Blue Washerwoman

Even though I have work in the afternoon today, I still managed to get a decent bit of painting done this morning.  The shelving unit/beast is coming along very nicely.  I'm not sure why I thought I should remove it.  Clearly, it just needed to be beautified.  I'm going to end up with more storage than I know what to do with.  It'll make it nice and easy to declutter the garage a bit more in the future.

The top shelf is done, but needs a few touch-ups of white paint.  Bottom shelf has one coat of blue, needs one more when I get home tonight.

Just comparing the two, it's like night and day.  I'm going to get some tension rods and make cute white/blue/tan curtains to hide the tubs and stuff.

I really like the unit now

Even the water heater looks less invasive.  I'm still going to put a room divider around it to make it less prominent.

Laundry Room

Mark said today he never thought of the laundry room as an actual room that should be pretty and decorated.  That will be changing, and I'm glad today's progress has changed his opinion as well.  A room that looks clean, pretty, and organized makes people want to spend time in there and be cheerful.

Blue paint for the walls, it matches the extra room.  I loved the color so much, very calming

You can see the tricky spot that I'm procrastinating on

The giant shelving unit will be emptied, cleaned, and painted white

The white patches on the wall are where I have more patching to do on the wallboard

Lovin' it

It's funny to compare the difference

Giant crack I had to patch today

The big hole in the ceiling

First layer of joint compound before sanding

Blegh!  Dirty beige on dirty beige, complete with spider webs.

Laundry Room, Before

 I'm exposing my soul here for all to see.  This room is a disaster and I honestly never thought I would be repairing it before I got to the bathroom.  Welcome to my nightmare, please do not judge.  The room was not part of the original interior of the home, from what I've gathered.  It was an afterthought and probably originally a patio that lead into the garage.  Somewhere along the lines, it became an interior room for storage, a wash room, and a catch-all for clutter and spiderwebs.

The damaged crack in the ceiling.  For now I will be quick fixing it with joint compound until the proper time to remove the whole ceiling and replace it with acutal gypsum board.  The ceiling appears to be some type of lightweight late '50s particle board slathered with a skim layer of texturing c. 1990.

We know the ceiling leaked, Mark has told me all about it.  I think it leaked before he bought the house too, then when the tweakers "remodeled" the house and did the texturing and "painting" it was applied to an already deteriorated surface.  The light fixture will be replaced with something pretty.  Naked lightbulbs are tacky!

I scraped it clean of all loose pieces and will be repairing tomorrow afternoon.

I have hated this beast for a logn time.  I finally figured otu what annoys me about it (and no I'm not talking about the clutter).  It's the color.  I will be repainting it white, removing the tracking for the sliding doors that I burned, and eventually having Derrick install actual cupboard doors.

I think once it has proper cupbaord doors and it's white, it should be less hateful to me.

I will improve this.  The heap in front of the hamper has been put away already.  Still not sure where that end table/lamp will be moving to.

It really needs paint.  I think we also need a better place to feed the cat.

Paint will help!

Phase 1 of organizing.  Clean out all unusable pieces of fabric and fold the pieces I'm keeping.

Two tubs folded nicely and labeled!

Oboviously my version of this assignment for the organizational challenge will be a bit more involved.  I will be doing 2x the work.

To do:
- Repair damaged ceiling sections
- Paint ceiling (ugh!  I hate painting ceilings.)
- Repair cracks in walls, add patches to holes, etc to minimize heat/cooling loss
- Paint walls
- Remove tracking for old doors off cabinet
- Paint cabinet
- Doors for cabinet (long term project here!)
- Remove clutter
- Organize and deep clean
- New feeding station for cat
- Storage cupboard for vacuums, mops, cleaning products

Progress on the Laundry Room

Putting the budget binder together

Bookkeeping nightmare

 Final proof of completing Week 3

The table is clean!

