From the moment when Jesse and I bought our house mid February, we began making lists of all the things we wanted to upgrade and fix.
In the past 6 months so far, we’ve:
* upgraded all the door hardware
*added board and batten in the downstairs bathroom and painted
*painted every room except the upstairs bathroom and downstairs playroom
*stripped and stained our entire 300 sq. ft deck
* built bullet deer proof garden beds
*stripped and refinished the upstairs bathtub
* built a concrete patio outside the downstairs playroom
But our biggest accomplishment thus far has been the laundry room. Granted, we hired our contractor friend to build the wall, fix the roof (it was leaking) and cut our tiles with a wet saw. For our first house we didn’t feel comfortable messing with those kinds of projects, right off the bat (also, what we would’ve spent in tools would’ve been close to what we paid a pro!). But we painted, put up the beadboard, added shelves, and, most importantly, leveled and tiled the floor ourselves! Talk about a money saver! We paid for everything with cash and don’t owe a dime on any of it, without dipping into our savings, best of all!
The financial breakdown (because I know you’re wondering):
Wall construction and insulation: $900
Paint: Leftover from our master bedroom, Behr Offshore Mist
Leveling Concrete: $80
Tile and supplies: $200 (we got a 99 cents/sq ft deal! They are Trafficmaster Ceramic)
Tile Cutting: $100
Roof Repair by the roofing company: $400
As for the furniture:
Hutch: $100 from Craigslist, painted in Silver Behr mixed with plaster of paris (for the chalk paint), lined with green paper from the dollar store
Ikea Desk: $10 from a garage sale
Ikea Expedit Bench: Leftover from our townhouse dining room table
Bench pad: Leftover as well, although I believe we paid $20 for it back then
Fabric for curtains and bench pad: $30 from fabric.com
Shelves: $50 melamine board from Home Depot
Various bins and baskets: $30 total from Ross and garage sales (remember the playboy bunny bucket?)
Laundry Basket Holders: $50 worth of materials from Home Depot
6 Laundry Baskets: $15 total (big deal at Big Lots)
Apothecary drawers: Birthday Gift two years ago from Amazon
Farmhouse Lamp and Edison Bulb: Barn Light Electric
Vintage Shelving unit: $30 at an antique store in Paso Robles
You can read about our decision to build this room out of the garage, and the steps leading up to the finished laundry room here, here, here,and here.
Now, for the pictures!!!
View from the kitchen into the laundry room
Laundry Station
My cleaning minions
Directly opposite the washer/dryer is my folding station
Only professional signs for us
Clean folded laundry on the left sorted by room in the house, dirty on the right pre-sorted by color
Old books from England, bookends from my brother’s Navy travels in South Africa
 Kitchen Updates– We Have Progress! |
 House Tour: Downstairs Bathroom |
 Laundry Room Progress |
House Tour #1 |
