#I remember making this model in the span of a weekend in 2017 just after chapter 2 of the first game released

[aquacomet]

Happy Bendy 2 (Bendy and the Dark Revival) release day! 

While I’m busy working on a couple of things, instead of doodling up something I thought I’d show a render of my Bendy model I made a couple of years back. While the model is quite dated there’s still a few neat renders that came out of it and this was one of them!

[truesportsfan]

The NFL’s Divisional Round Gave Us A Few Near-Upsets — And One Certified Mega-Upset

sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): Well, that was quite a weekend. For a hot second on Sunday, it looked like we would lose both of the FiveThirtyEight Super Bowl favorites in one round … but the Chiefs came roaring back, so we only lost our one overwhelming favorite. Welp.

So let’s start with the most shocking result of the weekend: Tennessee over Baltimore.

neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): That was the single most shocking playoff upset of the Super Bowl era, per Elo.

Tennessee’s upset was historic

Most unlikely playoff victories of the Super Bowl era (since 1966), according to FiveThirtyEight’s pregame Elo win probability

Favorite Underdog Season Rd. Team QB Adj. Elo Team QB Adj. Elo Win Prob. Score 2019 D BAL L. Jackson 1795 TEN R. Tannehill 1603 13.1% 28-12 2011 D GB A. Rodgers 1769 NYG E. Manning 1586 13.7 37-20 1987 D SF J. Montana 1767 MIN W. Wilson 1588 13.8 36-24 1996 D DEN J. Elway 1653 JAX M. Brunell 1483 14.5 30-27 2007 S NE T. Brady 1837 NYG E. Manning 1608 17.0 17-14 1983 W DAL D. White 1650 LAR V. Ferragamo 1484 17.7 24-17 2017 D PIT B. R’berger 1689 JAX B. Bortles 1551 17.9 45-42 1995 D SF S. Young 1769 GB B. Favre 1648 19.1 27-17 1983 D MIA D. Marino 1691 SEA D. Krieg 1574 19.2 27-20 2010 D NE T. Brady 1743 NYJ M. Sanchez 1617 19.3 28-21

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): I can confirm that I felt this level of shock.

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): The Ravens had such bad/unlucky offensive efficiency. They scored 12 points on over 500 yards of offense, becoming just the second home team in playoff history to gain 500 yards and lose. The Steelers did it in the 2017 season, in a loss to Jacksonville, but they scored more than 40 points. And only two teams since the merger (in the regular season or playoffs) gained over 500 yards and scored fewer points than the Ravens — the Bucs last year and the 1986 Niners.

neil: That’s what happens when you turn it over three times and fail on fourth down four more times.

Salfino: Yes, those fourth-down plays are basically turnovers.

joshua.hermsmeyer: In the regular season, the Ravens averaged 1.4 expected points added per play on fourth downs. Against the Titans: -2.58. And the Titans capitalized on those fourth-down defensive holds in a very big way.

sara.ziegler: It was pretty amazing that the Titans were able to capitalize on every single mistake the Ravens made.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was a bad day for doing the analytically sound thing.

sara.ziegler: And that’s the key point: They were RIGHT to go for it on those fourth downs, right?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Every time.

(And the 2-point attempt.)

neil: I detected a lot of people gleefully piling on analytics during that game.

They’d been waiting for a game like this.

Salfino: Tennessee is trying to make us think red-zone scoring efficiency isn’t random. The Titans were 3-for-3 on Saturday, 76 percent for the regular season and 8-for-8 in their last three games (spanning Week 17 and the playoffs).

joshua.hermsmeyer: A Derrick Henry TD pass is random???

neil: Tennessee is the perfect vehicle for everyone’s anti-analytics feelings, too.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I don’t blame folks for making fun of analytics after this game — it’s a fun target, for sure. But if your takeaway was that fourth downs got owned or that somehow passing was shown to be fraudulent in the playoffs, I’m not sure which teams you thought you were watching.

The Ravens were the best rushing team in the league in the regular season.

Salfino: Do you think that Lamar Jackson was pressing or just happened to play relatively poorly? I think he was pressing given his problems throwing a spiral. It seemed like he was choking the football; the ball just was not coming out his hand like it should.

neil: He certainly didn’t seem like himself once he had to try to pass his way out of that deficit.

Salfino: Should they have tried to play out of it that early or just stuck to their game plan?

neil: Well, it didn’t help that the score allowed Tennessee to dust off a version of the ol’ kryptonite coverage scheme we’ve written about before.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think the flukey interception at the beginning might have had an impact on things. Unsure about spirals and the rest. They moved the ball fine as a team — it was the high-leverage plays where the wheels fell off.

Salfino: The average team this decade has scored 1 point every 15.3 yards. So the Ravens had 34.6 expected points, and they scored only 12. And on top of that, the Titans got touchdown “drives” of 20, 35 and 45 yards (one play on the 45-yard “drive” — the play of the game, IMO).

The Titans had a point every 10.7 yards to one every 44.2 for the Ravens. Good. Lord. Those numbers are crazy.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I was tracking yardage and time of possession by drive, and I can’t remember a time when possessions were equal and the Ravens trailed in anything but penalty yards and turnovers. And, of course, points.

neil: So do the Ravens just file this in the “shit happens” drawer and move on?

sara.ziegler: I think so, right?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I don’t think anyone is just “moving on,” but yeah, I think that’s the most sound takeaway. Football is weird.

sara.ziegler: “Football is weird” should be our slogan for this whole season.

Salfino: I mean, they have 12 Pro Bowl players, most of whom should be returning, so it shouldn’t be as hard as it is for most teams to get back.

sara.ziegler: Very good point.

On the side of the Titans, we can’t really say enough about Henry. I can’t get over the way he turned his season around.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Also turned around Earl Thomas.

Salfino: Yes, that was a bad look after saying the Patriots were afraid to tackle.

sara.ziegler: LOL

Salfino: You would have to be insane to not be afraid to tackle Henry.

sara.ziegler: In his first nine games of the season, Henry averaged 72 yards per game and 3.93 yards per carry.

neil: I’m not sure we’ll see a stretch like this in football ever again:

Derrick Henry has been on fire since Week 10

Tennessee running back Derrick Henry’s weekly totals in the last half of the 2019 NFL regular season and playoffs

Rushing Week Opponent Result Carries Yards Yds/carry TD 10 Kansas City W 35-32 23 188 8.2 2 12 Jacksonville W 42-20 19 159 8.4 2 13 Indianapolis W 31-17 26 149 5.7 1 14 Oakland W 42-21 18 103 5.7 2 15 Houston L 21-24 21 86 4.1 0 17 Houston W 35-14 32 211 6.6 3 18 New England W 20-13 34 182 5.4 1 19 Baltimore W 28-12 30 195 6.5 0

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

Salfino: Henry’s genius to me is running the play that’s called. He’s not creative; he’s not looking for another hole or to create one himself. He’s just pure speed and power at the point of attack. He’s like Jim Brown, stylistically. His offensive linemen must love him because they know that if they just barely do their jobs, the play is going to be successful.

sara.ziegler: “He’s not creative” does not sound like a compliment to me, LOL.

Salfino: I know. But he’s not an improviser. Maybe that’s the better word.

And why should he be?

sara.ziegler: If it ain’t broke, etc.

What about Ryan Tannehill’s performance in this game — and in the postseason in general?

Salfino: Is he playing? I haven’t noticed.

neil:

sara.ziegler:

neil: Lol.

sara.ziegler: Jinx

joshua.hermsmeyer: He’s just sixth in play-action EPA per play in the playoffs, after being tops in the regular season.

neil: At least this time around, the EPA split between passing and rushing offense made more sense.

