Spring 2023 One Room Challenge Week 3: We Have (Custom) Cabinets!
Last Fall, we began to renovate our tiny mudroom and slightly bigger laundry room by combining them into one for the One Room Challenge. It turned out that moving plumbing and electrical was going to take way longer than we had anticipated, so, here we are, ready to finish this project! Let me show you where we are at week 3 of the 2023 Spring ORC.
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We’ve made some big progress on our new laundry and mud room again this week.
The biggest movement was in making the custom cabinetry we have planned.
As I’ve explained in prior posts, when we took the wall down between the old mud room and laundry room, we found an air return we did not expect. Now, I have had no intention of putting a wall back up so I knew it was a problem that would have to be solved.
We turned our attention to moving the plumbing and electric, installing the tile floor, and installing the cabinetry. With all of that finished, we moved onto the big holes in the ceiling and floor.
Solution to a Problem: Custom Cabinetry
We’ve had the wall open for many months now and we have not noticed one bit of difference in the air flow or temperature in the house, including the bedrooms above and below and the laundry room itself. That has made me pretty confident in my solution to this problem: create a custom cabinet that will hide the holes and allow the air to flow through it.
Now, the cabinet will not be air tight, obviously, but more air will be passing through the way it is supposed to than has been over the last several months. It’s been wide open so there’s been no air flowing the way it’s supposed to. This cabinet will be an improvement, then, and will meant we do not need to put any part of a wall back up. The cabinetry will look intentional, custom, built in…because that’s exactly what it is.
We will cut out holes in the top and bottom to align with the ones in the floor and ceiling as well as some in the back for the electric outlets. We will use this as a broom cabinet and where the vacuum is plugged in (hooray for moving the electric on that side of the wall as well).
The cabinet will be placed soon with the door as well. Believe me when I say a LOT of lessons were learned in making these cabinets. Lots of choice words and mistakes, lots of lessons. Also, the cabinet making class I got for Paul for Christmas really paid off.
And While We’re At It, Let’s Build a Pantry
Why not, right? We’re making custom cabinets already, let’s just add a few more. It’s slightly funny looking back on it, but that was pretty much the thought process. That and we could not stand how the existing sliding doors worked, or rather did not work. So, we built the boxes at the same time.
Apparently our boys like to stand in these boxes for photo ops. I love that they can watch us building things with our own hands, see us messing up and trying again (and again and again) until it’s right. It can be very difficult getting projects like this finished when we have two little guys who need us, but these pictures and these pieces will make me smile every time I think about them.
One More Build, Lots of Lessons Learned
Finally, after living with the laundry room open and without a door to close it off, we realized it would be nice to be able to limit the noise from the washer/dryer. I designed a sliding door–think barn door but modern–and it’s taking shape as well.
I decided to use a strong plexiglass because it’s too risky to have real glass in there with the dogs and boys. However, I’m adding a special touch to these windows once the door is installed that will make it look like a more expensive, custom door while also capitalizing on a big trend. More details to come.
I need to pick out my stain colors for the cabinetry, door, and butcher block countertops. I’m struggling with it, mainly because I had one look in my head and then I picked the wall color that would likely not go as well with my original vision. I don’t mean to be cryptic but I’m still a little undecided. Hopefully, I’ll make that choice this week and get on with it!
I think he’s done a beautiful job with a difficult built in so far. More on this to come!
On Tap for This Week:
Looking at my list from last week and it’s all pretty much still on the to do list:
- Patch the missing or damaged drywall and ceiling where the wall we took down used to be.
- Figure out what type of design I want to add to the ceiling.
- Install the new light fixtures.
- Install the custom cabinet.
- Stain and seal the countertop.
- Finish and install the sliding door.
I hope that you’ll come back for week 4 of the Spring 2023 ORC and see how far we get. I have a couple other projects to show you this week as well, so stay tuned!
