The House on the Hill Blog

Well, there have been some interesting developments in the laundry room renovation. We started getting plumbing quotes over the weekend to move our washer from its current location to the newly planned laundry nook. As a reminder, here’s the current floor plan:

And the floor plan we had settled on after our initial floor plan didn’t work out:

After looking into everything, it turns out that the only place to really have the washer downstairs is right where it is.

WOMP WOMP.

I won’t get too into the specifics, but basically the way the plumbing would have to be run into the nook would cause us to lose about 8 inches from the back wall which would make it way too tight to comfortably do laundry. The nook was already going to be cozy and losing 8 inches just makes it nearly non-functional. We do potentially have the option to move it upstairs which is appealing since that’s where all of the bedrooms and full bathrooms are but the only place for it there is our bathroom which would work but our bathroom is already on the small side and I don’t really want to have to squeeze another function into that space.

So, the fact that we have to leave the washer and dryer where they are is bummer number one. Bummer number two is the garage entry. We had hoped to slide the garage access a few feet to the right so that we could add cabinets to the current laundry room to give us some much needed storage. The problem with that is that the spot we wanted to move it is actually the worst possible spot to move it because there’s so much going on structurally. Beams, posts, etc. So not only can we not move the washer and dryer into their little nook but we also can’t move the door which means there’s no room for cabinets. Sure, we could put one large floor to ceiling cabinet where the old hall closet/bench was but that wouldn’t make the space feel any bigger and could potentially cause even more space/bottleneck issues. And then there’s bummer number three; the ceilings. The ceilings in the old cat closet and the laundry room are about 6.5′ which means they are super low. I think standard ceiling height is 8′ and even that’s a little low for me but it’s what we have in most of the house. I don’t know what mess somebody did to this house but the plumbing is crazy and unless we want to basically change the plumbing layout in our entire house, we can’t raise the ceilings much. We can maybe get 2″ through most of the space.

What does that all mean? It basically means that we can’t do much of anything that we intended to do and I tore all of the drywall down in the old cat closet for almost nothing. I mean, the drywall really needed to be done because as you can imagine, having a closet dedicated to cats caused some unpleasant lingering odors.

BUT! Not all hope is lost. The problem with the existing laundry/garage access combo is that it’s just too small of a space to accommodate both. We also desperately need more storage but that’s just a bonus of any new floor plan at this point. So, if we can’t move the laundry we’ll just have to move the garage access. New floor plan #3:

To be completely transparent, we think we can easily move the garage access to the back wall of the garage into the dining room but we don’t know that for sure. We’ll have to open up the wall to make sure we’re not dealing with anything too structural but if we can move it, we’ll be able to keep the laundry as is (which means no big plumbing cost) and we’ll be able to add about 5ft of cabinetry which means lots of storage. Coming into the house from the dining room will actually be great for bringing in groceries and it only slightly changes the future plans we had for the room so even though I had some initial hesitation there, we’re starting to get really excited about this possibility. We are not combining the existing laundry room and the cat closet anymore so instead that cat closet will become a pantry (more storage!!) and we’ll move the entrance to it to the dining room side as well instead of the hallway. We do have one air vent that will need to move to make this happen but that’s really it. I would love to find an old weathered half lite door to use for the new pantry or maybe buy a new one and make it look weathered.

The downside to the new laundry plan is that there isn’t really much wall space to use that wallpaper that I ordered so right now I’m trying to decide if I’m going to use it somewhere else (the new pantry maybe?) or if I’m going to return it. The upside is that now we get two spaces to design and we have an opportunity to try to learn/improve some new skills.

Remember when I said this project was going to be slow? Well, now it’s going to be on pause for a bit because we’ll have to do some clean out in our garage before we can get to the area that we need to open up for the new access into the house. We won’t even have a chance to start doing that until next weekend because this weekend is already packed. I’m thinking we might actually save this project just a few more weeks for the Spring One Room Challenge but there will be lots of planning and investigating in the meantime to make sure that this plan will even work.

Fingers crossed!

It’s happening!

We had originally said we weren’t going to do any new projects this year but I am super excited to tell you guys that we have decided to go ahead and renovate our laundry room! This picture is several years old but the room is an out of control mess right now so here it is at its nicest.

The laundry room in our house is tiny. I think it’s roughly a 5×6 space that fits our washer and dryer, the door to the garage (which opens into the laundry room), and another door into the rest of the house (which also opens into the laundry room). It’s also the very first room we “finished” when we moved in by painting the cabinets and walls and adding a counter over the washer and dryer. This is what it looked like when we moved in.

