Laundry Room – nuntawob

November 27, 2025

Moving In – October/November 2025

Following the installation of the stainless steel backsplash in the kitchen, the house was in a state where I could move in. Obviously there was still a lot to do, but all the things I needed to function were in place. I would spend most of my time preparing for the move. This meant a ton of sorting and purging, and eventually cleaning in preparation for moving the furniture from my apartment. In this post, I do not intend to cover that part of the process. Instead I will focus on the other things I attended to in between those activities.

One of the first things I did was to acquire a vanity for the guest bathroom.

As you can see, I opted for a free standing unit. The vanity you see above is simply placed where I want it. It has not been secured in these pictures because other things in the bathroom need to be installed before I secure it (like the baseboards). I will be replacing the door handles on the vanity to match the other hardware in this room. These handles are what came with the unit.

Another thing I attended to was getting a console table for the foyer. I found something online that I thought looked pretty good, so I ordered it and assembled it.

Although I liked the style, I thought it looked a bit small for the space, so decided not to use it there. However, I got the idea that it might work well in the kitchen at the end of the island as you enter from the garage.

I was very pleased with this arrangement. I will be entering the house mainly from the garage, so when I do this will be where my keys will go, along with any other things that one typically places on the counter as you come and go. This provides a very nice landing zone, keeping the counter free.

Of course, I still needed something for the foyer. Then it occurred to me that I could use the table I’d previously used as a sofa table. I moved it into position and was immediately pleased with how it looked.

Console Table for Foyer (second attempt)

This is a bit more substantial and I like the combination of metal, wood, and glass. I added a mirror to complete it.

The screening that encloses the lanai out back was in need of replacement. A couple of the screens had been missing for some time, so I decided to attend to that. I chose to outsource this work to make it quick, but I had to prepare for that first, which meant removing the existing screening so that I could wipe down the aluminum cage, which had a lot of mold built up on it from neglect. I also pressure washed the floor, which cleaned it up, but it needs a lot more attention and I have yet to decide what I am going to do there.

Here is a shot of the lanai after the old screens had been removed.

And here is a shot from the same angle with the new screens in place.

The new screening has smaller openings than the previous screening. This is supposed to keep out the tiniest of bugs (often called “no-see-ums”). It was a bit more expensive, but I thought it was worth it. I want to be able to keep the doors from the house to the lanai open during nice weather and don’t want to have to worry about bugs getting into the house. Another thing I did along this line was to use spray foam to fill voids at the joints in the aluminum framing. Even with the previous screening in tact, the little lizards had a way of getting in. Although they are harmless, I prefer they stay outside. Since doing this, I’ve not seen a single lizard, so I think it has been a success. And what a nice view I have.

I also put up my wind chimes, which have been sitting patiently collecting dust for years.

I like the look of the chimes, but positioned them in a protected location because they can get loud and I don’t want to disturb the neighbors.

Although the guest bathroom won’t be fully functional until after I get the baseboards down (a prerequisite for the toilet and vanity installation), nothing was stopping me from getting the glass shower enclosure installed. I hired the same people that did the glass wall for the master shower. For this installation, though, I added a door, since the area is much smaller. I was happy with the result.

Another chore I attended to just before the movers arrived, was replacing the two overhead lights at the front entry to the house.

These fixtures are pretty simple. The original ones were looking a bit ragged, and I think these clean up the entryway nicely. Like the flooring in the lanai, I’ll do something with the entryway here. The bare concrete is not very nice.

The actual move took place on November 10th. The weather was perfect. The movers were great and made quick work of it, leaving me to arrange things the way I wanted them. This is what I settled on.

I was surprised with how my traditional furniture worked in this room. It was my plan to replace all this and move toward a more modern look, but after setting it up, I was pleasantly surprised with the look. I really like it, so will be keeping my existing furniture. I already intended to keep the bedroom set. I bought it ages ago and have always liked it.

Here’s the kitchen.

