Home Improvement - Laundry Room

I love owning my own house, but don’t necessarily love all the upkeep and maintenance that goes along with it. Toss in 3 active boys and I’ve got my work cut out for me.

I’ve been on a home-improvement kick for the past few weeks and have been busy knocking out projects that have been waiting for years - sometimes more than a decade - to get finished.

My first project was to repaint our laundry room. Our laundry room is actually in our ‘utility room’ in the basement - the place where the furnace, A/C and water heater dwell. The laundry room used to be on our first floor in a very small closet adjacent to the garage. Iowa winters being what they are - miserably cold - would prove to be a challenge for our washing machine. The outlet hose went into a pipe which was located in the wall separating the garage and laundry room. Whenever it got really cold, the pipe would freeze and any attempt to do a load of laundry would cause the outlet pipe to overflow making a mess. We tried all sorts of fixes, but never came across one that worked. Someone suggested using a kind of heated pipe wrap, but the thought of that between two studs in a wall didn’t thrill us.

Eventually, we gave up and I spent a weekend in the utility room adding everything we’d need to make the connections for the washer and dryer. Everything from cutting into existing water supply lines to add copper piping for the cold and hot water supply lines, cutting & cementing PVC pipe for the dirty water from the washer, installing a new 240 volt recepticle for the dryer, hacking a hole in the side of the house for the dryer-vent. Oh yeah, it was fun. Thank goodness to a large number of books from the library which enabled me to safely tackle the 240 volt outlet.

What was the laundry room then was ‘turned’ into a tiny 5′ x 5′ computer room, which later morphed into a storage closet with white wire shelves lining the walls. It’s been a welcome addition to the house ever since.


Other than moving the washer/dryer to the utility room, we’ve NEVER spent any time or money fixing it up. No need to. It’s purely been utilitarian. The only other thing we added was putting a freezer next to the washer/dryer. A place nobody other than our family goes. The ugly yellow walls and marred grey floor from 30 years ago weren’t really a concern for us. Until last week.
I got a wild hair. I wanted it changed so it wouldn’t be such a dump.













Of course nothing that I do is ever simple. Home improvement projects always have a domino-effect to them. A simple project grows progressively more and more expensive and time consuming as I come across poor/substandard/bizarre (your choice) construction methods and techniques.

It kind of went like this:

Freezer Cleaning & Relocation

• Take everything out of freezer. Bundle in blankets to keep frozen.
• Use my 14-year old son as a pack-mule to help me move freezer upstairs to garage.
• Put in driveway in the sun to help speed the thawing process.
• Wipe out freezer using Windex making it spotless.
• Vacuum the coils and under the freezer.
• Find a new home in the garage, position and plug in the freezer. It works, so wait about 15 minutes for it to get cold.
• Reload freezer, throwing out outdated walleye from Canada, corn from 1998 and other unidentifiable stuff.

Laundry Marathon

• Wash, dry and fold every bit of laundry I could possibly find.
• Disconnect washer and dryer and move out of the utility room.
• Gag in disgust at the discovery of a dead bird in the dryer vent.
• Gag in disgust at the floor which was under the washer and dryer.

Home Depot - Part I

• Head to Home Depot for necessary supplies; cheap paint rollers, acid/etching solution, acid-proof gloves, good water-proofing masonry primer, flat-white paint, floor degreaser and grey basement/garage paint.
• Cringe at the bill of over $120 for these supplies. Mention to 14 year old not to mention this amount to his mother.

