Broom Fell, Company's Coming

**It's been a while since my last post. Late winter and early spring always seem to be ridiculously busy. This past season was no exception. But now I'm gearing back up for renovating this house.

Anyone who knows me also knows that my house is never visitor-friendly. It’s a construction zone with (mostly) nail-free sleeping areas, a (mostly) finished kitchen and a (mostly) finished downstairs bathroom. Everything else is a black hole of doom that’s riddled with stacks of plywood and lumber, power tools, hand tools, nails, screws, paint buckets and measuring tapes. After my morning staircase sweeping ritual today, the broom fell in the foyer. If you’re superstitious like me, a broom hitting the floor is never a good sign. It looks like company is coming, so I’d better get crack-a-lackin. 

After settling the broom back against the wall, I looked for my measuring tape. One of my measuring tapes. ANY of the scores of measuring tapes in this house would be fine, if I could just find one. But I found something better, which was a very special old notebook. Like any writer, I have notebooks upon notebooks, many of them so old I can’t even remember what’s inside. But this one is different. I recognized it immediately. This notebook contains every measurement of every wall, floor, doorway, window (even the crooked, round window), alcove and hallway in this house. Forget the measuring tape; I just struck gold. Let’s get this party started!

When I say we measured everything, I mean everything. Even the rafters in the attic!

Now, when planning for company, it’s best to begin with the things that absolutely must be finished by the time they arrive, which will probably be later in the summer by the way the broom bounced. Thank goodness it didn’t flip over. You don’t even wanna know. Mystical broom bouncing has a lot of subtle nuances to consider. With that in mind, I have two major project that I want to complete. Three, if the stars align just right. I need a functional laundry room, I want to finish the windowseat/bookcase combination in the living room and I’d love to have the upstairs bathroom beautified. 

Saying that I need a functional laundry room isn’t quite fair to the room. It functions just fine, but it’s a long way from convenient. When we moved here, Mr. Vagabond had the brilliant idea that we didn’t need any furniture for our bedroom besides a bed and nightstands. In his opinion, we should store all our clothes in the laundry room. I argued with him about that, but I eventually had to admit that he was right. We have never dressed in the bedroom, and we probably never will. We take clothes to the bathroom to dress, and the bathroom is just a few steps from the laundry room. I hate it when he’s right.  The problem with his brilliant idea is that all we have in the laundry room are a couple small cabinets and a bunch of shelves. I need cabinets in there, so that’s on the list. 

I refuse to post an image of the laundry room in its current state. You're welcome.

As for the windowseat/bookcase in the living room, that one shouldn’t be too difficult. I already have it framed out on the floor. I just need to finish building it, and then get it painted. 

The birth of a windowseat and book case. Salvaged lumber came in handy.

I'm thinking about something kind of like this:

This would be an easy build.

Or this:

Not so easy, but I love the idea of a table in front of the windowseat. 

The upstairs bathroom is a whole ‘nuther story. That room is beyond hope. No amount of paint or new flooring is going to cut it. That room has to be gutted and completely redone. 

First, it looked like this:

Ew.

Then it looked like this:

Not much better, but at least it's not disgusting.

The shower stall is so tiny, I can barely shower in it without knocking down the curtain. There's a pile of Romex in the shower and a big weird curtain in this photo. Don't ask. I have no idea why.

As you can see, I have my work cut out for me. What else is new? 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting photos of my progress. Stay tuned!  And for Pete’s sake, steady those brooms. 

P.S.  Did I mention that I also really, really need a deck out back?

XOXO

The Little Laundry Room that Could

Lately, I think more and more about my laundry room. It's horrifying. I want to change that. 


When we bought this house, we assumed the little room adjoining the kitchen was a dining room. Later, we came to the conclusion that it was the original kitchen, and the existing kitchen and bath were either nonexistent, or they were a porch. Because Mr. Vagabond and I have never, in our 14 years together, used a dining room, I decided to claim it for my laundry.


Sadly, I can't find a single image of the whole laundry room the way it looked when we bought it. They're probably on my other computer. The one without a monitor. Ha!  However, I did find a few that show some of the sad state of affairs.


This photo is a mess!  However, it also gives some perspective on the house layout while showing the level of insanity Mr. Vagabond and I reached by purchasing this house to begin with.  It was extraordinarily dusty inside that day because we were doing demo work. Dust and digital cameras are not best friends. What you see here is my living room facing the kitchen doorway. That is the doorway I later moved to the right because it led straight into the white wall you can see just beyond it. 


On the right wall, there is a doorway beside the nasty book shelves. That doorway led into the laundry. I later walled it up because I didn't want the laundry humming over Princess Bride in the living room.

Until today, I had forgotten just how horrible this room looked back then. I should never complain about my house not being finished. This seems like a lifetime ago.