Salfino: These are 1970s playoff QB boxscores for Tannehill.

neil: But he was efficient, and that quick TD strike to Kalif Raymond after a failed Ravens fourth down was devastating.

sara.ziegler: I guess there’s something to be said for doing what you need to do and limiting the mistakes.

Let’s move on to the other game that saw a big favorite get down big early: the Chiefs vs. the Texans.

Salfino: Biggest first-quarter deficit ever overcome by a home team in the playoffs. By a full touchdown.

sara.ziegler: Not gonna lie: I was pretty worried about our model about a quarter into this game.

joshua.hermsmeyer: What a first half that was. Whew.

neil:

sara.ziegler: A roller coaster right there.

Salfino: The Texans never really stopped the Chiefs one time. Kansas City had the two drops, the blocked punt and muffed punt return. And then, seven straight touchdown drives (that seemed like 700).

joshua.hermsmeyer: The game started in a similar way to the Baltimore-Tennessee game on Saturday. The difference is that the Chiefs are a team built on the passing game, and you can overcome a lot of bad variance quickly with that type of attack.

Salfino: The turnaround was so quick. It was more like watching an NBA game than a football game.

neil: Yeah, is that basically why the Chiefs are still playing and the Ravens not?

One team is built to dig out of holes, and one isn’t?

joshua.hermsmeyer: There’s certainly something to that, in my opinion.

Salfino: I think this is correct: There is no defense for Patrick Mahomes in this offense.

neil: Houston was also far from flawless in its execution once the big lead fell into its lap.

(By contrast, I thought Tennessee executed a nearly perfect game plan once it got out ahead.)

Salfino: Houston seemed to panic at the first sign of trouble. I get that the Chiefs made a great play to snuff out the fake punt, but that was a crazy play-call at that point in the game. Make the Chiefs earn it.

I’m not sure about it, but that seemed like it could have been the fastest four touchdowns in NFL history. If you went out for lunch and returned, Kansas City had already come all the way back from 24-0. In real time, it felt like 10 minutes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was one beer at a not-so-busy bar, my preferred measure of time.

Salfino: Hahaha

sara.ziegler: So let’s move over to the NFC, where the games were much less interesting, at least until the very end of the Green Bay-Seattle game.

neil: RIP Vikings.

sara.ziegler: Yeah, not much to say there.

I let you guys bully me into picking Minnesota, even though I knew that was ridiculous.

Salfino: I have a great Kirk Cousins stat. He completed 72.4 percent of his passes, and the Vikings had 147 total yards. That’s the fewest number of yards on better than 70 percent accuracy, minimum 25 pass attempts, since the merger IN ANY GAME, playoffs or regular season.

neil: He was really focused on getting that completion for 4 yards on third-and-8.

sara.ziegler: Dalvin Cook: 18 yards on nine carries.

Sure.

Salfino: This is what we talked about with Cousins last week. That’s why those stats about his rating against playoff teams being about the same as against nonplayoff teams is so meaningless.

sara.ziegler: Wait, what do you mean, Mike?

Salfino: I mean that if he happens to avoid interceptions, which are random, he’s going to play to a passer rating by just piling up meaningless completions.

sara.ziegler: Ohhh, passer rating is garbage. Right.

Salfino: It’s certainly garbage for Cousins.

joshua.hermsmeyer: A 63.6 three-and-out percentage was brutal for the Vikings. Throughout the playoffs, the average has been 26.4 percent.

Salfino: Three-and-out is such a good stat.

neil: I will say, we have to credit the Niners defense as well. They really reasserted themselves after a shaky stretch.

sara.ziegler: Absolutely, Neil. San Francisco is just a much more complete team.

neil: San Francisco really was the lone favorite that didn’t have to sweat it out over the weekend.

It was funny that at one point during the K.C. game, when Houston was ahead, you Slacked and were like, “Great, all of the underdogs will win this weekend EXCEPT the Vikings.”

sara.ziegler: LOL

I was wrong!

But not about the Vikings.

Salfino: The Vikings could not block San Francisco. The 49ers paid for the pass rush with draft capital and trades, and they got their money’s worth.

neil: I wonder if that will change next week against the No. 1 offensive line in pass block win rate.

Salfino: That’s a great stat. This game suddenly got a lot more interesting, in my mind. It’s always tough to believe in a rematch when the last game that season was such a massacre, but there’s also the 2010 Jets over the Patriots, right?

neil: That one definitely sticks out in my mind as a rare major reversal between regular season and playoffs.

joshua.hermsmeyer: My research has shown that o-line has more of an effect on pass rush allowed than defense does in creating it, fwiw.

neil: Interesting!

Salfino: I believe that, Josh. The offense is mostly in control versus anything the defense does, based on all the data I’ve seen.

neil: Does the defense control its own destiny in anything???

Poor defenses. Always at the whims of the offense.

(Or variance.)

Salfino: I think certain, generational defenses (cue Josh) do. And certainly some players like a Lawrence Taylor. But it’s rare.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Right, at the player level, defenders certainly own their pressure created. But it seems that they do so more often against poor o-lines, so that’s what pops up in the studies.

sara.ziegler: I have a hard time believing that the Green Bay run defense will slow down the Niners.

Salfino: Kyle Shanahan was all “run to win” Saturday in the postgame.

sara.ziegler: By Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, the Vikings had the ninth-best run defense this year, and they still gave up 186 yards to the Niners. Green Bay was ranked 23rd.

neil:

Well, we can also look at that split for the K.C. run defense vs. the Titans rushing attack. The Chiefs were 29th in DVOA against the run, and Tennessee ranked fifth in offensive rushing DVOA.

With all of these teams building to stop the pass and not caring about run defense, are we reaching the point where it makes sense to build a running team to tear through it? Or is this just a one-off with Tennessee?

sara.ziegler: Henry’s 6.5 yards per carry seems like a one-off, Neil.

Salfino: I don’t know if you can throw more defenders in the box at Henry and stop him. But I will dare Jimmy Garoppolo to beat me if I’m the Packers. I thought he looked VERY shaky against the Vikings.

You can’t let the Niners get 47 carries like the Vikings allowed or even close to it if you’re the Packers.

neil: Do we want to dance on the grave of the Seahawks? Their habit of playing close games finally failed to pay off.

(Although they almost won that game in true Seahawksian fashion, tbh.)

Salfino: At least Seattle didn’t have the chains on Russell Wilson. He was throwing early, just not well.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Throw out the game plan earlier, and they win.

Need to establish the pass.

Salfino: The Seahawks had only six running-back runs in the first half, probably still six too many.

I’m convinced that Russ would have won that game if the Seahawks had stopped the Packers on that third-and-long with two minutes left.

neil: Oh, I fully agree. The Packers were hanging on for dear life at that point.

sara.ziegler: I just want to know why they punted with 2:32 left.

joshua.hermsmeyer: OMG

That was wild.

sara.ziegler: Like, guys. Even if Aaron Rodgers is having a down year, you don’t give the ball back to him.

neil: And really they still might have gotten another chance if Rodgers doesn’t complete some of those passes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Right, that last throw for a first down to seal the game is part of why Rodgers still commands the respect he does.

Salfino: It was fourth-and-11 for the Seahawks, though. Wilson had to avoid the sack on third down, and he could not.

sara.ziegler: But Mike, if you trust your defense to hold the Packers to no more than a field goal if you don’t get the first down, it’s still a one-score game.

I don’t know — that seemed like throwing the white flag to me.

Salfino: There were no good options after the sack, which was a dagger, IMO.

sara.ziegler: So let’s wrap this up with some predictions!

We’ve been very bad this postseason, you guys.

Only three games left to redeem ourselves.

Salfino: 3-1 — I’m back baby!

joshua.hermsmeyer:

neil: Chalk was 3-1 as well! (Miraculously, given how things were going early in that K.C. game.)

