Sawdust Diaries mudroom week 3ish

And now we continue with week 3 of my mudroom build! Check out weeks 1 & 2 if you haven’t already.

So, with all the prep worked done for the floors, I realized that I couldn’t tackle the floor yet. Yep. You see, we needed a new door to the breeze way. The one that we had was extremely drafty and so old that it was near impossible to fix so, I now had to wait for the door to be installed. If I learned one thing through this process it is that not everything is or should be a DIY project. The door was left to the professionals. Doors before floors, people. Once the door was installed I was ready to install my floors. BUT, I also had two boys on a tee ball team that had practice as well as a 19 month old and a 2 month old. I also had a husband who loves DIY and uses projects as stress relief from work so.. for a good portion of the flooring, Chris took over while I took all 4 boys to practice. I gave him all the instructions I had found from many You Tube videos and he was off.

By the time we got home, he had the flooring a good 2/3 done and we were both exhausted (him from manual labor, me from the labor of chasing the 1 year old around at practice with the newborn in tow – Chris totally knows he got a good deal on this one). We got the boys to bed and were able to complete the flooring. I wish I had taken more photos of this process, but when it comes down to it, the flooring is easy to snap together and all, but without a wall to start from (we had to start by the door as it was the most visible) this was a tough project. There was no taking pictures because we were too busy cursing. There. I said it. Avoid installing laminate flooring in a room that is not square.

Week 4?

Ok. Let me be honest. This whole project is a bit of a blur. I stared it when Kacher was ONE MONTH OLD. What was I thinking? I was in newborn-zombie mode. I’m surprised I didn’t seriously hurt myself with the tools I was using. Oh yeah, and the boys were in a wedding right about this time:

All of that is to say, I may be off on which week these things took place but they did take place. I think. I mean, I have a mudroom now. So here is what I think happened next:

I moved on to the tongue and groove planked wall (Sandra has a great tutorial on this as well as all the details about the product itself). This was a different technique than I did previously in the nursery and gave it a cleaner, classier look in the end. I’m still torn as to which look I want throughout my house since a good part of me really wants a farmhouse feel while 100% of me wants my house to be nice so… Do I go classy or farm rustic? The verdict is still out.

This was time consuming, but so much fun! It was like a puzzle with each piece snapping into another, except that I had to use a rubber mallet quite a few times. It might have just been fun because with each board, I was covering up that wallpaper. I can’t tell you how much covering that up has calmed the room down! I used my Ryobi nail gun which made this go by quickly. I love that thing. I cannot stand air compressors and all their noise. This thing gets the job done with out all of that and it is nice and light weight.

Week 5?

The week I actually built something. This was by far the most exciting week at this point. I was ready to build my bench. I had to laugh every time I talked with Sandra. She would just be like, “so, now you’ll just build a bench.” Like, no-brainer. And honestly, now that I’ve done it, it really is, but at the time, it was like she saying, “so, now you’ll just fly a plane.” She was completely full of confidence that I could and each week, by the time I got off the phone, I was completely full of confidence as well. When Chris got home I would pull a Sandra “oh, yeah.. so, I’m just going to build the benches this week.”

I started with the design. There would be 3 drawers on each bench and above the bench, each person would have a locker to hang their jackets and above that, because I wanted it to be completely built-in and custom looking, we would throw in another small cubby and take it to the ceiling with crown molding. Each bench was made of the 3 boxes that would later hold the drawers that I would build. So, this week, I made the 6 boxes and not exactly sure what to do next and quite a few days until I was going to talk with Sandra again, I painted the planked wall. You can’t be wasting babysitting time, you know.

sawdust diaries mudroom tuckinginsuperheroes.com

I set my boxes in place to make sure that they did in fact fit. This is when I realized that the guy at the store cut my boards short leaving me with an inch and a half on each side by the wall instead of the half inch I was planning on. I was so focused on making sure that each box was the same size that I didn’t make sure they were the RIGHT size until after building them. Good news is that I realized most mistakes can be fixed with an adjustment in your plans. I also learned that have the guy at the store cut the wood saves time, but only if you measure it afterward and he cut it correctly. I didn’t want to seem rude and measure the cuts when I was there, but after this lesson, I started doing so. The only cuts that I had anyone else do was cutting the plywood down so that it would fit in the minivan.

Side note: People are so incredibly helpful when you are loading wood into your car with a baby in a carseat riding along with the wood on the cart. Perfect strangers jump in to offer help.