In my previous post, I showed a picture of the temporary rack I put in the laundry room to serve as storage until I built in cabinets and a bench. Here’s a reminder.

One evening while I was sitting peacefully in the living room, I heard a loud crash. I jumped up to investigate and discovered it was the shelf in the closet of the workshop. It came crashing down. I had been storing a lot of things on that shelf, including many clamps. I don’t have a proper picture of it, either before nor after, but here is one that will give you a small peek of it before it fell.

Fortunately, there was no real damage. I noticed a small ding in the flooring, but you had to really look to see it. After this, I decided that rather than put the shelf back up and ensure it was suitably secured, I would move the 5-tier rack from the laundry room into this space. I contemplated doing this when I first got the rack, thinking it would fit nicely here until I properly built out the closet, but decided it wasn’t needed. Ironic, eh?

5-tier Metal Rack Moved to Workshop Closet

As you can see, I have plenty of extra storage space available, so that is a nice benefit. The rack in the laundry room was replaced with a slightly smaller one since I didn’t really need all the space the larger rack provided. This one is made of plastic rather than metal, which is fine since it would not be supporting anything very heavy. Here it is loaded up with what I had before.

I am now living comfortably in my new home and am really happy about that. It’s really pleasant, which is aided by the beautiful weather we’ve had since I moved in, allowing me to keep the slider in the living room open most of the day.

There is still a lot to do. None of the trim work is done. There are no interior doors, and the crown molding in the kitchen has yet to be done. I’m contemplating hiring out some of that work, but will decide on that later. With the holidays approaching, I’ll be doing quite of bit of traveling, so until the New Year I am just going to enjoy my new home and take it easy. I’ll get back to work next year.

To end this post I’ll leave you with a picture I took the morning of November 25th from the lanai. I don’t usually get up so early, but that day I woke up as the sun was about to make an appearance, so I captured it.

Until next year…

September 29, 2025

Preparations for Moving In – August, September 2025

After returning from vacation, the plan was to turn my attention to the garage workshop. The idea was to prepare for the upcoming trim work that was facing me inside the house. A lot of thought went into it, but no real action. I was considering getting several new pieces of equipment, including an 8″ jointer, a cabinet saw, and something for dust collection. Some of these would require new 240 volt outlets. The table saw and jointer are both large machines. I have limited room in my garage so both would have to be mobile so they could be moved to the side to make room for the car. After considerable thought, I decided to not buy anything, yet. Instead I decided I would see if I could make do with what I have and only buy something when not doing so becomes painful.

While that was going on, I decided it would be best to focus on the things that would have to be ready in order for me to move in, which would be mid November. Some low hanging fruit was adding hardware to the master bathroom.

Since the towel rod is not right beside the shower, I added a hook to hold the towel while showering. I did not want to put a towel rod on the wall outside the shower because, if hung in the usual location, it would cover the switches.

Before moving in, I really needed to have the backsplash behind the cooktop installed. In the last post I mentioned that I planned to run the black granite up the wall. That was the plan, but the installers were really dragging their feet on this. I also asked them for an estimate for the vanity in the guest bathroom but, again, nothing. So while that was in limbo, I decided to have the tree in the front yard removed. It was something I figured I would do after I moved in, but given the limited activity, I decided to initiate that process. Fortunately, the company I contacted to do that was very prompt and responsive.

As you can see above, the tree was pretty ugly. Knowing it was going to be removed, I did not have it trimmed, so it was getting really crazy. It was a Live Oak, and was really not suited to this small a plot. The root system is extensive, so it would eventually mess up my driveway. Also, it sits atop the drain that leads from the house to the city sewer system, so that could be impacted too.

I will leave what you see above until the spring before sodding that area. It needs to settle for some time.