I was afraid we’d have to blow up the model.

sara.ziegler: 1-3 — ugh.

I went with my heart instead of my head.

Salfino: This seems too easy this week without the spread. But that’s what I said one year in college when I lost my car in the divisional round.

sara.ziegler: Wait … what???

neil: ???

Salfino: Joking.

sara.ziegler: LOLOL

joshua.hermsmeyer: I was gearing up for a bad beat story.

neil: Me too!

Salfino: I mean, we all have to pick the Chiefs and Niners, right?

joshua.hermsmeyer: KC-SF for me.

sara.ziegler: Anyone gonna break from the pack??

neil: I so badly want to take Tennessee. That matchup against the K.C. run D is very tempting.

sara.ziegler: DO IT, Neil.

neil: Also, did you know that Tennessee now has a higher Elo rating than SF or GB???

Upset wins really do wonders for your Elo.

But I can’t pick against Mahomes.

Salfino: Tennessee is not going to be able to run its way out of this one — he said, twirling his mustache.

neil: KC/SF. The Steve Bono Bowl.

joshua.hermsmeyer: hah

neil:

Salfino: No, it’s the Montana Bowl — come on.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Why pass over Montana, such shade.

neil: There are about a half-dozen KC/SF QBs we can pick.

Practically every KC QB from the 1990s into the 2010s was a former SF QB.

Steve DeBerg

Joe Montana

Steve Bono

Elvis Grbac

Alex Smith

Why? No clue.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Holy cow, that list.

neil: Or what about the first Super Bowl? KC-GB.

So many potential matchups.

sara.ziegler: That would be a fun throwback.

But I think we’re all here for the DeBerg-Montana-Bono-Grbac-Smith Bowl.

Salfino:

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

CORRECTION (Jan. 15, 2020, 3:40 p.m.): A previous version of the chart of defenses faced by Lamar Jackson gave the incorrect date for the Baltimore Ravens’ divisional-round loss to the Tennessee Titans. It was Jan. 12, 2020, not Jan. 12, 2019.

source https://truesportsfan.com/football/the-nfls-divisional-round-gave-us-a-few-near-upsets-and-one-certified-mega-upset/

[statusreview]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winter coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

[endlessarchite]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winter coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://bakerskitchenslimited.tumblr.com/

[truereviewpage]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

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Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room https://ift.tt/2FCCphE

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

[interiorstarweb]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn��t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

[lowmaticnews]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://landscapingmates.blogspot.com

[billydmacklin]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

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The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

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[truesportsfan]

The NFL’s Divisional Round Gave Us A Few Near-Upsets — And One Certified Mega-Upset

sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): Well, that was quite a weekend. For a hot second on Sunday, it looked like we would lose both of the FiveThirtyEight Super Bowl favorites in one round … but the Chiefs came roaring back, so we only lost our one overwhelming favorite. Welp.

So let’s start with the most shocking result of the weekend: Tennessee over Baltimore.

neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): That was the single most shocking playoff upset of the Super Bowl era, per Elo.

Tennessee’s upset was historic

Most unlikely playoff victories of the Super Bowl era (since 1966), according to FiveThirtyEight’s pregame Elo win probability

Favorite Underdog Season Rd. Team QB Adj. Elo Team QB Adj. Elo Win Prob. Score 2019 D BAL L. Jackson 1795 TEN R. Tannehill 1603 13.1% 28-12 2011 D GB A. Rodgers 1769 NYG E. Manning 1586 13.7 37-20 1987 D SF J. Montana 1767 MIN W. Wilson 1588 13.8 36-24 1996 D DEN J. Elway 1653 JAX M. Brunell 1483 14.5 30-27 2007 S NE T. Brady 1837 NYG E. Manning 1608 17.0 17-14 1983 W DAL D. White 1650 LAR V. Ferragamo 1484 17.7 24-17 2017 D PIT B. R’berger 1689 JAX B. Bortles 1551 17.9 45-42 1995 D SF S. Young 1769 GB B. Favre 1648 19.1 27-17 1983 D MIA D. Marino 1691 SEA D. Krieg 1574 19.2 27-20 2010 D NE T. Brady 1743 NYJ M. Sanchez 1617 19.3 28-21

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

joshua.hermsmeyer (Josh Hermsmeyer, NFL analyst): I can confirm that I felt this level of shock.

Salfino (Michael Salfino, FiveThirtyEight contributor): The Ravens had such bad/unlucky offensive efficiency. They scored 12 points on over 500 yards of offense, becoming just the second home team in playoff history to gain 500 yards and lose. The Steelers did it in the 2017 season, in a loss to Jacksonville, but they scored more than 40 points. And only two teams since the merger (in the regular season or playoffs) gained over 500 yards and scored fewer points than the Ravens — the Bucs last year and the 1986 Niners.

neil: That’s what happens when you turn it over three times and fail on fourth down four more times.

Salfino: Yes, those fourth-down plays are basically turnovers.

joshua.hermsmeyer: In the regular season, the Ravens averaged 1.4 expected points added per play on fourth downs. Against the Titans: -2.58. And the Titans capitalized on those fourth-down defensive holds in a very big way.

sara.ziegler: It was pretty amazing that the Titans were able to capitalize on every single mistake the Ravens made.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was a bad day for doing the analytically sound thing.

sara.ziegler: And that’s the key point: They were RIGHT to go for it on those fourth downs, right?

joshua.hermsmeyer: Every time.

(And the 2-point attempt.)

neil: I detected a lot of people gleefully piling on analytics during that game.

They’d been waiting for a game like this.

Salfino: Tennessee is trying to make us think red-zone scoring efficiency isn’t random. The Titans were 3-for-3 on Saturday, 76 percent for the regular season and 8-for-8 in their last three games (spanning Week 17 and the playoffs).

joshua.hermsmeyer: A Derrick Henry TD pass is random???

neil: Tennessee is the perfect vehicle for everyone’s anti-analytics feelings, too.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I don’t blame folks for making fun of analytics after this game — it’s a fun target, for sure. But if your takeaway was that fourth downs got owned or that somehow passing was shown to be fraudulent in the playoffs, I’m not sure which teams you thought you were watching.

The Ravens were the best rushing team in the league in the regular season.

Salfino: Do you think that Lamar Jackson was pressing or just happened to play relatively poorly? I think he was pressing given his problems throwing a spiral. It seemed like he was choking the football; the ball just was not coming out his hand like it should.

neil: He certainly didn’t seem like himself once he had to try to pass his way out of that deficit.

Salfino: Should they have tried to play out of it that early or just stuck to their game plan?

neil: Well, it didn’t help that the score allowed Tennessee to dust off a version of the ol’ kryptonite coverage scheme we’ve written about before.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I think the flukey interception at the beginning might have had an impact on things. Unsure about spirals and the rest. They moved the ball fine as a team — it was the high-leverage plays where the wheels fell off.

Salfino: The average team this decade has scored 1 point every 15.3 yards. So the Ravens had 34.6 expected points, and they scored only 12. And on top of that, the Titans got touchdown “drives” of 20, 35 and 45 yards (one play on the 45-yard “drive” — the play of the game, IMO).

The Titans had a point every 10.7 yards to one every 44.2 for the Ravens. Good. Lord. Those numbers are crazy.

joshua.hermsmeyer: I was tracking yardage and time of possession by drive, and I can’t remember a time when possessions were equal and the Ravens trailed in anything but penalty yards and turnovers. And, of course, points.

neil: So do the Ravens just file this in the “shit happens” drawer and move on?

sara.ziegler: I think so, right?

joshua.hermsmeyer: I don’t think anyone is just “moving on,” but yeah, I think that’s the most sound takeaway. Football is weird.

sara.ziegler: “Football is weird” should be our slogan for this whole season.

