Spring 2020 One Room Challenge – Week 6

Great news! After 5 weeks of waiting, I’m happy to report that we actually made some visible progress on the laundry room!

Before we dive into progress, let’s take a step back. Two weeks ago I told you that hung our light up. Technically that’s true, but it didn’t actually work.

We tried putting it up 3 times and it just wouldn’t turn on. It flipped our breaker every time and we had no idea what was going on. For a hot second, we were stressed that you couldn’t actually replace a florescent light with a real light fixture.

We tested out the light with an old boob light we had sitting around and it worked perfectly fine…which means our brand-new light must have had something wrong with it.

We found some issues in the wiring and added electrical tape and were feeling pretty good about attempt #4. We hit the light…and BANG. The light bulb exploded and we genuinely thought we were about to catch our house on fire.

We realized that since we only put in one bulb, maybe all the power went to that one bulb and it was too much to handle. But we were far from sure and we were pretty afraid of catching the house on fire.

So we added the 3 extra bulbs, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and had it ready to spray. We flipped the light switch on and…it worked!! FINALLY. Attempt #5 was the charm and it still hasn’t caught on fire.

Now do you see why we don’t give you tutorials on anything to do with electrical 😉

Cabinets

The crown molding arrived, which means we could finally hang the cabinets! And boy was this a game-changer for the laundry room. They might still be missing doors, but they still made the laundry room feel like a different space.

We opted to hang up all the way to the ceiling so that there would be room for clothes to hang underneath them and it makes the room feel so much taller!

All the details on how we made, hung, and finished these cabinets are heading your way soon 😉

Fold-down drying rack

We started this one in Week 3 and finally got around to finishing it last week. It’s already been tested in the field and I’m happy to report that it did a fantastic job of holding up 50 million pairs of yoga pants.

But seriously, drying space was a big priority for us so it was great to make some progress on that front. Next up: lay flat drying drawers (and finally hanging the rod for the clothes).

Tiling

We went back and forth and back and forth on whether to tile the wall or the floor first. We ended up choosing the wall and I sure am thankful that we did.

Tiling was a MESS.

But before we could get to actually tiling the wall, we first had to remove our quarter round and trim. Once we got that out of the way, we chalked some lines, mixed some mortar and started tiling.

We’re working on a nice little tiling tutorial for you, but in the meantime, here’s my biggest piece of advice: wear gloves. I didn’t and my hands have been stripped of fingerprints and have started to peel.

Lesson learned for tiling the floor, which WILL be done by next week. My hands are so sore that they can barely move, but the floor will be done.

And then I’ll never tile again because man, it’s more labor-intensive than people let on.

Progress + Next Steps 

Holy cow. I was writing this post and it hit me: the laundry room is supposed to be finished in TWO weeks.

TWO WEEKS.

Um…we have a LOT to get done before then. But let’s take it one week at a time.

The goal this coming week is to finish the tile and get the bottom section of “cabinets” done. That means making the lay-flat drying drawers, building the actual structure, and potentially making the countertop?

We’ll see about the countertop. We’re still finalizing what we actually want that to be and it does seem a *tad* ambitious.

• Cabinets
  • build upper cabinets 
  • make shaker door fronts for cabinets 
  • paint shaker doors
  • install cabinets
  • paint cabinets
  • install hardware 
  • make bottom section
  • make countertop 
• Drying space 
  • add rod to hang clothes 
  • make lay-flat drying drawers 
  • make fold-down drying rack
• Tiling
  • remove existing tile 
  • lay tile on floor 
  • lay tile on wall 
• Other projects
  • make shelf for above washer/dryer 
  • make step-stool (Andrew might be tall, but I’m short) 
  • replace fluorescent light 
  • decorate
• If there’s time (HA!)
  • accent wall across from laundry room 
  • add permanent shelves to linen closet 

One thing’s for sure: I’m definitely not going to be tackling that bonus accent wall during this One Room Challenge.

Until next week, check out the One Room Challenge blog for more design and project inspiration!