A Permanent Dryer Vent

This is what we've had to do every time we do laundry for the past year... Stick an adjustable dryer vent out the window. Not cool when it's snowing or raining, or when bugs decide to take you up on the open window invitation.

So we had my dad come over this afternoon to help us install a permanent dryer vent. We not only needed expertise, but also his non-exisitant fear of heights (our laundry room is on the second floor and there was no way either of us were getting up on a ladder).


We first had to decide on a location. I thought that from the outside it would look best if the vent were centered under the window. However, from the inside, that would mean I'd still somewhat see the metal vent between the dryer and washing machine. So we decided to just put it directly behind the dryer, about a foot off the floor. Of course in an old house nothing works out the way you want.

Both R and I were working on other projects, and after about an hour I went upstairs to check on my dad. Still no vent.. not even a big hole in the wall! He kept drilling small holes in the wall, only to have his drill get stuck and refuse to go any further. He kept leaning out the window to see what he could possibly be hitting (like the shutter?), but there wasn't anything he could see. Finally he got a big enough hole (about 2' higher than we had originally decided on) to see inside the wall... There was a big corner brace coming off of the beam in my bedroom closet, going down to the floor at a 45° angle. Now that he could actually see what he kept hitting, he was able to go a little bit above it and cut a larger hole. Only to run into more problems. The first layer was plaster, then lathe, then the brace (plus some other random vertical boards, which looked newer, and didn't really have any purpose, lots of blown in insulation (basically just a bunch of fibers), then some newer blown in foam insulation, then really really thick sheathing (this is where the drill kept getting stuck) and finally the wood siding.

What was suppose to be a quick afternoon project, of course, was anything but that. Because of everything in the wall it was very very hard for my dad to get a hole big enough for the vent. Eventually he was able to get it to fit, but of course by then it was 6:00, and we were all exhausted. Spending over 6 hours laboring in the sun and 85° weather isn't a lot of fun. 

Some night this week R will have to caulk around the vent, fill in the holes in the wall and reconnect the dryer. Until then I can't do laundry.. don't you feel bad for me? :) But basically it's done.. which makes me really really excited.. No more opening a window just to do laundry!

Laundry Room Before and After

Finished Laundry Room

I think this will be my cheapest room makeover in the entire house. And that's mainly thanks to the major discount I got on the wall paint. Originally $35, on sale for $5. As long as you're willing to be flexible, there are amazing paint discounts you can get!

Washer - $0 (given to me by a former client)
Dryer - $0 (given to me by a former client)
Wall Paint - $2.50 (the other half of the paint will be used in the upstairs Hall)  

White Paint - $0 (I had some leftover from other rooms)
Cabinet Knobs - $3

Rug - $0 (was in our Master Bathroom in our apartment, but didn't fit in this bathroom) 

Iron/Ironing Board Holder - $0 (I bought this about 3 years ago and we never got around to hanging it up in our apartment. I love having somewhere to put the ironing board and iron now.. they always seemed to get in the way!)

Yup. A $5.50 complete room transformation. The new cabinet knobs match the ones in the bathroom (because the cabinets also match). The washer and dryer were very generously given to us by clients of mine. We were remodeling their house and part of the remodel involved relocating their washer/dryer to the finished basement (as opposed to in the middle of the Kitchen where they had been). But to conserve space, we decided to go with a stack-able unit. Which meant that they had no use for their old washer and dryer. When they heard that we finally closed on the house, they asked if we needed a washer and dryer. At the time, we were just going to use my parent's or the ones in the basement. But who could pass up free appliances! And ones that were only a couple years old? The only catch was that we had to pick them up that weekend because demolition was starting Monday. More good luck... we already had the UHaul reserved to move out of our apartment. So all we had to do was make a quick trip down to Deep River to get them!

The wall cabinet is a huge help. It has three shelves, so I'm able to store household essentials and additional cleaning supplies in there. There's room for all of our backup laundry detergent and fabric softener, dusting supplies, Febreze, lightbulbs, laundry supplies, etc. If you know me, you know I have a lot of cleaning supplies... And they all fit in here!

Painting the Laundry Room

Every time I'm in our local Lowe's I check out their clearance section. So far, I've bought two cans of paint there. Both cans are premium Valspar brand paint... originally $35, on sale for $5. One of these I decided to use for the upstairs back hall (the other one is a yellow I'm planning on using in the Kitchen).