Salfino: I mean, they have 12 Pro Bowl players, most of whom should be returning, so it shouldn’t be as hard as it is for most teams to get back.

sara.ziegler: Very good point.

On the side of the Titans, we can’t really say enough about Henry. I can’t get over the way he turned his season around.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Also turned around Earl Thomas.

Salfino: Yes, that was a bad look after saying the Patriots were afraid to tackle.

sara.ziegler: LOL

Salfino: You would have to be insane to not be afraid to tackle Henry.

sara.ziegler: In his first nine games of the season, Henry averaged 72 yards per game and 3.93 yards per carry.

neil: I’m not sure we’ll see a stretch like this in football ever again:

Derrick Henry has been on fire since Week 10

Tennessee running back Derrick Henry’s weekly totals in the last half of the 2019 NFL regular season and playoffs

Rushing Week Opponent Result Carries Yards Yds/carry TD 10 Kansas City W 35-32 23 188 8.2 2 12 Jacksonville W 42-20 19 159 8.4 2 13 Indianapolis W 31-17 26 149 5.7 1 14 Oakland W 42-21 18 103 5.7 2 15 Houston L 21-24 21 86 4.1 0 17 Houston W 35-14 32 211 6.6 3 18 New England W 20-13 34 182 5.4 1 19 Baltimore W 28-12 30 195 6.5 0

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

Salfino: Henry’s genius to me is running the play that’s called. He’s not creative; he’s not looking for another hole or to create one himself. He’s just pure speed and power at the point of attack. He’s like Jim Brown, stylistically. His offensive linemen must love him because they know that if they just barely do their jobs, the play is going to be successful.

sara.ziegler: “He’s not creative” does not sound like a compliment to me, LOL.

Salfino: I know. But he’s not an improviser. Maybe that’s the better word.

And why should he be?

sara.ziegler: If it ain’t broke, etc.

What about Ryan Tannehill’s performance in this game — and in the postseason in general?

Salfino: Is he playing? I haven’t noticed.

neil:

sara.ziegler:

neil: Lol.

sara.ziegler: Jinx

joshua.hermsmeyer: He’s just sixth in play-action EPA per play in the playoffs, after being tops in the regular season.

neil: At least this time around, the EPA split between passing and rushing offense made more sense.

Salfino: These are 1970s playoff QB boxscores for Tannehill.

neil: But he was efficient, and that quick TD strike to Kalif Raymond after a failed Ravens fourth down was devastating.

sara.ziegler: I guess there’s something to be said for doing what you need to do and limiting the mistakes.

Let’s move on to the other game that saw a big favorite get down big early: the Chiefs vs. the Texans.

Salfino: Biggest first-quarter deficit ever overcome by a home team in the playoffs. By a full touchdown.

sara.ziegler: Not gonna lie: I was pretty worried about our model about a quarter into this game.

joshua.hermsmeyer: What a first half that was. Whew.

neil:

sara.ziegler: A roller coaster right there.

Salfino: The Texans never really stopped the Chiefs one time. Kansas City had the two drops, the blocked punt and muffed punt return. And then, seven straight touchdown drives (that seemed like 700).

joshua.hermsmeyer: The game started in a similar way to the Baltimore-Tennessee game on Saturday. The difference is that the Chiefs are a team built on the passing game, and you can overcome a lot of bad variance quickly with that type of attack.

Salfino: The turnaround was so quick. It was more like watching an NBA game than a football game.

neil: Yeah, is that basically why the Chiefs are still playing and the Ravens not?

One team is built to dig out of holes, and one isn’t?

joshua.hermsmeyer: There’s certainly something to that, in my opinion.

Salfino: I think this is correct: There is no defense for Patrick Mahomes in this offense.

neil: Houston was also far from flawless in its execution once the big lead fell into its lap.

(By contrast, I thought Tennessee executed a nearly perfect game plan once it got out ahead.)

Salfino: Houston seemed to panic at the first sign of trouble. I get that the Chiefs made a great play to snuff out the fake punt, but that was a crazy play-call at that point in the game. Make the Chiefs earn it.

I’m not sure about it, but that seemed like it could have been the fastest four touchdowns in NFL history. If you went out for lunch and returned, Kansas City had already come all the way back from 24-0. In real time, it felt like 10 minutes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: It was one beer at a not-so-busy bar, my preferred measure of time.

Salfino: Hahaha

sara.ziegler: So let’s move over to the NFC, where the games were much less interesting, at least until the very end of the Green Bay-Seattle game.

neil: RIP Vikings.

sara.ziegler: Yeah, not much to say there.

I let you guys bully me into picking Minnesota, even though I knew that was ridiculous.

Salfino: I have a great Kirk Cousins stat. He completed 72.4 percent of his passes, and the Vikings had 147 total yards. That’s the fewest number of yards on better than 70 percent accuracy, minimum 25 pass attempts, since the merger IN ANY GAME, playoffs or regular season.

neil: He was really focused on getting that completion for 4 yards on third-and-8.

sara.ziegler: Dalvin Cook: 18 yards on nine carries.

Sure.

Salfino: This is what we talked about with Cousins last week. That’s why those stats about his rating against playoff teams being about the same as against nonplayoff teams is so meaningless.

sara.ziegler: Wait, what do you mean, Mike?

Salfino: I mean that if he happens to avoid interceptions, which are random, he’s going to play to a passer rating by just piling up meaningless completions.

sara.ziegler: Ohhh, passer rating is garbage. Right.

Salfino: It’s certainly garbage for Cousins.

joshua.hermsmeyer: A 63.6 three-and-out percentage was brutal for the Vikings. Throughout the playoffs, the average has been 26.4 percent.

Salfino: Three-and-out is such a good stat.

neil: I will say, we have to credit the Niners defense as well. They really reasserted themselves after a shaky stretch.

sara.ziegler: Absolutely, Neil. San Francisco is just a much more complete team.

neil: San Francisco really was the lone favorite that didn’t have to sweat it out over the weekend.

It was funny that at one point during the K.C. game, when Houston was ahead, you Slacked and were like, “Great, all of the underdogs will win this weekend EXCEPT the Vikings.”

sara.ziegler: LOL

I was wrong!

But not about the Vikings.

Salfino: The Vikings could not block San Francisco. The 49ers paid for the pass rush with draft capital and trades, and they got their money’s worth.

neil: I wonder if that will change next week against the No. 1 offensive line in pass block win rate.

Salfino: That’s a great stat. This game suddenly got a lot more interesting, in my mind. It’s always tough to believe in a rematch when the last game that season was such a massacre, but there’s also the 2010 Jets over the Patriots, right?

neil: That one definitely sticks out in my mind as a rare major reversal between regular season and playoffs.

joshua.hermsmeyer: My research has shown that o-line has more of an effect on pass rush allowed than defense does in creating it, fwiw.

neil: Interesting!

Salfino: I believe that, Josh. The offense is mostly in control versus anything the defense does, based on all the data I’ve seen.

neil: Does the defense control its own destiny in anything???

Poor defenses. Always at the whims of the offense.

(Or variance.)

Salfino: I think certain, generational defenses (cue Josh) do. And certainly some players like a Lawrence Taylor. But it’s rare.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Right, at the player level, defenders certainly own their pressure created. But it seems that they do so more often against poor o-lines, so that’s what pops up in the studies.

sara.ziegler: I have a hard time believing that the Green Bay run defense will slow down the Niners.

Salfino: Kyle Shanahan was all “run to win” Saturday in the postgame.

sara.ziegler: By Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, the Vikings had the ninth-best run defense this year, and they still gave up 186 yards to the Niners. Green Bay was ranked 23rd.

neil:

Well, we can also look at that split for the K.C. run defense vs. the Titans rushing attack. The Chiefs were 29th in DVOA against the run, and Tennessee ranked fifth in offensive rushing DVOA.

