Square pegs and white spray paint--Laundry Room & Bathroom Phase I

Laundry room

Somewhere in between painting the 'tiki hut room' and unpacking hundreds of boxes, Sam and I decided that we couldn't STAND the laundry room for even ONE more day. I suppose that's the downside to DIY home renovations....we OBVIOUSLY need a project manager to keep us on track LOL.

The laundry room is right next to the tiki room which is now 'Luis's room', off the laundry room there is the entry to the garage, another bedroom/office, and a small half bath.....of course all of which need to be gutted and re-done.

Laundry room carpet and trim

Sam and I got this crazy idea when we were finishing the paint in Luis's room (he's in Mexico for 2 weeks), both of us couldn't stand being in his room because the laundry room smelled like dog pee SOOOO BAD!!! The same genius who put the tikis up carpeted the laundry room, half bath, and the bedroom/office in this industrial grade office carpet and then kept their large dog in the laundry area during the day.....I say large dog because the walls had dog pee stains on them about 3 feet high.

 

 I swear to God this carpet should have been condemned!!! We didn't even want to walk on it without shoes let alone put our clothes in there (dirty or not). The more we walked on the carpet the worse it smelled....I think us walking on it actually made it worse!! We put our dogs in there during the day too and everyday I came home wondering if they died from ammonia exposure!!



Laundry room



 As I mentioned, the walls had dog pee on them soaked all the way down to the baseboards. The dogs clawed/scratches the nice thick wood doors.....someone painted green exterior paint on the doors---that was me though hahaha....ya I know....there is a perfectly logical reason for that but it's a long story for another post :)!!! Anyway, I digress.....

Laundry room carpet

So more or less this laundry room was T-R-A-S-H-E-D!!! We just couldn't take it so we decided to rip up the carpet and put tile in....and we figured since we were already ripping up the carpet in the laundry room, why not tile the bathroom and office while we were at it!! Now the bathroom is equally as hideous....

The bathroom is floor to ceiling metallic floral wallpaper. The toilet is on a marble slab (not sure why) and the sink/vanity are old and outdated. The exhaust fan is probably the original as well as the medicine cabinet...the baseboards were all rotted and gross...the door was also scratched and dull. Originally we planned on gutting the bedroom/office, laundry, and bathroom but we could see early on that this would need to be done in stages.

Phase I paint walls

We needed a place to put everything while we worked and Luis's room was already done-ish so we decided to put everything from the laundry and bathroom in the office/bedroom and then when the two rooms are done we will move everything from the office/bedroom to the laundry and finish the project.

Here is the plan for the laundry and bathroom:

1. Paint ceiling, walls, baseboards, and doors
2. Replace tile
3. Replace switch plates/plugs
4. Replace hardware/door knobs
5. Paint the built-in cabinets
6. Update light fixtures
7. Replace sink/vanity

Painting ceiling and cabinets

8. Replace medicine cabinet
9. Take off wallpaper and paint
10. DEEP cleaning
11. Decorate

Estimated cost of renovation:

$100.00 Paint/supplies
$500.00 Tile (including the bedroom/office)
$200.00 Tile supplies
$100.00 Hardware/light fixtures
$100.00 New sink/vanity

Two tones trim
(before/after with paint)

$100.00 New medicine cabinet
$200.00 Decor
Deep cleaning and labor= Free

Total estimate for reno= $1300.00

So we started by picking out the tile. We went to Home Depot (HD) and decided on a nice dark, multicolor-ish natural slate tile. We needed about 30 boxes (200 sq feet) which HD had on hand (luckily!!). As we are standing there though, I said something to Sam about making sure we had enough tile for the bathroom and he looks at me kinds funny. I'm like....?????.....what's the issue here??

Concrete backboard going in

Apparently Sam's 200 sq ft 'estimate' only included the office/bedroom and the laundry room.....how the )@)#@)($ do you NOT measure the bathroom when we SPECIFICALLY said we were remodeling the bathroom?????? Luckily the bathroom is SMALL so we just needed two additional boxes. The other thing we didn't know was that in OR apparently almost all houses are wood foundation....in AZ they are concrete. So that means we had to buy this stupid concrete backboard which cost us an additional $200!!!

New light fixture and ceiling paint

We also didn't know that we would need so much thin-set/concrete and grout....so at the end of the day the tile itself was only about $440.00 but the extra supplies were like another $300.00 but we were more or less within budget.

We have inherited my dad's 1977 Chevy suburban.....this eye sore attracts more attention from people than a Ferrari don't ask me why everyone wants it....anyway I digress :). So this giant 'beast' is built like a Mack truck and we are thinking we can get all this stuff in one trip.....we loaded the back board, concrete mix and 15 boxes of tile and we were SLAMMED!!! So instead of ruining a perfectly good pair of shocks we decided to make 2 trips.