Returning to the cooktop backsplash, I contacted someone else to get an estimate, since my countertop installers still hadn’t responded. I got a much higher quote. Shortly after that, I did hear from my countertop guy, and he was expressing some concerns about the weight of the slab for the backsplash. It would be a very heavy slab. So that got me thinking of alternatives, and I decided to abandon the granite and instead opted for an embossed stainless steel backsplash with a diamond pattern. It would look really nice, be easy to clean, and would not introduce any weight issues. So I found someone to do that work and initiated the process.

While that was going on, I took care of a small but nagging issue that needed to be done before I moved in; mainly adding the remaining Ethernet keystones and faceplates. I wasn’t looking forward to this because it is fiddly work, but I was pleased to have it done. Here are some of them.

Once each of these is wired up, they have to be tested for connectivity (I have a special tool for that). If the connectivity is good, then I plug in my laptop and make sure it connects to the internet. Once that it confirmed, I insert the keystone(s) into the faceplate and attach the faceplate to the wall. After that is done, I verify again that the laptop can get online. I do this second test because, when attaching the faceplate, the keystone gets pushed into the junction box, which can disturb the connections. Fortunately, that did not happen on any of my installations.

With that done, I hooked up the washer and dryer. They certainly need to be working before I move in. I started with the dryer because it needed a couple of modifications before I could use it. The first was to simply reverse the door. In its current setup, the door would swing open toward the washing machine, making it awkward to transfer clothes from the the washer to the dryer. That was a pretty simple operation. The other thing I had to do was change the way the dryer vented. In its current configuration, it would vent to the left (toward the washer). That needed to change so it would vent out the back where it could connect up to the exterior vent. This proved to be quite an undertaking.

To move the dryer vent from the side to the back required that I disassemble the dryer (really!). I found a YouTube video that walked me through it, so that was great, but far more than I was expecting. So I moved the dryer into the living room where I had more space to work and started opening it up.

What you see above is the top and front door assembly removed. The control panel is resting on the frame and drum. That was just the start. To get access to the vent, the drum would have to be removed.

With the drum out of the way, I had access to the area where I would install the vent pipe. Below you can see it installed.

Straight run of Pipe out to the back of Dryer

Something of note here is that the pipe that was installed before (the one that vented out the side) was very poorly installed. When I pulled it out I noticed that it was not sealed with foil tape. Instead, the installers simply lined up the sections of pipe as best they could and used foil tape to keep them together. Because they did not take the dryer apart like I did, they had very limited access, so they would have simply reached in as far as the arm would allow and tape the pipe sections together as best they could. They would not have been able to wrap the foil tape fully around the pipe, which is what I saw. Having no experience with this, I was oblivious. It worked, for the most part, but would have leaked a lot, which would have heated up the room, making my A/C work extra.

With the new section of pipe in place, I reassembled the dryer and used a flexible foil pipe to tie it to the section of pipe in the wall that leads to the outside.

Here it is installed (sort of).

I turned it on, then went outside to verify that it was venting well, which it was. As you can see, I have kept it on the dolly. Since the dryer will have to be moved some day when I install baseboard, I decided to leave it on the dolly. A dryer doesn’t spin at a high rate of speed like a washing machine, so it doesn’t need to rest as securely on the floor. So this should be fine for the foreseeable future.

The installation of the washing machine was a much simpler matter. I did not need to make any modifications. I simply needed to remove the shipping bolts I installed before moving it from the other house, and then connected the water supply and lines put the drain pipe in place.

Unlike the dryer, I could not leave this on the dolly. It needed to be on solid ground and level. To test it, I ran the “tub clean” program, which takes more than an hour. It was a good test and the tub was in need of a good cleaning. There were no leaks and it ran smoothly.

Another thing that needed to be sorted out before I could move in was having something on which to hang my clothes. The two closets in the master bedroom were blank slates. Eventually I will create a custom solution tailored to each closet, but for now, I just needed something that would do the job and not cost too much. I found a pretty inexpensive rack online and purchased it to see if it would work.