Before adding the barn door in our foyer, we would regularly keep the laundry room door closed so that we didn’t have to worry about any of our pets running out when we came in from the garage. Any time we would both be coming in or out we’d have to do this weird little shuffle dance so that we could close the garage door before opening the other door. It was incredibly obnoxious to do with the two of us, even worse with groceries, and nearly impossible once we added a car seat we had to carry in and out of the house.

Now that we have the barn door in place, we have been leaving the laundry room door open and it has helped some but the space is still way too tight. We’re planning on taking down the wall between the laundry room and that built in bench and luckily for us, there is also a closet right behind the laundry room that we can expand into.

For years we have used this as a place for our cats to do their business and hang out. I feel kind of bad evicting them but we can gain another 2-2.5ft to our laundry room by taking the wall down between the two spaces which I have already started doing.

Here’s the first draft of the new layout which I already know will need to change:

That empty corner space is where we had planned on stacking the washer and dryer. Adding the cabinetry is going to add so much function to our downstairs that I can hardly stand it! First though, we have to finish opening up the walls and see what we can do about what’s behind them. I’ve already found a good bit of plumbing, some of which we’d like to move and some we’re hoping we can work around. We also need to take a look in the ceiling because the ceilings in the laundry room and the cat closet are both low – probably about 7ft as opposed to a normal 8ft ceiling.

I’ll get more into the details of what needs to be done, what we plan to do, and what we plan to hire out later this week. We had planned on saving this project for the Spring One Room Challenge but in what is shocking news to absolutely no one, I am way too impatient to wait another couple of months so here we go!

I normally do my Weekender post on Fridays, or at least the Fridays that I remember to do them, but I promised a foyer post this week so here we go!

I mentioned before that 2019 will be the year we actually finish a bunch of projects that are already in progress. We have a few different areas to choose from and we decided to start downstairs in the foyer. Here’s an accurate depiction of how the space has looked since the day after Odessa’s birthday party.

The foyer is mostly finished; it really just needs baseboards, crown molding, and window/door trim. Oh and we have to repair the window sill because Barley has to constantly stand on it to bark at every living thing that passes and let’s just say she’s not the smallest dog.

Before we can do any of that though, we have to pull up the floors and re-install them. We originally installed the floors as a temporary fix but turns out we love them and the dogs can run and slide across them all day without scratching them so we want to put them throughout the downstairs. The problem is that to do that we have to install them from the front of the house going toward the back of the house and right now they’re the other way around. It shouldn’t be too bad since they are super easy to install so at least there’s that.

So that’s hiccup #1 with finishing the foyer (because it doesn’t make sense to put in baseboards before the floors are done). #2 involves the “mudroom” bench and laundry room.

We have big, big plans for the laundry room in the next couple of years. It’s a project we never really thought of as a priority but honestly it will have such a domino effect on  how the entire rest of the downstairs functions that it’s something we’re trying to move up the list. When I say big plans, I mean completely changing the lay out and blowing out walls and that includes the wall between the current laundry room and the little bench nook by the powder room and taking out the bench itself. Since we want to carry the flooring into these areas as well, we’re going to need to go ahead and at least tear the bench out and potentially that wall so we can install the flooring properly.

Fun fact: the paint samples at the top of that photo have been there for approximately 5.5 years.

I’m a little sad about ripping the bench out because it’s the first thing we ever built but it tends to just be a place we throw crap so it’s probably better this way.

Once the floors are done we can install all of the new trim and the foyer will be mostly finished! We’re going to get a new front door this spring which should be the last thing we need to finish this space.

Hooray, it’s the weekend!

We’re getting ready to start on our first project of the year and I’m so ready! We decided out of our list of 2019 projects to start with the foyer first. I’ve got a blog post almost ready to go for next week and we’re planning on starting this weekend.  It really doesn’t need much but before we can start the actual finishing process we have some floor work to do. More on that next week!

A couple of weekends ago we hosted OG’s 1st birthday party at our house and it was so much fun! We are so thankful to be surrounded by such great friends and family.

Confession: the bottle brush trees and tablecloths are still sitting piled up in the family room and snowflakes are still hung from the ceiling. We’ll get to it eventually. I didn’t get any pictures of everything completely set up or my kid before she got covered in strawberries but that’s okay.

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I’ve been day dreaming about our laundry room a lot lately and it’s been really hard to not just go ahead and start tearing it apart. We’re not even close to working on that project though so for now I’ll just keep dreaming, I guess.