Intial Floor Cleaning

• Sweep, scrape and vacuum the floor.
• Gag using degreaser, mop the floor, rinse with clean water

Dealing With Effloresence

• Put on safety goggles and my new cool acid-proof gloves.
• Mix acid crystals according to instructions.
• Fill spray bottle with acid solution.
• Spray acid solution on walls
• Start immediately choking and coughing
• Stop spraying acid solution on walls
• Apply acid-solution according to directions (with a brush)
• Let soak for a few minutes
• Scrub with brush.
• Spray clean water on walls to dilute/deactivate acid-solution.
• Let dry overnight

Wall Painting

• Convince my two kids that it’d ‘be cool’ to help me paint the walls in the laundry room.
• Dress them in old t-shirts so they wouldn’t trash any of their clothes
• Give them strict instructions as to what they can paint.
• Apply the waterproof paint, cutting in around the various pipes, hoses, outlets, etc. Switch to rollers to finish up.
• Smile as the kids are having the time of their life.
• Let dry overnight
• Bushwack my 14-year old into helping do the final coat of flat-white
• Listen to him grumble.
• Let dry overnight.

Floor Painting

• On hands and knees, use sponge and scrub floor one more time.
• Let dry.
• Cut in around perimeter of room, pipes, furnace, etc. with paint brush using the grey paint.
• Using a roller, finish the remainder of the floor. (I think the floor took all of 15 minutes from start to finish.)
• Stand back, smile at the transformation
• Let dry

Home Depot - Part II

• Get necessary PVC pipe, elbows and couplers to rework plumbing of sump-pump
• Smile at paying less than $10.00

PVC Pipe for Sump-Pump Upgrade

• Gag at disgusting sight of sump-pump and its innards
• Unscrew one-way valve (if that’s what it’s called)
• Cut away old, poorly installed PVC pipe.
• Turn off water-heater pilot light so I don't cause an explosion or fire from the cement.
• Measure, cut and cement pipe, elbow’s and couplers to fit.
• Rework support which hangs and supports PVC pipe assembly from ceiling.
• Stand back and marvel and the new plumbing.
• Plug in the sump-pump only to realize that I’d forgotten to cement the new piping to the old PVC. I had only dry-fitted it and forgot to finish that one joint.
• Scramble for towels and rags to clean up the water.
• Remedy problem by cementing PVC pipe and retesting.
• Paint cover to sump-pump. We get an ‘F’ for originality and simply painted it the same grey as the floor. Hey, what else are we going to do - we had a 1/2 can of grey floor paint left over.
• Turn on fan to make sure all flamable fumes are gone
• Relight pilot light switch.

And On the Third Day….

• Reconnect the washer with it’s water connections and electrical connection and the dryer vent and plug it in.
• Test for leaks or problems.
• Start laundry marathon.
• Call this project finished.

It looks SO much better now than it did before. The white paint makes it look bigger and brighter. And cleaner too. While it’s still a utility room, it’s not the disgusting pit that it used to be. The kids were amazed at the difference and you could see their pride knowing they had a small part in all of this. Other than periodic cleaning and upkeep, I hope I NEVER have to do this again at this house.

Lessons Learned

1. I need to defrost, clean and vacuum my freezer out more often than every 5 years. This goes for the fridge too. I think yearly should be nice.
2. I need to move/clean under/behind the washing machine and dryer more often.
3. I need to replace the dryer vent-hose on a regular basis. Finding a dead bird is not a pleasant thing for anybody. Plus the accumulated lint and fuzz. Well, it's just a fireball waiting to happen.
4. I replaced the old water supply hoses with brand new hoses. These were like $13.00 each and have a braided steel covering on the outside. An added bonus is they have a device that shuts them off if one of the hoses were to burst. I like the added peace-of-mind that gives me. The thought of water dumping into my basement does not amuse me. The only downside of these new fancy hoses during normal day-to-day usage are that they severely restrict the amount of water going through them. This means that a load of laundry takes about twice as long because it takes so long to fill with water. Just something to get used to.
5. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. Inhaling acidic spray sucks.
6. Get the kids involved more often. They want to help (at least the younger ones) - find something for them to do - even if it means the project will take longer or parts have to be redone. I got an hour out of them - no fighting, quarreling, etc. plus they love the fact that they played a part in making the laundry room look so much better!