House 173

Literally, for decades this old cabinet was in the laundry room.  It's a great little cabinet, lots of drawers and a top to hold baskets, laundry, etc.  The only problem was that it was in pretty rough shape...
Not only was the paint peeling badly, but some of the wood was coming apart: So with lots of wood glue, some thin slices of 2x4, clamps and screws... LOTS of sanding, priming and painting, and "new" knobs (left over from some long-forgotten piece of cabinet or something) she ended up looking like this: And here it is in its "new" habitat! So here's a before and after shot, kinda tickled with the way it turned out! It's a shame I can't get the color to really show, it's the same color that was used on the front porch, and really adds a little pop to the laundry room.  Anyway, here's a final view from another angle: With that, that's the end of the great basement re-do of the winter.  Had no idea it would take all winter AND spring!…

It's not exactly on the punch list, but it kinda was......so I did it! A little by way of back-story...a bunch of years ago I found this 1950's metal cabinet for $10 at a yard sale.  I planned on putting it in the bathroom, but it looked horrible, so I started to prime it...and that was coming out terrible so I ended up using it in the workshop for years.  This is how it looked...

So I got started on it, and here it is all primed up: I decided to give the inside some color, so I used the paint from the front porch.. And some white from the front porch, and here it is in its new habitat... One thing (kinda) off the punch list!

Well it's been a few weeks since I've posted anything, but that doesn't necessarily mean nothing's been done. You know how it goes...life takes priority over writing!  So in the last post, I was talking about moving onto the punch list items in the basement, and in particular in the laundry room.  Turns out the punch list was longer and more involved than I thought! One of those things was the workshop walls.  Originally, years ago, I put up a few pieces of peg board...


Not a great shot, but that's one of the few "before" pics I had (one of these days I'll get better about that).  The peg board did well, worked fine, then I did this...

That was all part of the basement remodel, you can read more about that here.  Well, this time I decided there'd be more peg board...LOTS more!  Here's the outside of the workshop...kinda came out almost exactly as it was before:

But the real difference is inside the shop!  

I made two entire walls of the shop p…

I don't know about you, but when I'm nearing the end of a big project a couple things happen...I get antsy to finish it, I start thinking about what's next, and counter-intuitively - I slow down.  It's not exactly that I lose interest, I think it's just that the devil is in the details, and by the time I get to the punch list - it's a %$&^*@# million little devils, most of them painting (which I hate).  So this is one of the only shots of I have of this angle on the laundry room, but it gives a sense of how the corner with the chimney was looking:
I realize some people would think it best that the paint be sanded off the brick, that it would give the room a nice rustic look, but let's be honest...the laundry room at 173 is anything but rustic, unless of course you mean rustic in the "rough hewn" sense! So we painted it with the Drylok.  One little devil done - and geeze, what a difference! Then there was this little devil.  See the circuit box…

I'm not in a great mood, so there won't be a lot of jibber jabber tonight, but I did want to post some update pictures.  Most of the laundry room is done, meaning that the basement project is nearing the end! After this weekend, I'm really down to just punch-list items.  So without further ado...as you can see from the pic below, some of the pipes in the laundry room hung pretty low.  For the most part the new ceiling would cover them, but because of their positioning, some couldn't be and would be a major pain to work around.
So I figured I would soffet around them.  Here's the basic framing: Then it was just a matter of some 1x6's: After that, it was ceiling time.  Of course I started with the grid... Lemme tell you something, it's a fairly small room and it wasn't real hard to do, but if I never put in another drop ceiling it'll be too soon!  Then came the tiles... Next is a wider shot.  Things are going pretty fast now, so some of the flaws you …

Every once in awhile I like to build something, and usually out of scraps from other projects.  In this case I wanted to make a little pallet for under the new laundry room sink to put some of the cleaning supplies on.  I know it's kind of silly to bother to post about something like this, but I'm laid up in bed trying to get over a pretty rough cold, so while I'm watching a B-grade movie called "They" on Netflix, I thought I'd post it anyway.  Looking around the wreck of a basement I currently have, I remembered that I had a piece of counter top from when we re-did the back porch.  So I figured I'd use it and some 1x3 stud remnants to make the little pallet...
For $6 I also picked up a set of casters to make for ease of use, you know - that whole...getting older thing. The whole little project took about 15 minutes!  Next time I have the paint out I'll paint the front of the pallet.   Here's a longer view... So there's a little project Made a…

Geeze, it's been almost a month since I took down the wall between the workshop and the laundry room, and I've finally reached the point where the new wall could go up.  Here's a shot where I was laying out the sole plates.  Because of all the pipes (and other stuff) in the ceiling, I had to build the wall one stick at a time.  I laid out the sole plates and used a good ol' plumb bob to figure out where the top plate would go.
I used Tapcon bolts and my hammer drill to fix the sole plates to the concrete floor, then just cut cut cut.  So here it is...I don't know why the picture makes it look like the studs are out of alignment, but believe me - this is the only plumb and square wall at 173!   And from the laundry room side... Then it was time to put up the sheet rock.  I decided to go with 1/2" Hardiebacker cement board.  Even though the basement at 173 is dry and there's not been any mold...I figured what the hey!  Besides, it came in 3'x5' sheet…

When last we met, I had finally dove into the laundry room, and it was looking like this:
The painting is finally done... ...so I moved onto the plumbing.  I figured the plumbing was going to remain exposed, so I thought I'd give the quick connect fittings a shot.  Man!  those things are expensive, but they worked like a charm!  I added some wood blocks for support (and yes, they'll be painted), and strapped the hell out of the pipes. And here's a wider shot... The funny thing is, even though those quick connect fittings work great, it still took me an entire day to put it all together.  I had it all figured out one way, got half way through assembling it, and decided on another layout I thought would work better.  I wanted to be able to shut off the laundry water supply and the sink water supply separately, so it took forever.  In the end, I think it was well worth it. Of course the whole drain system for the sink had to be done too, but that was all PVC - much easier to …

On to the laundry room.  I've had mixed feelings about this for, well to be honest - since the day we bought 173.  It's complicated, cement, electrical, plumbing, carpentry etc etc... This room's going to take just about every (near) skill I have.  I have no delusions...this is a basement laundry, it'll never have that ultra-finished look to it, but we're looking forward to it looking better than this:
See that lone, hanging light bulb?  Besides the window, that's the only light in the room.  And here's a shot the other way: Not much better huh?  So this weekend I dove in.  Part of the problem was deciding what order to do things in.  Well, nothing could get done until the appliances were out of the way.  For that, and for the first time ever, 173 has a hand truck, I suppose that was going to happen eventually, I'm just not getting any younger. Moving the washer and dryer revealed a shocking mess! Look at this will ya??!! Enough of that...the loose conc…