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I hope you all have a great weekend!

A long time ago, I played with the idea of naming my Friday post “The Weekender” but not too long after, a much more well known blog that I love started doing it and I didn’t want to look like I was copying them. But ya know what? It’s okay. It’s just a post title and I have very few readers and even fewer that read other home improvement blogs so I’m going to start using it. So here is my first Friday post in a while filled with random thoughts or things going on in our lives and it’s a long one!

You know what I love most about the One Room Challenge? It forces me to post every week. When it’s over I always slack on posting whether I finished my space or not. Spoiler alert: we didn’t finish our outdoor living space and now it’s too cold to use anyway so we’ll hold off until Spring. We’ve had a much rainier fall than normal and so even if we had finished we wouldn’t have been able to use it much. We did pour the last two pavers (and have left the forms on for over a week…whoops!) and Kyle made some progress on the arbor. We’re setting that project aside until warmer weather comes back in the Spring but we have plenty of stuff inside to focus on.

OG is 11 months old as of today and I just am not emotionally ready for the 1st birthday. I’ve already been planning and ordering decorations but it’s starting to feel too real now. This year has absolutely flown by and it’s so bittersweet. I love watching her grow and change but I already miss some of those newborn and young infant characteristics.

Here’s a little sneak peak of the direction her party is going – yes, that is a pink sequin table cloth. I have also ordered approximately 1,204,813,057,395,372 balloons and I’ve cleared the Target Dollar Spot of all of their rose gold bottle brush trees every time they’ve stocked them so we’ll see what I end up doing with all of those.

Since we are hosting her (or more honestly, our) party at our house, there are some things downstairs we need to at least temporarily take care of. You might remember that a while back I talked about taking up some of the tile between the kitchen and foyer. Well, I took the tile up but we haven’t touched it since which means we currently have 3 layers of flooring exposed.

Our weekends in December are already busy so we won’t be able to completely fix it before the party but we are going to temporarily lay down some flooring just to cover the gap. We also need to put a bullnose flooring piece down where you step down into the front room from the foyer and we need to finish painting at least the dining room and if we have time, the family room. We’re also missing loads of trim but since we need to flip the flooring around downstairs it doesn’t make much sense to install baseboards and door trim just to take it all back out a week later to finish the floors so we’ll just need to make sure no nails or staples are sticking out since there will be kids running around.

Can you guys believe there are less than 3 weeks until Christmas?! I usually have my shopping done by now but I still have a few things left to buy and one present to go pick up. Luckily the ones left to buy are all gift cards but half of them will need to be mailed and we need to ship some of the other gifts. Ahhhh. We’ve been slowly decorating and have the inside pretty much taken care of but all we have outside is a tree and a polar bear on our porch. There are still pumpkins in our front yard that need to be moved and we at least need to set up our cheater lights that project onto the house.

A few years ago vs. this year:

I think 2019 is going to be a major budget year for us as far as house projects go but once I have a list of what we’re thinking about tackling I’ll be sure to share it here. I also need to take a look back at what we had hoped to get done this year and compare it to what we actually got done. My guess is we didn’t check off most of the list but we already knew that would be a major possibility so I’m not too bummed about it.

Happy weekend!

Reveal day is here! Yay!

Buuuuuut I don’t have a reveal for you. Boo!

Saturday I raked the area next to the walkway a bit more and started spreading gravel around the finished pavers, Kyle got the last two concrete forms set, and he leveled the two sides of the arbor to each other. OG was sick again over the weekend and then Sunday (aka the day we were going to pour the last two pavers and finish building the arbor) I woke up sick and Kyle hurt his back. I was able to spread a little more gravel but other than that Sunday was 100% unproductive.

Then of course this week we’ve been recovering and working at our actual jobs and it’s too dark after work to get anything done outside plus the weather has been uncooperative. I’m bummed we weren’t able to finish our space but it should just take us one more good weekend of work and then hopefully we’ll still have time to enjoy it before it gets too cold!

While I don’t have a full on reveal, I do have some before and “in progress” photos that show how far both spaces have come.

Let’s start with the walkway. Here’s what it looked like before:

And here’s what it looks like now!

We cleared all the junk, tackled some DIY 4×4 concrete pavers (first time ever working with concrete), and started filling in around the pavers with gravel. We are still planning on doing some planters along the walkway and hanging cafe lights but we need to do a bunch of leveling work to the right of the pavers first and we’ll likely also build a small retaining wall. We should be able to completely finish off the pavers on Saturday and then after they cure a couple of days we can pop the forms off and finish spreading the gravel.

