Restoration Farmhouse: Laundry Room Overhaul

After living here two years and doing countless other projects like painting the entire exterior I couldn't wait to get my hands on the laundry room. On the exterior of the laundry room wall was the last part of the exterior to paint. I called it "our hidden shame".

The outside:

See beautifullness to the right and ugliness to the left?

On the right is original siding and the left is 80's masonite siding.

First up I had to re-paint this mess and add insulation

Before:

After:

Next up and I couldn't wait for this: tear out this horrible 80's, rotting, ant infected masonite siding:

My plans were:

Remove siding

Replace light fixture

Replace the two cheap windows with one vintage window (craigslist find $20)

Replace the door jamb and add replace french door with a vintage door (local salvage shop $75)

Add a stained glass vintage window to the left of the door (craigslist $25)

On the other side of the wall is the laundry room. The plan in there was:

Replace 80's paneling

Re-paint ceiling and walls

Make-over window from laundry room to living room.
Re-place ugly bi-fold door with a vintage screen door (craigslist $30)

Buh bye ugly cheap windows:

They weren't leaving without putting up a fight though:

Rotting door jamb

Rotting masonite siding.

Nasty going down, pretty going up!

Here's my beautiful window!

Framing it out

View from inside

Finger nail injury. The drill slipped and cracked my nail. It took months for that to grow out.

We got it in!

We had to replace the door jamb. Look how disgusting it was.

And a partially rotted sub floor..

My husband had to help with that part. We cleaned it out then added more wood.

New threshold and our pretty new door jamb installed!

Our vintage door. I stripped it down to bare wood then re-painted.

Primer

I stripped all the hardware

The window is in, rotting door jamb replaced, hardware re-painted and door hung!

Our vintage window. I stripped it too.

50's blue under those handles. I used stripper and went down to bare wood.

I also re-glazed the window

A somewhat before picture of the inside

The laundry room was originally a screened in porch. The walls are the original siding except for the 80's paneling when the porch was enclosed. I didn't want to add boring drywall.

A neighbor had given me some old fence panels. I cut them and made a wall!
(this is not a picture of the actual panel)
On the panels the tops were curved and the bottoms were rotting. I decided to cut along the horizontal pieces to fix those problems then that left me with only one row of nails I had to deal with.

The panels were in a pile in my backyard. My original thought was to put them on saw horses to cut. I could not lift them. So I dragged the panels to the ground and cut them. It was terrifying. I'm surprised I still have all of my fingers and toes.

I started by staggering them. (At this point I was going back and forth taking down pieces of siding and installing the wood wall)

With the wall up on this side and the siding gone on the other side I used foam insulation between the boards.

I also caulked them on the inside wall.

After painting:

Cute handles painted black

I also built a bench for the kids. The bottoms are pieces left over from pillars and the top was a piece of wood that I happen to find in our shed left by the previous owners. I painted it with left over paint I had from a previous project.

I wanted each child to have their own hook. Instead of buying stencils I just printed the letters out, cut the letter out and painted

Meanwhile on the outside...

We have the 6 inch 105 wood siding. It also comes in 8 inch which is what Home Depot and Lowe's carry. I didn't realize at the time how hard it is to find. Originally I had talked to a lumber yard in Dallas back in July about pricing. The 6 inch in a 10 foot board was 11.99 in October when I was ready to buy they tell me the price went up to 16.99! I said no thank you!

I found Craddock Lumber Company
Their price was 10.50 a board! SCORE!

I installed this myself. I used exterior screws with a star tip. It was fairly easy. The first couple on the bottom I used a level then after that it was a breeze.

We added insulation, caulked under each board and primed. When it came time to paint and I opened the container, it was a total mess. The summer heat I think killed that paint. It was a gummy mess at the bottom and like water on top. No amount of stirring was going to save it.

I knew the color was called Flax and it was in a Behr paint can. So I head out to Home Depot to buy a new gallon. The man at HD finds the color, mixes it and when he shows me the color it was this pale pale yellow. I'm of course wearing my old paint clothes and point to my shirt and say no it's supposed to be this color. He says that doesn't help. Dang it. So I go home, look through all the papers that the previous owners left us and found the paint chip/card. It was actually an Olympic color which is sold at Lowe's. They must have wanted to use Behr and HD color matched it. Off I went to Lowe's to get the right color!