The office space

Office space part 2

 Week 4: The Laundry Room

This week's project will take me a little longer than planned.  My in-laws are coming up at the end of the week, the play is closing, we're going on vacation, etc.  I'll be extending the deadline a little bit to accommodate all the various activities, not to mention this will require a bit of restoration to be completed.  I will be repairing the ceiling, starting tomorrow.  As you can see below, it's in dire need of it.  Additionally, the large cabinet will be painted white, like the ceiling and the trim.  I will be painting the walls, and doing some repairs to those as well.  The 8/31 deadline is just not happening with this one.

Crack in the ceiling from water damage; I already scraped off the loose texture and paint.

More damaged ceiling

As you can see, the damage is only in one area

The other side of the room.

Edit 08/21/2013
14 Week Organizing Challenge Schedule
1. Kitchen due 8/10 COMPLETED: 8/8 Comparison shots can be found here
2. Garage due 8/17 COMPLETED: 8/20  Final Shot found here
3. Pantry  due 8/21 SKIPPED: we don't have one

4. Office due 8/24 COMPLETED: 8/23
5. Laundry Room due 8/31
6. Master Bedroom due 9/7
7. Linen Closet due 9/14
8. Kid's/ Extra Room due 9/21
9. Dining Room due 9/28
10. Mudroom due 10/5
11. Living Room due 10/12
12. Bathroom due 10/19
13. Master Closet due 10/26
14. Playroom due 11/2

Week 2, complete (enough)

I think this is proof of success for the week 2 project in the Organizing Challenge.  Not much in the way of excitement or overly pretty pictures of perfectly organized racks, etc.  The point is that the car fits in the garage, for the first time in the 20 years my husband has owned our home.  This is the car's second night in the garage.  We're quite excited.  I took a bit longer on week 2 since we do not have a pantry, so the week 3 project was moot.  Anyway, back to working on the week 4 project now: the office space(s).

Edit 08/21/2013
14 Week Organizing Challenge Schedule
1. Kitchen due 8/10 COMPLETED: 8/8 Comparison shots can be found here
2. Garage due 8/17 COMPLETED: 8/20  Final Shot found here
3. Pantry  due 8/21 SKIPPED: we don't have one

4. Office due 8/24 COMPLETED: 8/23 No photos for this one
5. Laundry Room due 8/31
6. Master Bedroom due 9/7
7. Linen Closet due 9/14
8. Kid's/ Extra Room due 9/21
9. Dining Room due 9/28
10. Mudroom due 10/5
11. Living Room due 10/12
12. Bathroom due 10/19
13. Master Closet due 10/26
14. Playroom due 11/2

Looks like a dirt storm

The hubby got on the roof to blow off all the pollen and clean the gutters

Seriously detest all the pollen

The back looks like something out of the Dust Bowl.  The gutters were completely packed solid with dirt.  Not leaves, dirt.

What a mess!

Today will be spent inside though since the Rim Fire has made the air more toxic to breath than Mt. Vesuvius.  Time to put together an owners manual binder and do filing!

Garage door

Mark decided that the garage door had to be painted today since it made the house look like a dump.

I started scraping off all the old nasty paint

Opted for red paint

It's not perfect, but is a temporary fix for the problem.  I still have some touch-ups to do

Skipping ahead

Since it only took me an afternoon to do the kitchen project and the garage was mostly done, I'm going to start the next week's cleaning project.  Since the garage is a project I will be returning to as soon as I get to the laundry room, it will live in a mountain of boxes for a little while.  It's usable though, the car can go in and be parked for the first time in 20 years.

Our home does not have a pantry, so I will be skipping the project for Week #3.  I'll be moving on to the Week #4 project, which will help me to clean up the kitchen table and the rest of the Hoosier cabinet much quicker.  This will be the office space.  It's high time I got the files sorted out, organized, and made sense of some of the excess paper.  I usually keep on this pretty well, but it could always be better.  The goals of this project will obviously be to finish the budget binder, menu planning for the next shopping trip, organize the papers from previous years, fix my filing cabinet (or invade Mark's cabinet if need be), and create a clean, usable workspace at my writing desk (rather than the kitchen table).

First, though I had to put up some side by side comparisons from the kitchen.