Category: laundry room

A few months ago (in my last post) — well, that was six months! — I started restoring the door that I was planning to put into the laundry room. Hmm, so riding my bike got in the way, and I stopped working on the house for quite some time! Very enjoyable.

Back to work:

Above left I’m clamping pieces of redwood (the door is old growth redwood) to the sides of the door to slightly increase the width and height. Above right, I’m test-fitting in the pocket door opening.

I also bought an old, beautiful brass door lock from building resources. The old door hardware is more difficult to install than the new hardware. I had to hand carve out a mortice to fit the lock.

And then July Fourth came along… Harrison street was again a war zone of fireworks: Exciting for humans, but terrifying for Arwen and Bella. We put their “thunder shirts” on. They look a bit peeved, but it did help to calm them down a bit.

Not that they were totally calm… but at least they weren’t hiding under the couch!

Here’s the door ready to be stained (left) and stained (right). Still need to put polyurethane on it.

Right next to the door, in the laundry room, is a sink. I made a cabinet that will hold the sink, and be wall-hung. None of the walls are perpendicular, so it took some trial and error to get the cabinet the right shape. I stained it with the same stain used on the door. It came out close (a bit lighter) because it’s fir, not redwood.

Janeen spent a day filling all the nail holes, sanding and priming the wainscot. I finally finished installing all the trim.

And here’s the door on, and the sink in. The room just needs tile on the floor and paint.

Janeen just caught some photos of Bella working on her cutest cat award: Bella decided to get into my ‘Obama’ hoodie:

She liked it so much that she went to sleep inside.

I finished up installing the wainscot. Now I need to get the moldings for around the doors and windows.

I always enjoy looking back at old photos of this project. The photos above on the right are of the same wall. The lower photo is from February 2012.

I mentioned before how good Arwen is at shredding paper. Well, she finally got her paws on a bill. I had to piece it back together with tape. “My cat ate it!” Good thing mole is really good at puzzles and found all the pieces.

Above left: Unshredding. Above right, looking down through the skylight while I was plastering the ceiling.

I set up boards over saw horses so that I could reach the ceiling. Plastering the ceiling went quite well. I followed all the directions: “Blue” board as the base, then “Kal Kote” base coat, then “Uni-Kal” veneer plaster.

One problem I’d always had when plastering was there would be small patches of the plaster that would come loose as I was trying to polish the plaster. It was as if that section did not set up as fast. I’ve finally learned that when putting on plaster, the first pass must be very thin – basically scrubbed onto the surface so it’s almost translucent. If it’s too thick, it will get air bubbles under it, and that’s what was happening to me. Then, from the same batch, I come back and build the coat of plaster up to about 1/16 inch thick. This is the first time I’ve done that (the manufacturer’s instructions say to do that — it was just never clear to me how thin the first pass must be). It worked like a dream.

So now the plastering is done in the laundry room. Here’s mole and Arwen coming to inspect right after I’d finished the walls. The plaster was just setting up; it goes a brownish grey until all the water evaporates.

Then Arwen decided to get up to her old tricks and ran up onto the roof. Here she is walking along the ridge, with the sun setting behind her. Must be a great view.

Not to be outdone, Bella jumped up onto the handrail and walked back and forth. Then she walked into the open window of the laundry room.