With all of these teams building to stop the pass and not caring about run defense, are we reaching the point where it makes sense to build a running team to tear through it? Or is this just a one-off with Tennessee?

sara.ziegler: Henry’s 6.5 yards per carry seems like a one-off, Neil.

Salfino: I don’t know if you can throw more defenders in the box at Henry and stop him. But I will dare Jimmy Garoppolo to beat me if I’m the Packers. I thought he looked VERY shaky against the Vikings.

You can’t let the Niners get 47 carries like the Vikings allowed or even close to it if you’re the Packers.

neil: Do we want to dance on the grave of the Seahawks? Their habit of playing close games finally failed to pay off.

(Although they almost won that game in true Seahawksian fashion, tbh.)

Salfino: At least Seattle didn’t have the chains on Russell Wilson. He was throwing early, just not well.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Throw out the game plan earlier, and they win.

Need to establish the pass.

Salfino: The Seahawks had only six running-back runs in the first half, probably still six too many.

I’m convinced that Russ would have won that game if the Seahawks had stopped the Packers on that third-and-long with two minutes left.

neil: Oh, I fully agree. The Packers were hanging on for dear life at that point.

sara.ziegler: I just want to know why they punted with 2:32 left.

joshua.hermsmeyer: OMG

That was wild.

sara.ziegler: Like, guys. Even if Aaron Rodgers is having a down year, you don’t give the ball back to him.

neil: And really they still might have gotten another chance if Rodgers doesn’t complete some of those passes.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Right, that last throw for a first down to seal the game is part of why Rodgers still commands the respect he does.

Salfino: It was fourth-and-11 for the Seahawks, though. Wilson had to avoid the sack on third down, and he could not.

sara.ziegler: But Mike, if you trust your defense to hold the Packers to no more than a field goal if you don’t get the first down, it’s still a one-score game.

I don’t know — that seemed like throwing the white flag to me.

Salfino: There were no good options after the sack, which was a dagger, IMO.

sara.ziegler: So let’s wrap this up with some predictions!

We’ve been very bad this postseason, you guys.

Only three games left to redeem ourselves.

Salfino: 3-1 — I’m back baby!

joshua.hermsmeyer:

neil: Chalk was 3-1 as well! (Miraculously, given how things were going early in that K.C. game.)

I was afraid we’d have to blow up the model.

sara.ziegler: 1-3 — ugh.

I went with my heart instead of my head.

Salfino: This seems too easy this week without the spread. But that’s what I said one year in college when I lost my car in the divisional round.

sara.ziegler: Wait … what???

neil: ???

Salfino: Joking.

sara.ziegler: LOLOL

joshua.hermsmeyer: I was gearing up for a bad beat story.

neil: Me too!

Salfino: I mean, we all have to pick the Chiefs and Niners, right?

joshua.hermsmeyer: KC-SF for me.

sara.ziegler: Anyone gonna break from the pack??

neil: I so badly want to take Tennessee. That matchup against the K.C. run D is very tempting.

sara.ziegler: DO IT, Neil.

neil: Also, did you know that Tennessee now has a higher Elo rating than SF or GB???

Upset wins really do wonders for your Elo.

But I can’t pick against Mahomes.

Salfino: Tennessee is not going to be able to run its way out of this one — he said, twirling his mustache.

neil: KC/SF. The Steve Bono Bowl.

joshua.hermsmeyer: hah

neil:

Salfino: No, it’s the Montana Bowl — come on.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Why pass over Montana, such shade.

neil: There are about a half-dozen KC/SF QBs we can pick.

Practically every KC QB from the 1990s into the 2010s was a former SF QB.

Steve DeBerg

Joe Montana

Steve Bono

Elvis Grbac

Alex Smith

Why? No clue.

joshua.hermsmeyer: Holy cow, that list.

neil: Or what about the first Super Bowl? KC-GB.

So many potential matchups.

sara.ziegler: That would be a fun throwback.

But I think we’re all here for the DeBerg-Montana-Bono-Grbac-Smith Bowl.

Salfino:

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

CORRECTION (Jan. 15, 2020, 3:40 p.m.): A previous version of the chart of defenses faced by Lamar Jackson gave the incorrect date for the Baltimore Ravens’ divisional-round loss to the Tennessee Titans. It was Jan. 12, 2020, not Jan. 12, 2019.

source https://truesportsfan.com/football/the-nfls-divisional-round-gave-us-a-few-near-upsets-and-one-certified-mega-upset/

[justbritishmotoring]

The new Aston Martin Vantage GTE will make its long-awaited racing debut in the 2018/19 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Super Season at the Total 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps this weekend (3-5 May).

Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

The Aston Martin Vantage GTE is based on the critically-acclaimed Aston Martin Vantage road car, the most performance-oriented sports car to come from Aston Martin’s ‘Second Century Plan’. Powered by a 4.0-litre, V8 turbo-charged AMG engine developed and optimized by AMR, the Vantage GTE is the first all-new GT car Aston Martin has introduced to the FIA WEC GTE category in seven years.

Following an extensive 10-month testing and development programme that has covered 35,000km and 14 different circuits, the team is confident that it has a competitive and reliable car capable of repeating Aston Martin Racing’s 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours glory in June and contending for the overall Super Season GTE Pro title.

Aston Martin Racing also boasts a world-class driving line-up in 2018. The GTE Pro roster includes three-time Le Mans winner Darren Turner, who is joined in the #95 car by 2016 FIA WEC GTE Pro champions Nicki Thiim and Marco Sørensen. Meanwhile, 2017 Le Mans winner Jonny Adam shares the #97 entry with DTM and Spa 24 Hours race-winner Maxime Martin (B) and Formula 1 test driver and Formula E racer Alex Lynn (GB).

The Vantage GTE replaces the highly-decorated normally-aspirated V8 Vantage GTE, an example of which will be campaigned by Aston Martin Racing’s reigning GTE Am champions Paul Dalla Lana (CDN), Mathias Lauda (A) and Pedro Lamy (POR) in this year.

2018 World Endurance Championship Prologue Paul Ricard, France 5th-7th April 2018 Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

2018 World Endurance Championship Prologue Paul Ricard, France 5th-7th April 2018 Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

Copyright : Drew Gibson Photography / Nick Dungan

2018 World Endurance Championship Prologue Paul Ricard, France 5th-7th April 2018 Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

2018 World Endurance Championship Prologue Paul Ricard, France 5th-7th April 2018 Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

COPYRIGHT : NICK DUNGAN PHOTOGRAPHY CONTACT : NICK@NICKDUNGAN.CO.UK

COPYRIGHT : NICK DUNGAN PHOTOGRAPHY CONTACT : NICK@NICKDUNGAN.CO.UK

COPYRIGHT : NICK DUNGAN PHOTOGRAPHY CONTACT : NICK@NICKDUNGAN.CO.UK

2018 World Endurance Championship Prologue Paul Ricard, France 5th-7th April 2018 Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

2018 World Endurance Championship Prologue Paul Ricard, France 5th-7th April 2018 Photo: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography

The Super Season heralds a new era for the FIA WEC. The eight-race calendar spans 14 months and is book-ended by two 24 Hours of Le Mans – the first time in history that the legendary event has appeared twice in the same championship. The series will also return to Spa-Francorchamps in 2019, having raced at iconic venues such as Silverstone, Fuji, Shanghai and the famous US sportscar circuit Sebring in between.

Aston Martin Racing Technical Director Dan Sayers said:

I can’t wait to get started now. We have delivered our most extensive testing programme with the Vantage GTE, optimizing every aspect of the car and bringing it to a point where we are satisfied that it is competitive and reliable. With it being the first all-new AMR car in seven years, this has been a huge undertaking and a fantastic effort by the whole team. I’m very proud of the car’s reliability and performance out of the box, but there really hasn’t been any time yet to look forward to going racing with it, maybe there will be time to reflect after Spa!

