Laundry semi-renovation
Hello, headache, my old frenemy. I wonder what brought you here today? Dehydration? The change in drugs? Too much exertion and dust last night?
Speaking of exertion and dust: Randy has got a total bug up his butt about renovating the laundry room. It's got really old, gross paint color, old cabinets, and old linoleum. So last night, after getting off work at 10 pm, he went downstairs and tore down the cabinets over the washer/dryer. Yeah, at midnight. They took some doing; they were screwed into the studs pretty hard, and done yeeeears ago, so the three of the eight screws were impossible to get out. Eventually he tore the cabinets apart. So much for trying to take the cabinets down in one piece and recycling them. Maybe someone will come and claim the pieces of wood; other than some nail holes and some torn-up parts, it's good stuff and could make a nice smaller cabinet.
In the process, we discovered the layers of color that the laundry room had been in its many years. Before it was this current Clairol liquid foundation color, it was bright green; and before that...
I was out of the room when Randy took down the first part of the cabinet that was against the back wall. I heard him groan, "Oh GAWD," and I thought, crap! Carpenter ants! Roaches running everywhere! Dead mice! Black mold!...because i've seen waaaay too many DIY shows.
I said, "What? What?!" as I walked into the room and saw what he was seeing: this clear rectangle of odd green swirly stuff where the cabinet had been.
"Is that mold?" he exclaimed.
"I don't think so," I mused, "but...is it wood glue?" I checked the back of the cabinet and didn't see a matching pattern. Then it dawned on me -- "It's WALLPAPER!"
We both looked hard at it. It was exceptionally fugly, but it was a repetitive pattern, and there were seams. Yep, wallpaper. And it was undoubtedly from when the house was built in 1964.
I went up and touched it, and immediately shied away. "It's FLOCKED wallpaper! Gross!"
Yeah. Flocked green swirly abstract wallpaper. Eeyugh. Luckily, it peeled off very easily, leaving us with just the drywall to prime and paint.
Unfortunately, the paint that's all over the rest of laundry room (including window frame and ceiling!) is so thick that it's coated the hinges on the other cabinets. We tried to unseal them, but to no avail. The cabinets open and close just fine, but the hardware's the same color as the cabinets. If we had all the time in the world, we might take some solvent and scrapers and a heat gun to it to get down to the bare wood, but that's not happening right now. Maybe when we move out we'll do it right.
In the meantime, Randy's going to clean the walls tonight. Tomorrow morning he will prime, and tomorrow night, paint the room a nice clean glossy white. The new dryer arrives on Monday. I wish we could get the peel-and-stick vinyl tiles that we want before the dryer goes in, but we can't, so we'll just get an indoor/outdoor rug to hide the old linoleum for now. Then we'll go to Ikea and get a much better cabinet system for over the w/d.
So really, it's a half-reno. But it's something, and BOY am I ready to see that awful foundation-flesh color go away. It occurred to me that it was the same color that used to be in my office when we first moved in! *shudder*
Speaking of exertion and dust: Randy has got a total bug up his butt about renovating the laundry room. It's got really old, gross paint color, old cabinets, and old linoleum. So last night, after getting off work at 10 pm, he went downstairs and tore down the cabinets over the washer/dryer. Yeah, at midnight. They took some doing; they were screwed into the studs pretty hard, and done yeeeears ago, so the three of the eight screws were impossible to get out. Eventually he tore the cabinets apart. So much for trying to take the cabinets down in one piece and recycling them. Maybe someone will come and claim the pieces of wood; other than some nail holes and some torn-up parts, it's good stuff and could make a nice smaller cabinet.
In the process, we discovered the layers of color that the laundry room had been in its many years. Before it was this current Clairol liquid foundation color, it was bright green; and before that...
I was out of the room when Randy took down the first part of the cabinet that was against the back wall. I heard him groan, "Oh GAWD," and I thought, crap! Carpenter ants! Roaches running everywhere! Dead mice! Black mold!...because i've seen waaaay too many DIY shows.
I said, "What? What?!" as I walked into the room and saw what he was seeing: this clear rectangle of odd green swirly stuff where the cabinet had been.
"Is that mold?" he exclaimed.
"I don't think so," I mused, "but...is it wood glue?" I checked the back of the cabinet and didn't see a matching pattern. Then it dawned on me -- "It's WALLPAPER!"
We both looked hard at it. It was exceptionally fugly, but it was a repetitive pattern, and there were seams. Yep, wallpaper. And it was undoubtedly from when the house was built in 1964.
I went up and touched it, and immediately shied away. "It's FLOCKED wallpaper! Gross!"
Yeah. Flocked green swirly abstract wallpaper. Eeyugh. Luckily, it peeled off very easily, leaving us with just the drywall to prime and paint.
Unfortunately, the paint that's all over the rest of laundry room (including window frame and ceiling!) is so thick that it's coated the hinges on the other cabinets. We tried to unseal them, but to no avail. The cabinets open and close just fine, but the hardware's the same color as the cabinets. If we had all the time in the world, we might take some solvent and scrapers and a heat gun to it to get down to the bare wood, but that's not happening right now. Maybe when we move out we'll do it right.
In the meantime, Randy's going to clean the walls tonight. Tomorrow morning he will prime, and tomorrow night, paint the room a nice clean glossy white. The new dryer arrives on Monday. I wish we could get the peel-and-stick vinyl tiles that we want before the dryer goes in, but we can't, so we'll just get an indoor/outdoor rug to hide the old linoleum for now. Then we'll go to Ikea and get a much better cabinet system for over the w/d.
So really, it's a half-reno. But it's something, and BOY am I ready to see that awful foundation-flesh color go away. It occurred to me that it was the same color that used to be in my office when we first moved in! *shudder*