This lovely image is of the laundry room ceiling. I was kinda heartsick when I saw all the old wallpaper hiding behind the drop ceiling. Sadly, as is often the case in very old houses, ductwork and new plumbing were installed and had to be covered somehow. Drop ceilings are an inexpensive choice that almost anyone can install. Luckily, they are just as easy to UNinstall. Don't ask me why those 2x4s were under the drop ceiling. Our only guess was that the former owners were trying to figure out a way to hang a new ceiling. *sigh*

You know you're jealous. Admit it. 

We had a big problem in here. We could install a drywall ceiling, but I wanted the ability to hang things from the ceiling (eventually). With the joists above so much higher than the level where the new ceiling would be, there wouldn't be enough support for drywall and whatever I wanted to hang. We opted to hang OSB for extra durability and to give me something to twist hanging hooks into. 

Same ceiling, but with OSB and new wiring installed. Also, Mr. Vagabond's shoulder in the left corner. :-)

OSB is not the ceiling of choice for most rooms. It's very heavy to lift, and the surface is rough. We framed out the perimeter of the ceiling with 2x4s (remember, the level is your friend!), then installed 2x4 braces across the room every 12 inches. We also installed 2x4 vertical supports that fastened to the joists in the original ceiling and the horizontal braces across the ceiling. After the new ceiling framework was in place and sturdy, we screwed the OSB to the braces and the perimeter frame, placing screws about 6 inches apart. Six-inch screw spacing is a bit of overkill, but we didn't want to risk this heavy stuff sagging. 


Now, I have a ceiling that is solid as all get-out. Unfortunately, it still looks just like this. :-(




The next thing we tackled was the floor. It was in very poor condition. Luckily, the old beaded board wainscoting, beaded door molding and even the plinth blocks were still in place and strong. The original baseboards were long gone, and replaced with plastic ones. Yuck. 


That little 3-pound sledge on the right made light work of breaking up the rotted flooring, and that allowed us to assess the damage under the floor. We were both stunned and amazed to learn that the joists under the house were rock-solid. All we had to do was replace the damaged subfloor.

I remain stunned by the way this place looked 5 years ago.

A word of warning about old vinyl flooring. It's brittle, and it can be sharp as a razorblade. There is no such thing as peeling up old flooring like the red brick vinyl we had in here. You lift, it breaks, you lift again, more breaks and so goes the rest of your day. We switched to a flat shovel for prying it up. 

Aside

Another word about vinyl. It is not the same thing as linoleum. They are completely different. Vinyl is the stuff you can buy in rolls or self-adhesive tiles. Linoleum is the old, speckled stuff that lasts forever. The color is solid all the way through and it's eco-friendly. Linoleum is made from linseed oil and a number of other things that are normally waste products like sawdust and cork dust. After helping my former landlady install a gorgeous linoleum floor in the kitchen / keeping room of her massive historic house in Knoxville, I decided I would one day use that material in my house.




Unfortunately, this is where the photos for this room end for now. After removing all the vinyl, we scabbed in plywood where the old subfloor was rotted. That leveled the floor, even though it does nothing for the appearance of the room besides covering the holes. 


After much deliberation, I have decided to lay either vinyl or linoleum in the laundry. I am not a big fan of vinyl, but it's one of the few choices we have that will actually work. Because this room is already about an inch higher than the kitchen that's through the doorway, any flooring we lay in the laundry will raise it even higher. I considered tile briefly, but after installing cement board and tile, the height difference would be significant. We'd either having a tripping hazard in the doorway, or a ridiculously thick and sloping transition strip in the doorway. 


Now that spring is teasing me with on again / off again warm weather, this room is once again at the forefront of my reno dreams. Don't ask me why spring equals laundry. I do wash clothes during the other seasons, too. I swear.


At the moment, I have major issues with the laundry. No real floor, no storage and the old, vintage stove that takes up a lot of room while we wait to have it repaired. I have plastic storage tubs stacked to the ceiling in one corner. There are cardboard boxes stacked everywhere. Tools always seem to levitate to this room, too. Basically, it's a catch-all for everything downstairs that doesn't have a home somewhere else. It's also the landing spot for out of season clothes that I can't manage to haul up to the attic on my own. 


Here are a few inspirational images I have found, and I would like to incorporate them somehow. 

Boxes over the open cabinets would really help with the storage problem

HOW cool is this? Ordinary hooks installed in pairs for the brooms and mops. 

As soon as I can find baskets that are tough enough to support heavy items, I am totally converting one wall in the laundry to pegboard. 

I heart this with a thousand hearts! Beadboard would be super-easy to install over the existing OSB. I love how bright the room looks with the beadboard ceiling painted semi-gloss white. 

I already have a closet like this in the laundry, although it's not pretty like this one. It's the back side of the original doorway leading to the living room. 

In a twist of weird, I painted the walls above the wainscoting aubergine. Not exactly a great color for the laundry. If memory serves, I dumped several cans of paint together and that's what I got. The wainscoting is white now, but I have to strip it. After repeated cleanings, stains still seep through the white paint. I'm not adding Kilz over a hundred years of paint. I'll strip it all, and start from scratch. 


I am gathering inspiration for my laundry room. Storage is the top priority. That, and a floor that I am not required to wear shoes on. 


XO