Aston Martin Racing Team Principal Paul Howarth added:

All of the pre-season development and testing has been targeted at Aston Martin Racing’s performance and delivery across the 2018/19 super-season. Spa marks AMR’s first race with the new Vantage and the whole team is looking forward to completing the first FIA WEC race with our new model. Our revised driver line-up has also completed an intensive training programme over the winter period, including a week’s training camp in the south of France and intensive endurance tests, so they are prepared for the challenge ahead. We’ll also continue to compete with last year’s reigning AM champions in #98 V8 Vantage GTE – in its swansong season with the same driver line up. Spa equates to 9% of the overall points available in the championship and the whole team’s focus is on delivering the best race possible for AMR.

Vice President and Chief Special Operations Officer David King said:

The outgoing Vantage has been competing on-track since 2006, and in the FIA WEC GTE class since its inception in 2012, so the racing debut of the new Vantage in Spa this weekend is a very significant moment for Aston Martin. Endurance racing defines the very character of our sports and GT cars – durability, performance and driveability – and they remain the best-looking cars on the grid as always. The super-season is going to be longer and tougher than any previous season, but the team have executed the development plan and pre-season testing clinically to be as ready as we can be for the debut of an all-new car

Works driver quotes:

Marco Sørensen (DEN), #95 Aston Martin Vantage GTE:

I am really excited to get this season started. The whole winter of testing with the new car has now come to an end and we can finally get to that first race weekend. My expectations going in to Spa are very high. I know the car is good enough to win races and I genuinely feel that we have the best driver line-up in the paddock. Of course, we need to learn a lot from Spa as Le Mans is so soon after, but we are already in a good position. Aston Martin has changed a lot since I joined in 2015. Our professionalism has grown along with our experience and I’m super proud to be a part of that. For every driver, it’s very special to work closely with a manufacturer, but my focus this year is to get the results we deserve with the new Vantage GTE.

Nicki Thiim (DEN), #95 Aston Martin Vantage GTE:

Spa… finally, finally, finally! It has been a long and busy winter. This is the first time as an Aston Martin factory driver that I have had such a busy winter; there has been so much exciting stuff going on with the new Vantage GTE car. We have done a lot of mileage and I think we are well prepared. There is a lot that is new about the car, including turbos (!), so it’s an exciting time for not just the drivers, but also the engineers and the mechanics. As a driver I can’t wait to go to Spa. I’m interested to see where we are compared to the competition when everyone is driving on the same fuel load and the same tyres at the same time. It’s going to be so nice to get out and race. Being a factory racing driver is a real privilege, it’s such a small club, so you must appreciate your position and not take it for granted, but right now Aston Martin is very exciting and a cool place to be. It’s something very special to be part of a new car development programme. Whatever I do in my career, this will always be something special to look back on when I am old and retired!

Darren Turner (GB), #95 Aston Martin Vantage GTE:

Since testing of the new Vantage GTE began in August last year everyone in the team has been looking forward to this moment. We have completed many miles in testing and already feel confident with the performance of the new car. I’m so excited about Spa where we finally get the chance to go up against the competition. From everything we have seen, we have a very good car. It feels good behind the wheel and that is always a strong sign that you have a great race car. The hardest thing when you have a new car is knowing where you stack up against the competition. A podium with the car first time out would be incredible and we go there believing that is possible. It’s always massively exciting when you have a new car. We had some incredible high points with the old V8 Vantage GTE last year, but right now I’ve never felt such a buzz within Aston Martin Racing and I cannot wait to get to Le Mans this year to see how well the new Vantage GTE performs.

Jonny Adam (GB), #97 Aston Martin Vantage GTE:

I’m very much looking forward to getting the 2018 FIA WEC Super Season underway and driving the new Aston Martin Vantage GTE on its debut race. A lot of hard work has gone in to it up to this point and everyone at AMR is looking forward to Spa. Expectations are to get a solid haul of points and see where we are in comparison to our competition. The car has been running well in testing and we’d like to carry that over into our first race weekend of 2018. Of course, the race we all look forward to is the Le Mans 24 Hours. The success of 2017 will always be remembered, but I think we as a team are excited to return to this amazing race and hopefully fight for a strong result with our new GTE car.

Alex Lynn (GB), #97 Aston Martin Vantage GTE:

I’m very excited indeed to be making my Aston Martin debut with the new Vantage GTE. There has been a lot of preparation up until this point from everyone at AMR and now we are very ready to see what our new creation can do. I think we can certainly expect a lot, and my expectations are high. We have put very good mileage on the car and it performed brilliantly, so we would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t expect to be fighting for the win at Spa-Francorchamps. I guess there has never been a better time to join Aston Martin Racing as a factory driver! I guess I am biased, but there is a real buzz within the team and I can’t wait to get to Spa now, but if I am honest, Le Mans and Silverstone are the races I am looking forward to the most.

Maxime Martin (B), #97 Aston Martin Vantage GTE:

I am really looking forward to starting a new chapter in my career with the new Vantage GTE. This is definitely a big point in the season and an exciting moment for Aston Martin Racing. Spa is always a great event, but of course I think the most exciting point over the year will be racing in the Le Mans 24 Hours, which is going to be quite a challenging race with all the competitors in the GTE class now. I think it is the most competitive and exciting GT class in the world. I think we have everything at Aston Martin Racing to make it an even bigger success than with the other car. I’m so excited to finally be racing in the FIA WEC Super Season with the Vantage GTE.

Note: Press release courtesy of Aston Martin.

  Aston Martin to Start Racing Season this Weekend The new Aston Martin Vantage GTE will make its long-awaited racing debut in the 2018/19 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Super Season at the Total 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps this weekend (3-5 May).

[statusreview]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winter coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

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The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://ssmattress.tumblr.com/

[endlessarchite]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winter coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://bakerskitchenslimited.tumblr.com/

[vincentbnaughton]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back edge of the washer and dryer if that makes sense. So it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth and the “natural waxed” finish). One great thing about them is that because the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from using the baskets to store some laundry supplies and setting our detergent right out there in the open, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added. So it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

***P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.***

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

[truereviewpage]

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room

If you have some ugly things in your laundry room you’re interested in hiding, or you’re just looking for photos of a laundry room with a top loader (since most online photos feature front loaders with a big counter over them), well this post is for you. After months of simmering in the background, the beach house’s laundry room/mudroom finally came together over the weekend. It’s a pretty simple room that we’d been planning and shopping for since way back in December (yes, as in 2017), but it always got stuck in line behind other tasks like building the walk-in pantry and constructing the wall-to-wall bunks beds. With those out of the way, it was nice to clear out all of the lumber, tools, and random dust bunnies that had been calling this room home and make it a working, functional space that’s approximately 89% nicer to look at.

Let’s take this makeover tale waaaaaay back, shall we? This was arguably the UGLIEST area of the beach house when we originally bought it. And that’s quite a title to hold, given the stiff competition.

This room had originally been a porch that someone “enclosed” at some point. I say that in quotes because it wasn’t done very well (they used interior flooring instead of siding) which caused this whole section of the house to get soggy and rot over time (there were fist sized holes in it by the time we purchased it). That, plus the failing foundation is why we had to have this whole side area of the house rebuilt entirely (it was set in sand as opposed to having concrete footers… and sand slowly sinks… as did this area of the house).

But by the end of last summer, it was starting to take shape, thanks largely to drywall and the floor tile we laid. It was from Lowe’s and was nice and easy on the budget (we used Warm Gray grout by Mapei with it).