We also decided that instead of figuring out how to route the downspout away from the house, we’re going to get a rain barrel instead. We’ve talked about getting one for a while and now is a good time for us to do it instead of routing and burying a drain around the pavers. Originally we were going to keep our big green trash and yard bins here and build a privacy screen but I’m glad we decided to move those inside the garage instead.

Our pavers definitely aren’t perfect but I think they turned out pretty good considering it was our first time working with concrete. They still need a good cleaning but I’m really happy with how they turned out!

Of course now that we have this area starting to come together all we can think about is how great it would look next to white brick instead of our orange brick.

Now let’s take a look back at the patio. Before it was just dirt, weeds, junk, and dog poop.

We cleared all the crap (literally), spread a bunch of gravel, and built (part of) an arbor. Here’s what it looks like now-ish:

We can actually use it! Just imagine it with a finished arbor, cushions on the furniture, cafe lights, and no baby jail or stray adirondack chair, We’ve already sat out here once and it’ll be a great area to host people once it’s finished. Once I get the planters on the arbor trimmed out, I plan on grabbing some end of season mums to fill them in.

We just got Odessa’s baby swing yesterday which we’ll hang from the center supports of the arbor when it’s finished. Once the pressure treated lumber dries out we’ll be staining the arbor the same color as our fence.

We still need to hang our string lights and I want to build a table to go along the brick wall that we can use for drinks and s’mores for fire pit nights.

I wish I could have had a better post for you guys today but things happen! I’m still happy with the progress we made over the last 6 weeks and I’m excited to get everything finished.

Make sure you go check out all of the other (finished) spaces right here! And if you want to see our spaces actually finished be sure to check back in soon.

Holy smokes week five already?! And November at that. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I felt so confident about finishing on time and then last week when I was a little less sure? Well, I’m even less sure this week. Uh oh.

Even with my uncertainty about meeting the deadline, we did make some good progress this week! But we really only have 1 day to work this weekend (maybe 1.5) and we still have a lot to do. Here’s what we got done this week:

Started building the arbor.

Saturday we plopped OG in her baby jail outside and fed her puffs to keep her distracted while we put the planters together and started to build the arbor. It still has a ways to go but we’re planning on finishing it off Saturday morning. We just need to make the cuts for the tops pieces and get them bolted on and I need to trim out the planters and add ya know, plants. I won’t be able to stain it yet (at least the arbor pieces) because we used pressure treated lumber which needs to dry out for several weeks before finishing. Once the arbor is finished we can hang our lights!

Poured more pavers and started cleaning up the area around the walkway.

My mom came over on Sunday to help watch OG so that Kyle and I could both get some work done for a few hours. While Kyle built and leveled forms, I started to rake and pull weeds and monkey grass. The pavers are taking us a long time because we’re only able to mix 1-2 bags of concrete at a time and each paver takes 5+ bags of concrete. We did talk about renting a small concrete mixer but decided it wasn’t worth it. We wised up when we were on our last paver (for that day) and started mixing in an extra baby pool we had laying around which was a little better than our seen-better-days wheelbarrow. We were able to get 3 more pavers done for a total of 4 and we have 2 more to do. My hope is to get the two forms built and leveled Saturday at the very least and either pour and float the pavers that day or Sunday afternoon if we are able to.

I tried to intentionally leave more texture in these pavers but it was surprisingly difficult. I also may have had a duh moment and accidentally gotten some over spray from the hose on a somewhat freshly poured paver. Whoops. I’ll be popping the forms off later this afternoon if the rain holds off. I had planned on taking them off late Tuesday but they didn’t look quite set enough so I left them and then didn’t have time after work on Wednesday before trick or treating started.

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That’s really all we got done over the weekend but those were big items to check off or at least partially check off. The other biggest task is pressure washing but after realizing we were running out of time and with no clue how we’d be able to tackle the upper parts of our house we decided to hire this out. We have a guy coming today to take care of pressure washing and cleaning our gutters which means I’ll be able to mark it off the list. We probably also won’t be cleaning up the foliage around the walkway quite as much as I had wanted but that will be a good task to do later this Fall or early winter when everything has died off.

On another note, I started to play around with furniture placement on the patio and in the end I think the modular sofa we have and the adirondacks are just too much so we’re just going to store the adirondacks in the garage for now and use them somewhere else or just pull them out when we need extra seating. Bonus: this means I don’t have to stain them right now so I can take that off the list, too.

