strange area that the original owner had nailed up a piece of wood board instead of sheet-rocking to make the house look presentable for sale. Lazy on his part but easy for us to fix. Some sanding and texturing later it was ready for cleaning.  

Here is Greg cleaning after sanding.

 

We were then ready to paint the walls. Deciding it was best to save some paint, we went with a color we already had, a light blue green that we think was from the baby's room.

 When we did Greg's man-cave we had bought this bucket of glue on discount from the Habitat for Humanity outlet store ($5!). It's this crazy neon blue-green color that is supper sticky, perfect for gluing down laminate floor. 

We made the decision to do laminate because of the potential moisture and water issues that come with a laundry room. We got an 8x12 ft pre-cut roll from Home Depot and cut it down to size. Using a roller and the neon blue-green substance Greg just rolled and glued.

Finally Greg added some trim (FYI, Paint and trim make a room)

 

And it was done!

Nice and Easy! 

 

We do want to add some cabinets and some fancy drying wall racks from Ikea, but overall mostly done.