But for the last 6 months or so, other than finally hanging some light fixtures that we designed (this is the onyx color), it has largely been a dumping ground for all of our project supplies. Since we don’t have a garage or a shed (yet – a shed is on the list), all of our tools, scrap wood, boxes, etc, ended up in here.

After our laundry appliances arrived around Black Friday, it still resembled a work zone more than anything else. This is the washer and dryer we got, which are the current models of what we bought for our own laundry room four years ago (we really really like them, hence buying them again for the beach house).

So how did we jump from that mess to this weekend’s mostly-finished room? Let’s break it down.

The biggest challenge in finishing off the laundry room was the ugly stuff on the wall to the left of the washer, aka our tankless water heater (you can see it more clearly two photos up). We wanted to cover it all with some sort of cabinet, but still leave it easily accessible for service and so we can still turn it off every time we leave (when a house is vacant, turning the water off = great peace of mind). Our solution? A good old fashioned IKEA hack. Ignore the lack of cabinet organization for now – that’s still on the to-do list (are you sensing there are around 348 things that are still on that list?).

We discovered that an Ikea PAX wardrobe could fit nearly perfectly in the space that we had available between the wall and the washer. They sell one that’s about 20″ wide, which would fit as long as we cut out a hole to slide over the water heater’s breaker box (which we needed access to anyways). And the 24″ depth would allow the whole thing to sit in front of the water heater without sticking out too much beyond the washer, creating a nice little built-in nook for them.

Even though we have nine foot ceilings in here, we chose the shorter 79″ height (instead of the 93″ one) so it was visually similar to the height of the window and the two doorways in the room, rather than being the one super tall object in the space. It’s nice because it feels like the window height on the right sort of balances the cabinet height on the left when you face the laundry area:

Back in late January we picked up the PAX at Ikea, but it wasn’t until a visit in early March that we actually found time to start building everything. I should point out that I was in this position when our contractor Sean popped over for a visit.

Creating access for the water heater was easy. The two side panels provide the majority of the structural integrity to the cabinet (the back panel is much thinner, sort of like a veneer) but I thought cutting a section out of it and leaving the rest of it in place would help keep things square and provide more helpful storage than making the unit completely backless.

So before attaching the back panel, I used a jigsaw to cut a big section out of it (you can see my cut lines marked below). After everything was assembled it didn’t feel compromised at all with that opening in the back – although I’d warn against making any cuts this large in the sides since those provide most of the support.

Once I nailed the remaining pieces in place, we were left with this generously sized access hole in the back of the wardrobe. I had Sherry take this photo of me for scale.

Then I thought it might actually be better to use Sherry for scale since I’m the tall one, and she basically used it like a photo-booth and “showed me what she was working with.” #NailedIt

We did have to cut a smaller hole in the side so it could slide over and give us access to the breaker box for the water heater. Here you can see it after it was cut (as we were figuring out what wooden spacers we needed to add along the side so we could firmly secure it to the wall). Screwing those boards along the side into the piece (and into the wall studs) also provided a lot more strength to the cabinet, so that small cutout for the breaker box didn’t make it wobbly or anything on that side. I’ll share a little more detail about those side boards that we added in a second.

As for how we made that rectangular cutout for the breaker in the right spot (can you imagine if we messed that up?) we just took careful measurements of where we needed the cutout to be placed, and then we marked it off and taped along the cut lines, which helps to make the cuts cleaner and less splintery. Whenever cutting in the middle of any material with a jigsaw, I liked to drill holes in each corner (this is a 3/4″ bit) so that it’s easier to navigate the blade around the turns. You can go back and square off the corners if you want a crisper edge afterwards.

The last step before putting the PAX in place was to add some blocking against the wall (which you saw me testing out two photos above). Since I couldn’t anchor this piece to the back wall like Ikea intends, we knew we wanted to screw ours into the side wall instead.

First we had to add some boards to bridge the distance between the cabinet and the wall so we could firmly attach everything. I screwed the boards into walls studs, making sure the vertical piece was placed 3/4″ behind where the front of the PAX would eventually sit – this way we could eventually add a 3/4″ white filler piece right against it to conceal the 2 x 4″ boards (that’s how you make it look a lot more built-in).

In this picture below you can see the white filler piece (just a primed piece of 1 x 3″ board that we cut to size) and later added against the wall to cover the blocking behind it. We’d later caulk it, which always makes things look more seamless.

We also added a large flat panel on the other side to give it the appearance that the cabinet goes all the way back to the wall, even though it doesn’t. It’s just a 1/4″ sheet of plywood that we cut to size and painted to match (Behr’s “White” matches this door perfectly – literally, that’s the name).

You can see below that before installing the side panel I added some more 2×4″ blocking against the back wall so that I had something to secure the back edge of the plywood into. That top board is because I used some leftover plywood to add a top piece too. Mostly just so anything we end up storing on top of the PAX doesn’t fall behind it.

So with the cabinet portion pretty much done (we still need to add hardware and figure out the interior organization) it was on to adding shelves above the appliances – which Sherry captured sooooo graciously in this photo of me screwing the brackets into the wall. Guys, I think I have a career as a lunge model.

Like the cabinet, the shelves serve the dual purpose of storage AND hiding ugly stuff. The bottom shelf is intentionally placed there to make the washer hook-ups and the dryer plug less visible, while also spanning that annoyingly large gap behind the appliances (since the dryer hose often prevents them from going right up to the wall, we find there’s always at least an 8″ gap back there for things to fall down, never to be seen again). Our dryer vents directly out the right wall there and because of some studs in the way, we actually have about a 12″ gap behind the appliances, so these 12″ shelves fill that space and help prevent us from dropping stuff behind the appliances.

They don’t interfere with using the washer (turning the knob, opening it up to load it, etc) because the shelf basically starts right above the back-top of the washer and dryer if that makes sense – it doesn’t stick out over them like a diving board (that would mean the washer door wouldn’t be able to be opened fully – so keep that in mind when choosing a shelf depth).

You may remember we actually did something similar in our laundry room at home – creating a shelf to cover the ugly stuff and fill that weird gap. We’ve found it to be a great solution for top-loading washing machines since you can’t just throw a counter over everything like you can with front-loaders.

We knew these iron brackets from Etsy (which Sherry actually found via Little Green Notebook a little while ago) would be perfect for this situation because they come in lots of sizes (we ordered the 12″ depth). And since the shelf board just lays on top and is cradled by the bracket’s front lip, we can easily lift and remove that bottom one if we need to access the plugs or valves behind the appliances.

The shelves themselves are just 1 x 12″ whitewood boards from Home Depot that we stained to look closer to the old pine doors and floors in the house (we did one coat of wood conditioner, followed by a light coat of Puritan Pine by Minwax, and a few thin coats of Safecoat Acrylacq to seal it).

Apart from storing some laundry supplies in the baskets and holding our detergent, the shelves are mostly just decorative thanks to things like the gold frames and a few other accents Sherry added, so it’s nice to know that there’s room to spare for some more functional things up there if the need arises. But hopefully we’ll always find a place to show off the coffee cup that inspired us to make the beach house pink. Sherry said that someone on Instagram suggested we stick it in a glass cloche so nobody thinks it’s garbage and throws it away. Probably a smart move.

We still need to tweak the mudroom area of the room so it’s a little more hardworking, but for now we just brought down one of the wood benches we had upstairs (it’s from Target a while back and is no longer sold, but here’s a similar one). We had already hung some hooks last winter to give us a place for winder coats – which will now transition to a place for beach towels (like this blue Turkish towel that Sherry whispers sweet nothings to). We’ll probably end up with a similar set up, just maybe with more hooks/storage space. We’ll keep you posted.

