Laundry Room

Scott and I decided to fix up our laundry room.  We thought about really going crazy and pulling down all the paneling and putting up dry wall, but in the end went with the path of least resistance, and just painted the paneling.  In the process, we also learned a little more about personality of someone who lived in our house before us.  This person never actually "fixed" anything, but instead threw some crap together, covered it up, and pretended the problem was gone.

This is a before shot of our storage area...you are looking at all of our Christmas supplies.

A previous owner of our house also decided to paint the wood paneling...only they  decided to only paint ONE wall a light brown.  Oh, and they painted the plywood around the storage area dark brown.  But left the rest wood paneling.

Unfortunately, there is a small piece of wood paneling that is missing.  It allows you to see the quality wallpaper that at one time graced the room...the wood paneling may be in improvement!  Last weekend I washed all the walls and ceiling, filled in all the holes, and also painted the ceiling.

Today we finished prepping the stairway down to the basement to paint.  The wood paneling ends about 6 inches above the foundation, and as we looked at the surface below it, we realized that it was cardboard.  Yes, CARDBOARD.  A previous owner noticed that there was a little extra "space" below the drywall, and thought, "I know, I'll just nail some cardboard to the studs, then wallpaper it all!  Never mind that there isn't any insulation between the outside of the house and the stairs!  Never mind that cardboard isn't very water proof!  It's a great idea!"  

Cardboard!  We took out the cardboard, and have plans to put in insulation,  fill in the hole, and cover it with wood paneling.

Another previous owner thought: "I need to hang a curtain in front of this storage area.  I bought a curtain rod, but seem to have lost the pieces needed to hang it.  I know!  I'll take a couple can lids from my honey jar, cut them in half, and nail them to the wall!"  

Here is the laundry room after the coat of primer.  This went really quickly, because we are painting all the walls and the trim, so we didn't have to worry about being super neat on the edges.

Here is Scott rolling the walls of the storage closet.  Since the washing machine is in front of this area, this is the only way to get in there to paint it.

We bought one of those awesome extendable ladders last year, and it came in useful on the stairs--we could make one leg longer and still have it be level on the stairs.  Not very roomy, but we were able to reach every thing we needed to paint.

Storage closet after the first coat of paint.

You may notice that there is still a chunk of paneling missing.  We found replacement paneling at Menard's, but they only sell it by the large sheet, but would not cut ot for use so it would fit in our car, so we didn't purchase it.  The lumber yard in Osky is going to order some for us and cut it for us.  I had hoped that someone would have an old chunk of wood paneling sitting in their basement, but haven't had any luck rounding some up.

We are going to do a quick second coat of paint tonight, and then after church tomorrow we'll paint all the trim white.  We need to put up trim around the windows and the door, fill in the missing paneling (obviously), and put down new flooring still. Since I will be the assistant volleyball coach at William Penn University this fall, and the season starts next Saturday, the floor might have to wait until after volleyball season is over!