More concrete baseboard

Who knew that tile would be this heavy!!!! I couldn't even lift one box with my bad hand and all :(. So we get home and Sam unloads the beast. When he was done he pulled up one part of the carpet to see it the dog pee had soaked into the wood....we would have been PISSED if we did all this work and it still smelled like dog pee!!! And thank God we did because the wood underneath smelled BAD!!!

Sam decided to leave me at the house on his second trip to HD so I could start painting the ceiling. Now keep in mind it's about 7:00 in a Friday night....I've just worked a full 40 hr week and I'm EXHAUSTED....God forbid we have any 'break' in there :). So I started painting the ceiling and scrubbing the walls.

Painting the bathroom and laundry room ceilings were a breeze. We had bought a 5 gallon bucket of white paint for $100.00 before we moved knowing that we would be painting EVERY ceiling in this house. So in about 30 mins I had the rooms done....still no Sam so instead of sitting around bored I started to paint the walls and scrub as I go. The walls were BAD and they smelled like dog pee but I just assumed the paint would mask that smell....ya no.

Laying the tile

Sam texted me about 15 mins later and was like did you start painting the walls??? I'm like ya what the hell else would I be doing...I'm almost done with the whole room!!! He's like wait wait wait we need to treat the walls so they don't smell. Sam got home about 15 mins later with a special wall/floor treatment which is basically oil based paint that claims to get rid of ANY smell. I had my doubts but it did work...$20.00 WELL SPENT!!



One of the laundry room doors



 So we started ripping up the sorry excuse for carpet....and holy hell lets just say the smell was worse when we took the carpet up, thank GOD Sam got that stuff!!!! We picked a darker gray as the color so it would flow with Luis's room color and compliment the darker tile.

The following day Sam had another coaching clinic/camp thing so I got to work on the room all by myself....so what did I do....more painting, this time I spray painted the built-ins. So I know the can of spray paint says use in a well ventilated area....which I thought I was in, but clearly that was NOT the case. I start spraying this white paint and next thing I know I start to get a headache....and I have a sticky sensation in my nostrils....but I keep going. I hate spray paint it just gets EVERYWHERE!!!



More of the new tile and
the square pegs

The cabinets turned out nice and I was able to finish painting the doors and baseboards/trim. Sam took the light fixture from the main living room and put it in the laundry room....it looks AMAZING and even better.....it was FREE!!! After I finished all the paint I decided I needed a shower or bath desperately bad. So I went into our bathroom and had to do a double take....I looked like some drug addict....the inside of my nose was covered in white spray paint!!! Think....Tony Montana....LOL :).

Now I don't know how exactly how one goes about getting the spray paint cleaned out of ones nose but there was lots of Qtips and Kleenex involved in my experience. But before I decided to try and get the paint out of my nose.....I took a nice bath in my giant 1970's Scarface bathtub.....all I needed was bubble bath and a cigar since I already had the tub and 'white powder' and I really would be Tony Montana LOL.

More tile, phase I almost complete

Over the weekend Sam and I finished tiling the laundry and bathroom (I will post about the bathroom soon....that deserves a post all to itself) in a matter of a few days. The slate tiles were a little hard to work with because they were really fragile but we didn't break any while using the tile saw which was good. But I did almost have a complete melt down when I came home from work on Monday and Sam asked me to go to the store for more tile spacers.....wouldn't you think he would have bought more than ONE BAG when he went to HD to rent the tile saw?!?!? Apparently not.

We tiled with 1/2 in spacers which he got at HD....one would think you could buy those anywhere....apparently not. I went to Ace and Lowes.....nothing. And here in Salem Ace, Lowes, and HD are NOT close or anywhere convenient....it took me 2 hours and 3 stores later to get the tile spacers and then Sam didn't really need them!!! Go figure.



And yes that is me slaving away
like Cinderella scrubbing the grout

While I was at HD buying said spacers I picked up more spray paint (this time black for Luis's closet doors and yes I managed to also get the black spray paint inside my nose, I'll be blowing black and white paint out of my nose for months I am sure of it!!!!)....5 cans to be exact and when the lady carded me I was in such a huff that I dropped one of the spray paint cans which by some freak of nature sprayed black paint all over my legs....the checker lady was horrified and could hardly keep a straight face--I of course cursed up a storm.

So the tile is now more or less done....and we are right on track with time and budge. Like I said before, I will post more about the bathroom soon.

Here is the cost breakdown for the laundry so far:



$450.00 tile

$300.00 tile supplies

$35.00 tile sealer

$50.00 paint

$10.00 white spray paint

$40.00 black spray paint

$20.00 floor treatment

Total for the moment (not including bathroom) so far: $905.00

The laundry/bathroom saga is NOT over.....until next time Dear Reader....stay tuned :)