Doing laundry isn’t something I’d describe as “exciting” but I will say that updating this room makes it noticeably more pleasant than having to step over a saw and a ton of scrap wood on the way to the washer and dryer. Once our outdoor pathway is done, which will lead to this side door as well as the back patio and the outdoor shower (not that it’s even started – ha!) we expect this side door into the mudroom to become a primary entrance, especially after sandy trips to the beach. So it will be nice to walk into a good looking space versus some weird wood graveyard.

And since most of the questions we get revolve around paint colors & room sources, Sherry put together a little mood board for this space for anyone who is looking for the same tile, light fixture, gold frames, etc. Oh and the walls are White Heron and the trim is Stone Isle (both Sherwin Williams).

1 /2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17

P.S. If you’re interested in bonus photos, tips, project ideas, and behind-the-scenes info delivered straight to your inbox, you can click here to subscribe to our free newsletter. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room appeared first on Young House Love.

Disguising Ugly Stuff In A Laundry Room published first on https://aireloomreview.tumblr.com/

[kansascityhappenings]

Joe’s Weather Blog: A coming cold change (MON-11/27)

Good morning…haven’t had an opportunity to really write up a weather blog for the last few days..I’ve had the time…just no real material to dive into. Yes the weather has been “boring” which is good for 98% of the population during this time of the year…but not so great when you try to write interesting blogs about the weather with some “meat” in them for you to chew on and ponder. As you know, one of my rules about the blog is I try and NOT waste your time just to throw a few paragraphs together and with all the nice weather out there lately…it’s been tough to come up with something. We’ll try today and look for a change in the weather scenario in about 10 days or so…

Forecast:

Today: Filtered morning sunshine then sunny skies. Windy and warm for late November. The record high is 71° set in 1960…today I think we’ll fall short of that record by 1-4° (officially at KCI). Highs today in the upper 60s to near 70°. The winds will again be an issue…from the SSW at 20-35 MPH, especially later this morning and this afternoon.

Tonight: Fair skies and mild with lows near 50°

Tuesday: Becoming cloudy and turning cooler with highs in the 50s (some upside on the south side) and as a cold front comes through the temperatures may actually back off a few degrees in the afternoon. Also there may be some areas of drizzle developing with the front and behind it.

Wednesday: Variable clouds with some light drizzle or a few AM showers possible. Cooler but still above average with highs in the 50-55° range

Discussion:

Well for the 2nd time in 4 days…we’re going to try for a record high…and believe it or not…I’m looking into the record highs for December 3rd too as I’m expecting a warm finish to the the upcoming winter. The record today of 71° set back in 1960 is in range BUT there are issues getting to that lofty number. 1) is the cirrus clouds that are filtering out the sunshine this morning…2) is that our temperatures above us will not be as warm as they have been (in the warm days we’ve had recently) but in the end I’m still expecting 67-70° highs this afternoon.

All of a sudden we’ve gone from seeing temperatures some 5+ degrees below average for the month to, after today, almost average temperatures for November. We’ve had 17 below average days and counting today…10 above average days BUT this will be the 6th double digit above average day compared to 5 double digit below average days…that’s a lot of swinging temperatures but in the end…the month will be pretty close to average.

Perhaps a harbinger of the upcoming winter…lots of flips coming I think. Not terribly unusual for the Plains though overall.

The last blog dealt with the winter snow forecast…well obviously snow right now ain’t happening…nor can it because…well duh…it has to get cold first.

That won’t be this week…but it may be towards the middle of next week. At least getting colder…not so sure about the snow risk (of consequence). I should also put this out there now, I’ll repeat it many times when looking farther ahead into the future…I’ll typically be talking about snow chances of significance…let’s say 1″ or more…when looking longer range. Sure there can be some flurrries…or some lighter snows (and a lot of times those can create some problems in and of themselves) but those smaller scale issues will be dealt with closer to the main event…anything bigger will be speculated farther away (if that makes any sense).

That’s a long ways of going about in saying, as I mentioned on the air over the weekend…I’m not seeing that potential of anything bigger for awhile at least…more than likely 10+ days. So snow lovers will have to wait longer to get anything to crow about…or to shovel I think.

There is a more significant change in the weather likely though towards the middle of next week. That will be a trend for about 10-20 days of colder air masses coming back into the region again. It can’t snow when it’s almost 70° outside…so the first step is to get some cold weather in play in the Plains.

This should come about in response to a storm that’s wayyy out towards the west of the Aleutian Islands right now…can you see it on the satellite loop this morning…it’s in the upper right side of the images…

By tomorrow into Wednesday it will be into the Islands…and it will be a seasonably strong storm up there.

943 mbs…is the strength of a hurricane on this side of the world…and a strong one at that…but up there where there is the cold polar air to it’s north…these storms wrap up incredibly on an almost routine basis. Our model data has shown this evolution for awhile…so confidence in the downstream effects are increasing.

What we don’t know though are the details how this will play out…that storm in AK will be in the center of the Islands up there later Tuesday…then slowly progress towards the Gulf Of Alaska later Thursday…then be off the west coast of CA/OR later Saturday and then move into the SW part of the country on Sunday. That part is more than likely at that point…from there though things get dicier and it’s influence on our weather gets iffier.

There are two model camps…one would be that the storm “cuts off” and gets separated from the main jet stream to the north…another would be that the storm keeps moving along…and impacts our area with stronger effects (more precipitation…probably rain…and perhaps even some severe weather somewhere here or southwards?

I’m posting a map for next Monday night…a week from today.

Or will there be a wild card system dropping in from the western part of Canada…that kicks a chunk of the current AK storm towards the NW of KC…we get some rain and then dry slotted as the colder air behind the storm wraps through the region…as the “wild card” system becomes the predominant storm in the SW part of the country and we wait for that to come out after the middle of next week?

The later scenario could be more interesting for snow lover’s IF we get cold enough. That timing would be towards the end of NEXT week though.

The ensemble data which should be used from this far out…is in the camp of a more “progressive” system which I tend to agree with. We haven’t seen a cut-off low in the SW part of the country yet this fall…one of their driest and warmest falls out there is because of this…but I’m not sure of the real path of the storm at the end…I do feel confident of the colder look though coming sometime after the 5th or 6th or so…

Let me illustrate that better for you…let’s look at the 5,000 foot temperature trends over the course of 5 days…ending in the 6th of December (from 12/1-12/6 at 6PM). That red corresponds to warmth to a large degree…and remember this is a 5 day average…

Now let’s jump 5 more days into the future…for the period of 6PM on the 6th through 6PM on the 11th…ALL that green and whitish shading is a LOT of cold air at that level (5,000 feet or so).

Notice as well…with us cold…that there’s warmth (it’s relative up in northern Canada). So the cold has been displaced towards the USA…it’s still cold even in Canada…but instead of being 30 or 40 BELOW Zero…it’s closer to 10 below zero..

So utilizing the charts above…whats the takeaway? 1) a likely storm towards the 5-8th time period…2) odds favor rain as the main precipitation 3) MUCH chillier air flows in sometime between the 6th-9th…4) this type of cold will ebb and flow for awhile but for at least 7-10 days after the 6th-8th we should be cold on average with some brief warm-ups possible in that span before another cold shot moves into the area. 5) overall it appears mostly dry though without significant moisture after whatever storm ushers in the change to begin with…this would take us almost towards mid month. 6) let’s watch for any “clipper” type systems after the 9th or so

So there you have it…at least for now and obviously VERY much subject to change. For snow lovers…at least it’ll be getting cold again…just not seeing any significant storms lining up for us (snow-wise).

Our feature photo comes from this morning from Angelita Crow…

Joe

  from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports http://fox4kc.com/2017/11/27/joes-weather-blog-a-coming-cold-change-mon-11-27/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/joes-weather-blog-a-coming-cold-change-mon-11-27/