Laundering the Laundry Area

Part of our kitchen remodel involves fixing up our laundry area in the basement.  Paul very wisely realized that we would need a nice area to wash dishes in once our kitchen sink was removed.  Our laundry area, although it has a washer and dryer that I love, was not the most warm and fuzzy place to work in.  First, to update, I had posted previously on how we fixed up the old basement door to make it more weather-tight and to make it look more attractive (see post here).  Here is the finished door:

Once we removed the old sink and had the pretty new one installed, we saw how scary and dismal the surrounding area was:

So we removed the crackly old plaster, painted the wall behind where the sink, washer, and dryer go, and painted the floor:

Paul carefully painting around the new sink.

We chose a light green for the floor.  The Behr paint company calls it "Terrace View".  I like to think of it as Pistachio.

Another view, with the new sink.

We have to paint the floor in front of where the laundry is, fix the ceiling, and place wallboard back behind where we took out the scary plaster.  But we are on our way to a more beautiful laundry area.  Stayed tuned for further developments!

Completed: BSN

It is official: I have graduated.  I am now a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.  It was a long and difficult process.  Many times I wanted to give up.  I am glad I stayed with it.  It feels very good to have done this!

Spice House Haul

There is a wonderful spice shop not too far from our house, called The Spice House.  You can find anything there.  Any unusual spice that your recipe may call for.  I recently went there with my grandson to get some more vanilla beans to use with our homemade vanilla kit.  It was fascinating.  I ended up getting more than I came in for:

Make That Eight Phases

It turns out that there are two phases of getting the kitchen done that I either forgot, or needed to expound upon.  Paul rightly pointed out that the window replacement we did deserves its own phase, because it was an arduous job and took a lot before we could complete it.  See past posts here and here.  The second added phase is a new basement laundry sink.  To what does that pertain in a kitchen, you might ask?  Well, once we remove the kitchen sink to do the next phase of cabinet replacement, we realized that it would be very nice to have a clean and attractive basement sink in order to wash our dishes in until the new kitchen sink was in place and functional.  The old one was a massive concrete affair, battle-scarred and ugly, frightening.  (Julie referred to it as a "Hannibal Lector" sink, recalling the end of the movie The Silence of the Lambs, with the creepy basement - it wasn't actually that bad, but you get the idea!)

So, I have revised the phases, below.  You will note that the basement sink phase is checked off as complete.  It is!  We bought the sink, and the plumber came and took care of it today.  More on that in a subsequent post.

The Phases (a √ indicates completion):

1. Make it livable (completed in 1988): remove "island", place south wall base cabinets and cheap countertop) √
2. 2011-2012: New kitchen windows √
3. 2012: North wall gutting, insulating, initial electrical, wallboard, and upper cabinets, west wall uppers √
4. 2015: New basement laundry sink √
5. Knotty pine removal, wallboard, and electrical for east and south walls, keep existing base cabinets and cheap countertop
6. New base cabinets for north and west walls (including a blind corner cabinet with pull-out hardware for easy access), new sink (buh-bye old metallic monstrosity), built-in 18" dishwasher, adjustment of stove on north wall to accommodate new bases, new countertop
7. New upper cabinets and countertop for east and south walls
8. Knotty pine removal and electrical for last portion of south wall (no cabinets here)