I was very pleased with this. It was easy to assemble and very light weight, yet was strong enough to hold anything I planned to put on it. It fit nicely along the long wall in the large closet, so I decided to purchase two additional racks from the same company, but just a bit smaller. One would also go in the large closet, and the other would fit nicely in the small closet.

Look how well the smaller rack fits in the small master closet. I was pleased with that.

I also started moving some things from the apartment to the house; things that would fit in my car and would not be needed in my day to day life between now and November. One such item was a cube organizer, which fit nicely beside the piano.

Cube Organizer moved in, and a couple of Pics added.

I got a bit carried away and even hung a couple of pictures. I like the look of this room. It is aligned with the style I am after (modern or transitional). Unfortunately, the furniture from my previous house is very traditional. Although it differs from the more modern style I want, I will not entertain replacing it until after the trim work is done. So it will be with me for quite some time. Here is a glimpse of what I mean.

More Traditional furniture to Occupy Great Room for time being.

This contrast will become more pronounced once I move in.

I continued to do next to nothing with respect to construction work around the house. Instead, I just kept moving bits and pieces from the apartment to the house, sorting through boxes that had been packed for ages, and throwing out things I could no longer justify keeping. I also decided to start learning FreeCAD, which is 3D modeling software that I will use to design the various things I intend to build. I have a lot of projects I want to do around the house, such as building out the closets. Learning this software will allow me to fully flesh out the designs before I build a thing.

In the laundry room, opposite the washer/dryer, I imagine that I will introduce a “hall tree”, where there will be a bench where you can sit to put on shoes, above which will be hooks for coats and some cubbies for storage. I imagine flanking the hall tree with tall cabinets where I can store laundry supplies and an ironing board. All of that can be modeled in 3 dimensions using FreeCAD to make sure it is what I want. FreeCAD has a significant learning curve, so it’ll be a while before I am proficient, but I am on my way. In the meantime, I purchased a 5 tier rack to store laundry supplies and other such things.

To close out this post, I am pleased to show you the backsplash behind the cooktop. It was just installed today and I am very pleased with it.

April 14, 2024

Guest Bedroom, Laundry Room, and Master Closets – March/April 2024

The guest bedroom was the first room where I did any drywall work. I started there because I figured it would be the least used room, and if I was going to make any mistakes, I’d rather it not be something I saw every day. Fortunately it went very well and I was happy with the results. I did that work in July/August of 2021. I stopped working on it after finishing the ceiling (primed and painted) and after priming the walls. I didn’t know what color I was going to paint the walls, so I moved on to other things.

It was not long after I finished working on the guest bedroom that I decided to sell the house I was living in, which was about an hour south of this one, and move into an apartment next to my community, saving me a considerable commute. Since I could not fit everything from my house into my small apartment, I stored most of it in the various bedrooms of the house under renovation. The guest bedroom, being the only bedroom with the drywall finished, received the bulk of the contents I had to store. Now that I was ready to paint it, I had a lot of stuff to shift. I moved almost all of it into the now empty office and used this as an opportunity to organize it in a way that it was easier to get at. The things I had previously stored in the guest bedroom had been put there by the movers, so whenever I had a need for something I knew was stored away, it was often an adventure locating it and often involved climbing over boxes and furniture. With that done, I was ready to start.

Before any painting could take place, I had to address a problem that arose while working on the master bathroom. The master bathroom shares a wall with the guest bedroom. During the demolition of the ceiling in the master bathroom, a small part of the drywall in the guest bedroom was damaged. So I cut out the damaged portion and fit a patch.

I cut the opening enough so that I had something to screw the patch piece into on either side. In addition to screws, I also used construction adhesive, as I usually do.

The patch piece could have been a bit tighter, but since I was going to prefill it, I would have to open the seems a bit anyway, so I decided this was sufficient. Here is the prefill.

When taping, I decided to try something a bit different from my usual. Instead of running tape along all four seems, I simply ran three horizontal strips. By doing this I don’t have any overlapping tape to smooth out when I cover the tape with mud. I think this will be fine.

