The Crack Room

Since we always seem to buy fixer-uppers, we find that there is always one room in whatever house we live in where we can picture a bunch of crack or meth addicts gathering to huff their drugs. In our new Camas house this room happened to be the laundry room. When we looked at the house we could initially tell that there had been some water damage to the floor due to years of inept house owners neglecting to fix their leaky washers. We decided that this room would be the first to remodel. After getting our fill of fun this summer and the fact that we were tired of looking at moldy Sheetrock and having our washer drain into a sink; we decided to rip into the laundry room. Typical remodel: the project grew to more than we expected. We initially thought that only the Sheetrock and floor were damaged. HA! After thirty years of leaky washers and wet climates, we should have known better.

So after two days of demo, we (actually Jarred, I'm just the helper or bitch to use less PC terms), felt like all the rotten siding and floors were in our dump trailer and out of this portion of the house. Jarred spent the next day figuring out the plumbing and the next working on moving electrical outlets. We're cheap, actually we like nice things but don't like to pay for them. We've had great luck with Craigslist but no one on Craigslist has yet to post an ad for used labor, so Jarred is often stuck figuring out electrical and plumbing himself which takes longer than hiring someone. Luckily we're passed the "major mistakes" point, we took care of all those with our Hermiston house. I vividly remember getting in the shower one night, turning on the water and hearing a gushing sound BEHIND the new shower wall.

I also find that enough time seems to lapse between when we work with Sheetrock that we forget what a messy pain in the rear the stuff is. Jarred hates working with Sheetrock and swears that he'll always hire it out next time we remodel...next thing we know I'm holding pieces while he saws away at them, then we're mudding and sanding and mudding again.

After finally getting all the proper walls back up, we were ready to paint. I thought I'd be a good human and buy the VOC free earth friendly paint. While the color options were cool, I may as well have colored on the wall with a crayola marker as the paint seems to come OFF the wall just as fast. Next time (like next week) I'm going for the Behr one-coat chemical laden paint.

**** So there's be a slight time lapse since when I started this post and now. Don't know where time went, oh that's right, school started and I have to be a part of the working world again while still maintaining my action packed personal life.. ****



So to continue the remodel story, after the paint saga our luck started to change. We're floor snobs and decided that even though this was a laundry/dog room, we wanted nice hardwood floors. After calling around we found a super deal on some birch flooring...regular price $5.75 a square foot...our price $.99 a square foot! This deal made up for our paint experience. Now that we've nearly finished the room (the foreman in this household gets sidetracked and does not like to finish projects) we've realized it's the nicest room in the house and we have some work to do.