Here’s our updated to do list!

PATIO

Clean out junk
–Clear ground – pull weeds and small trees, move large stones, rake out area
-Dig out next to bricks to allow space for gravel
-Weed current brick walkway 
-Lay extra bricks to complete existing brick walkway
-Order gravel to have delivered
-Lay weed fabric
-Spread gravel
-Pressure wash siding and brick – Hired out and happening any minute now
–Build adirondack kits
-Remove rust from outdoor sectional 
-Build/stain outdoor console table (Planning on scrambling to do this next week before reveal day)
-Hang cafe lights (hopefully this weekend after we finish the arbor)
-Decorate/Style space
-Build arbor/baby swing stand – In Progress

WALKWAY

-Clear junk
-Rake out/remove existing mulch
-Remove weeds
-Remove monkey grass that has regrown – In Progress
-Transplant plum trees (not enough light in current location)
-Clean up/remove surrounding foliage – In Progress
-Pressure wash – Hired out and happening any minute now
-DIY large concrete pavers – In progress (2 left!)
-Hang cafe lights
-Fill in with gravel
-Build planters – In Progress

As always, make sure you check out what everyone else is up to right here.

Ah, the dreaded Week Four of the One Room Challenge. If you remember, last week I was feeling pretty good about the 6 week time line. This week, not so much.

As predicted, weren’t able to knock off much of anything from this week’s ambitious to-do list. Here’s what I had hoped to get done:

-Weed brick border
-Remove rust from outdoor sectional
-Build/stain adirondacks
-Start building planters/arbor
-Pour concrete pavers
-Build/stain privacy screen

The weather wasn’t great for exterior work for half of the weekend (we knew weather would be a factor when we chose to do an exterior “room” but it’s still a bummer) and we had a little gremlin in the form of a teething baby who needed to be on one of us at all times.

So here’s what we did get done: I weeded the brick border little by little throughout the week, I scrubbed the rust off of the sectional and got it sprayed with rust proof spray paint, both adirondack chairs are assembled (not stained), and both planters for the arbor are mostly put together-ish. We decided against the privacy screen for our trash and yard waste bins because we’d really rather they live in the garage anyway so we’re just going to have to clear a spot for them and that item can come off the to-do list. So I guess we actually got more done than I thought.

The big thing I wanted to get done was the concrete pavers but ultimately we were only able to get one done. We have never worked with concrete before and there’s definitely a learning curve. I had a lot of trouble getting a completely smooth surface which could be from my technique or I may have been working the wrong size float so instead the paver we finished is pretty textured with my float arcs but we kind of dig it so I’ll be intentionally creating texture on the tops of the other five (FIVE!) pavers. I’m not really sure what happened with the color but it could have been that I over worked it or there was too much water or both. Clearly not a professional job but I’m pretty pleased with it for our first concrete project ever other than setting fence and deck posts.

That’s really all I have today! It’s supposed to rain again part of this weekend but I’m hoping with my mom’s help wrangling the baby we’ll be able to get a lot done. Here’s my next overly ambitious to-do list for the coming week:

-Leaf blow patio area
-Stain adirondacks
-Build arbor
-Pour remaining pavers
-Hang cafe lights over patio
-Pressure wash siding and brick around patio and walkway
-Start building planters for walkway

It’s gotten cold early here so I’m a little nervous we may have missed patio season this year but holding out hope for warmer days ahead (but not too warm).

Here’s an updated to-do list for both spaces:

PATIO

Clean out junk
–Clear ground – pull weeds and small trees, move large stones, rake out area
-Dig out next to bricks to allow space for gravel
-Weed current brick walkway 
-Lay extra bricks to complete existing brick walkway
-Order gravel to have delivered
-Lay weed fabric
-Spread gravel
-Pressure wash siding and brick
–Build/Stain adirondack kits (purchased at Home Depot during End of Season clearance) – In Progress
-Remove rust from outdoor sectional 
-Build/stain outdoor console table (Not even started – potentially on the chopping block)
-Hang cafe lights
-Decorate/Style space
-Build arbor/baby swing stand – In Progress

WALKWAY

-Clear junk
-Rake out/remove existing mulch
-Remove weeds
-Remove monkey grass that has regrown
-Transplant plum trees (not enough light in current location)
-Clean up/remove surrounding foilage
-Pressure wash
-DIY large concrete pavers – In progress
-Hang cafe lights? (Might look nice to have some here, too)
-Fill in with gravel
-Build planters

Make sure you check out the other guest participants right here!