After coating a couple of times, followed by a final tight skim coat, it was ready for painting.

Not much to see in the image above other than there being no evidence of the patch.

Since preparing the patch for painting required several days due to the drying time between coats, I started painting the other walls. I used the same paint I used in the office; namely Behr Dynasty Beach House. When that was done I was able to start painting the wall with the patch. After getting the first coat done, which didn’t take long, rather than wait until the next day to start the second coat, I started on some of the other tasks I knew were ahead of me. Most notably was getting a head start on the laundry room, which was where I was going after being done (for now) with the guest bedroom. Like the rooms before the guest bedroom, the laundry room required that I clear it out so that I could get at all the surfaces. So that was the first order of business.

Laundry Room Cleared – From Entrance to Kitchen.

Laundry Room Cleared – Toward Entrance to Kitchen.

If you look at the first of the images above, you’ll also notice that I removed the trim from around the door to the garage, and I also installed a piece of drywall to close the opening between the plumbing closet and the existing ceiling. I also installed a couple of water hammer arrestors for the supply lines to the washer (shown more clearly below).

Laundry Room – Water Hammer Arrestors Installed.

The next time I returned to the house, I was able to paint the second coat on the south wall to finish the painting for the guest bedroom. Here it is finished.

Guest Bedroom Painted – Toward Entrance.

As you can see, I hooked up the outlets and installed the light/fan. This was all I intended to do on the room for now, so I turned my attention back to the laundry room.

Before hanging drywall in the laundry room, I had to introduce fire block foam into the openings where the electrical wires run into the attic. I ended up adding the foam in more places than that simply because I had plenty of extra, so I got a bit carried away.

I then added the insulation.

After this I was ready to hang drywall. Since I had a lot of drywall off-cuts, I used them instead of buying new full sheets. Consequently, it was a patchwork.

Laundry Room Drywall Hung – From Kitchen Entrance.

Laundry Room Drywall Hung – From Behind Garage Entrance Door.

With all these seems, there will be a lot of taping. I prefer that to wasting all those off-cuts. Even with all those taped joints, I’ll make it look great.

With the drywall hung, I scheduled another inspection. That meant I had to wait a couple of days before I could start taping, so I started working on the large closet in the master bedroom, which was scheduled to start after I was done with the laundry room. The first job there was to add sound insulation between the back wall and the shower.

Large Master Closet – Sound Insulation added.

Note the opening in the ceiling. When I had the underside of the roof deck insulated with spray foam, they walled off the area between the garage and the rest of the house to separate the conditioned space from the unconditioned space. This meant that I no longer had access to the attic by using the original opening within the garage. The opening you see in the image above was created as a temporary alternative. I have since relocated the access to the attic to the area between the two closets in the master bedroom. Consequently, in the image below, you will see it closed off as I added drywall. As with the laundry room, I used off-cuts of drywall, so it too is a patchwork.

Large Master Closet – Drywall Hanging Completed.

It’s pretty ugly, but just wait until you see it once I’ve finished. Eventually it will be covered by cabinets when I get around to spiffing up the closet. But that will be a very long time from now.

The inspection of both the large closet and laundry room went without a hitch, so I prefilled and started taping. Here it is after taping. I removed the light fixture in preparation for coating the ceiling, so I used a different light to illuminate the room for this picture, hence the whiter appearance.

I prefilled and taped the laundry room during that same period.

I continued to work on both the laundry room and large master closet concurrently. The first coating of the tape was next.

Laundry Room – First Tape Cover Coat Complete.

I also applied a first cover coat to the ceilings in both rooms to begin transforming the knock-down texture to a smooth texture. I used an all-purpose mud for that. For subsequent coats, I returned to the light weight Plus-3 mud.

Laundry Room – Cover coat of Ceiling Complete.

Large Master Closet – First Tape Cover Coat and Ceiling Cover Coat Complete.