I started by filling in holes and sanding the walls (the paper left behind a weird, rough texture), then moved on to the trim and doors. I painted the trim and doors the same white I've been painting the rest of the trim/doors in the house. I love how white trim instantly cleans up a room! I also find that it accentuates the detailing in the trim (especially in some of the intricate crown molding we have in some rooms) much better than the dirty cream color did.


The walls and trim took about 2 coats of paint each. At first I wasn't too sure about the color on the walls. I'm not a "brown" person. I don't like brown clothes or brown walls. But this brown (it's called Moose Mousse) works for me. It makes the room look sophisticated, if you can call a Laundry Room sophisticated.

The hardest part of the room was the wall cabinet. It took a couple coats of paint and took longer to dry. But I did find about 6 bottles of body wash (unopened.. still in their gift packaging) and a really nice winter/Christmas hand soap set from Bath and Body Works. Looks like someone received all of these as Christmas gifts and just left them in the cabinet; either didn't want them, or forgot about them. And the best part? I also found a $20 Borders gift card tucked into one of the gift bags. It looked like whoever received it never even noticed it was there! Yay for free books!!

February Was a Slow Month..

We didn't do much around here in February (or really all winter). It seemed like every single weekend was dedicated to either shoveling or fixing yet another snow blower (R managed to break a snow blower every time we had a storm.. it was insane).

A couple weekends ago I put together my birthday present from my mom... my pretty new bookcases.  They're from Ikea and I think they look perfect. Originally I wanted to fill the whole wall with bookcases, but I think this arrangement works much better for this room. I also have curtains, my desk set up and some new Ikea lamps. And a rug picked out, but just not purchased yet. I'm really starting to love how the whole room is coming together.. I took a couple pictures but for some reason blogger won't let me upload them. I'll get them up as soon as I can.

Because our renovating has been put on a winter hold, I've been doing some unpacking where I can. Mostly stuff in the Living Room (which is almost done.. just waiting for a warm day when we can open the windows so we can use the paint remover on the trim), my office and the Guest Room. Slowly but surely it's becoming our home.

This past weekend was warm (New England early March warm... it was 40 degrees and sunny) so we had a window or two open and while R worked on cleaning up the yard I did some prepping and painting in the Laundry Room. 

The backyard was a mess.. after over 3 feet of snow being on the ground for basically 2 1/2 months we have a lot of mud. There's also a ton of branches, big and small, scattered around the yard. Once it's really warm out we'll be spending a lot of time out there cleaning up. We do have a couple tulips, daffodils and crocuses popping up though... can't wait until they bloom!

The Laundry Room deserves it's own post, so be looking for that (I'm waiting for a nice sunny day to take pictures). The wallpaper in this room was removed months ago (on a weekend when we had a lot of extra helpers!) and with the bare walls and creamy colored trim the room just looked dirty (and it looked even dirtier once I started painting the trim white). This is a room we walk through many times every day (to get to our upstairs bathroom) so it's nice to have it cleaned up and nice.

My Old Laundry Room

Now that I work from home, it's easier to get work done on the house. The best time to paint in this house is when it's sunny out. It gets very dry in the house, which means that I can put multiple coats of paint on quickly. And because the house was designed before fans or air conditioners, the window placement was designed to provide amazing cross ventilation. You've got to love the spring breezes coming through here!

So my first project was to paint the Laundry Room. The Laundry Room is located on the second floor, off of the back hallway. The upstairs bathroom is located directly off of the Laundry Room. At one point in time we believe that the Laundry Room was more of a dressing room, complete with a sit down vanity (which we found in the basement). When we bought the house it looked like this:

The closet you see is a linen closet. The existing space also had a large window that looks out to the driveway and a large upper cabinet. The previous owner had his washer and dryer in the basement (actually they're still down there), but because I didn't want to be dragging laundry down 2 tight, narrow, uneven sets of stairs, I convinced R that we should put our washer and dryer up here. The only problem with the set up was that there wasn't a dryer vent, so for the past couple months we've just been opening the window and putting the vent out the window.

Back in August, on a really productive day, the wallpaper got taken down in here. We had 2 helpers who were working way too fast, and they needed something to keep them busy! :) But then we never got around to painting in the room. So for about 7 months, the room looked like this:

 So nice that this is one of the first things you see in the morning. Needless to say, it was starting to drive me crazy. The room just felt icky and dirty. The walls were disgusting looking (never would have thought that anything was worse than the wallpaper that was on the walls before!) and the trim/doors/windows were all a dirty cream color.