It's Great To Be Home

The Flip: The Laundry Room, Then & Now

January 13, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 14 Comments

So far on our tour of the flip we’ve checked out the dining room, the great room and the jack ‘n jill bathroom. Next up . . . the laundry room!

It’s hard to get too excited about a laundry room, but this one actually underwent some changes that dramatically improved the flow of the house.

If you check out the floor plan below, which is how the house used to look before the renovation, you can see that the only access to the fourth bedroom used to be through the laundry room.

Isn’t that weird? I know I would feel strange sticking a kid or a guest in that room, all by their lonesome. So we decided that needed to change.

After tons of deliberation (and lots of consultation with wise folks like my mom), we figured out a way to make that crazy laundry room / 4th bedroom dilemma work out. Basically, we moved the doorway (leading from the kitchen to the laundry room) about 3 feet to the left and pushed the south wall of the 4th bedroom out about 2 feet – this gave us enough room to create kind of a vestibule or tiny hallway between the kitchen, laundry room and 4th bedroom, and eliminating all of that weirdness. Now the 4th bedroom has a proper entrance from the hallway!

We also had a closet removed from the laundry room that was accessible only from the garage – it was eating up valuable floor space that we needed after we pushed out the wall of the 4th bedroom. But we left part of one of the closet walls still standing so that you aren’t greeted by the side of the dryer as soon as you walk into the laundry room.

Anyhoo, enough explanations – here’s how the laundry room used to look as you entered from the kitchen:

And here’s how it looks now.

The garage is to the left on the other side of the partition wall, and the vestibule area is through that open door at the end of the laundry room – you can see it to the left of the cabinetry in the photo below.

And that’s how we made the 4th bedroom much more friendly, while still leaving lots of space in the laundry room!

We wanted to make sure the laundry room looked nice and was super functional, since we figured the future buyers would pretty much always use the laundry room to come in and out of their home. At least, that’s what we do. What about you?

The Flip: Status Update

November 3, 2010 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 7 Comments

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve filled you guys in on what’s going on at the flip. Here’s what’s been crossed off the to-do list:

- Demo. Messy and nasty but also awesome and over. (Read more about demo at the flip here.)

{ The master bathroom was a bit of a disaster during demo. }

- Framing. Remember all the changes we decided to make to the floor plan? (Read more about those changes here.) Well they’ve become a reality and everything looks fab. Particularly the ceiling in the great room – I’ll tell you more about that in another post.

{ The ceiling joists for the great room were HUGE! }

- Rough electrical. All of the recessed lighting has been put in, electrical has been run (through the slab foundation) to the island to power the microwave, dishwasher and disposal, the jetted tub in the master bathroom has been powered, a new electrical panel has been installed . . . I could go on and on!

- Rough plumbing. The biggest plumbing endeavor was moving around the fixtures in the master bathroom. The concrete was jackhammered out in certain areas, plumbing was laid, and then new rebar and concrete were put in. Lots of other little things happened, too, but the master bathroom was the biggie.

- HVAC. Since we made some adjustments to the ceiling in the great room, the HVAC needed to be raised, and new flex ducts were added where necessary.

{ Yep, that is the HVAC system hanging from the ceiling above the fireplace in the great room. }

And here’s what’s coming up next:

- Raising the French doors. Remember those glorious French doors at the end of the great room? Well, they all have to be raised at least 2 inches and reinstalled.

{ These are the French doors that are now part of the great room. Trust me, it doesn’t look like this anymore! }

That is a lovely expense that we weren’t planning on at the beginning of the project. The reason for doing all of this is that the French doors are installed on what used to be the covered patio – which means that it slopes. Now that the patio has been incorporated into the living space, the floor has to be leveled out so that the new flooring can be laid and once that happens the French doors wouldn’t be able to open because they would hit the now-higher floor. Make sense?

- More concrete. As I discussed above, the former-patio-now-living-space floor has to be leveled out.

- Sheetrock. I’m excited about this one – from past renovations, I remember that the project starts feeling somewhat finished once all the walls and holes have been closed in. There will be 3 different crews taking on the sheetrock – 1 for actually hanging it, another for taping and bedding, and a third for texture. Whew! And I’m hoping that the cold and humidity from all this rain we’ve been having won’t slow down the drying process too long.

- Cabinetry. Eeek! I cannot WAIT to see the cabinetry installed. That’s the biggest “imagination to reality” transformation that I’ve been anticipating. (Read more about the kitchen cabinetry here.)

- Flooring. I’ll be showing you pictures soon of the gorgeous (if I do say so myself) flooring that we’ve picked out!

{ If you’re wondering whether all of that fit into my trusty SUV, it did not. And we’ve still got lots more to pick up. }

- Paint. That’s a big job and will take awhile. I’m hoping I get another coupon from Sherwin Williams soon to use to pay for all that paint!

- Tile. I looooove the tile we’ve picked out for the master bathroom. I can’t wait to show it to you!

- Finish work. Countertops (I showed you the bathroom countertops here), lighting fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and all that good stuff.

- Massive cleaning. It should come as no surprise that construction sites are crazy dirty. I’m guessing that buyers won’t be impressed by a crazy dirty house. :)

- Staging. That’s right, I said staging. We’re thinking of investing in a house full of (affordable) furniture that we can use to snazz up all of our future flips when they go on the market.

If all goes as planned, our flip should be on the market well before Thanksgiving. It gives me heart palpitations to think of missing that benchmark, so feel free to send me good vibes in the hopes that doesn’t happen!!