For the second cover coat, I decided to cover the entire wall surfaces rather than just the tape, since the coverage area was not so extensive. I did, however, add more mud over the taped areas to make sure they were properly covered before I started the proper skim coating phase. So, arguably, the second cover coat was a kind of skim coat, with emphasis on the taped areas. After the second cover coat of the walls, I applied the first of two skim coats to the ceilings.

Laundry Room – Second Tape Cover Coat of Walls, First Skim Coat of Ceiling.

Large Master Closet – Second Tape Cover Coat of Wall, First Skim Coat of Ceiling.

When skim coating, I usually apply two coats. However, I have had my doubts about the need for two skim coats, so I decided to try applying just one for the walls of the laundry room and large closet. I figured this was the place to try it because if I decide that two skim coats is the way to go, these rooms are where I can afford to learn that lesson. So here they are with just a single skim coat applied to the walls. The ceiling however, still gets two skims coats because of the heavy texture I had to cover.

Laundry Room – One Skim Coat on Walls, Two on Ceiling.

Large Master Closet – One Skim Coat on Walls, Two on Ceiling.

With just a single skim coat, you do not get the “almost painted” look. But the surfaces are smooth, so the coat of primer and two coats of paint will take care of the patchiness you see in the images. Here are the final results after two coats of paint to the walls and ceiling.

Large Master Closet – Two Coats of Paint applied to Walls and Ceiling.

For the closet, I used the same paint on the walls as I used on the ceiling. It is a flat Behr ceiling paint. I’m very happy with the result. However, in future I will go back to applying two skim coats, especially over a painted surface. You need an inspection light to see, but when you skim a painted surface, it can leave very tiny air bubbles. This is because the water in the mud cannot be absorbed into the painted surface. As such, it’s only way out is in the other direction, resulting in tiny bubbles. These bubbles are not always apparent when skimming. It was not until the next day while priming that I noticed them. They are sufficiently insignificant that I decided not to address them, especially given that this is a closet and that the walls will probably be covered by cabinets some day, as mentioned previously.

For the laundry room, I applied two coats of Behr ceiling pain to the ceiling and two coats of Behr Dynasty White Palais with an egg shell sheen to the walls. It took several samples before I settled on the wall color, but I am very pleased with it. It’s actually what I was going for in the bedrooms, but I’m not going to go back and change them now.

Laundry Room – Two Coats of Paint applied to Walls and Ceiling.

All the electrical outlets and switches are installed and working. The lamp you see installed is a temporary measure. I have another in mind, but haven’t quite found what I’m looking for yet. The lamp I installed used to hang above the kitchen table when the house was first built. This will be fine for now and I may hold off on replacing it until I’ve moved in. I also added spray foam around the door jam to the garage to prevent air flow. As the weather heats up, this will be helpful.

With the laundry room and large closet in the master bedroom done for now, I started work on the small closet in the master bedroom. This only required I removed the existing shelves and fill the holes before I could start coating the existing drywall.

Small Master Closet – Prepped for Skim Coating.

As usual, I applied a coat of all-purpose mud to the ceiling to cover the knock-down texture. After that I applied two skim coats to it and the walls to smooth them all out. With two skim coats, there were no tiny air bubbles to contend with. The surfaces looked great and were ready for two coats of the flat white ceiling paint (same as what I used in the large closet). It would make no sense to show a series of images capturing the progression because it would not come through. It would just look white at each stage. So here are a couple of shots of the closet after I applied two coats of paint and reinstalled the switch, light, and A/C grate.

Small Master Closet – Two Coats of Paint applied to Walls and Ceiling.

I think it looks great. The funny thing is, no one other than me will appreciate it because who actually notices such things. Still, it pleases me.

The only drywall work I have remaining is in the guest bathroom, so I’m getting close to the end of the messy work. Since the only functioning bathroom I have at the moment is the guest bathroom, before I start to work on that, making it unavailable, I need to get the master bathroom functional. So that is my next order of business. That will be the subject of the next post.