Colorado Reno- Project 1- $500 Laundry Room Makeover

I will cut to the chase with our finished product! But do not be deceived, many many hours went into this over the course of this past month.  But the heavy lifting of ripping up the existing floor, prepping the subfloor and laying the tile happened in about 3 days total.  We could not be happier with this cheery laundry/mudroom now! In the midst of my chaotic and NOT organized (yet) new home, this little room brings me a smile whenever i pass through it from that garage door entry.

Renovating is my mission, my passion, and something that I have faith will financially pay off once we move again(fingers crossed!).  But see, when we did this the first time, we waited until the very end of our stay to renovate things to sell our home.  And while it was still fun, I realized I seconded guessed myself WAY too much and should have gone for it at the start so we could have enjoyed all our improvements as well.  I have much more confidence in myself and dear husband now, after all I went to 4 years of interior design school right? 

So with this house, we started working our way through the projects from the outside in.  The house is not what I would call a "fixer upper" by any means- but it needs cosmetic help in all the right places that will pay off later- kitchens, baths, floors.  So we invested in a few key tools which we found on the cheap at a pawn shop actually- Tile Saw, Miter Saw, Drimmel tool, and we borrowed our awesome neighbor's brad gun (Mr.Ralph is the best!). Starting on the laundry room allowed us to practice our DIY skills on a low risk area too.

We started out with the laundry room because 1. our lovely movers failed to bring our washer and dryer anyways. 2. HELLO 90's border and blue vinyl floors. But you know it had good potential with lots of storage.

Laundry BEFORE! hard to even see how bad the vinyl floors were.

For our first tile floor hubby and I rocked the herringbone pattern.  Laying tile is tiring and thank goodness I had my awesome husband for the measuring and cutting.

This is an IKEA glass message board which I added a "self serve laundry" graphic detail from this great Etsy shop :Toodlesdecalstudio Shop

Total cost $14 for glass board, $15 for decal

 By adding a small 1x2 to the left side of shelf- the width was perfect to add this wire bin by Allen Roth at Lowes, which slides out for easy access to my laundry goodies.

Now we have a place for mail, shoes, two laundry basket spots, and more!  And it all looks pretty clean and tidy when you walk in.  My favorite part of this shelf are the roll out wire shelves I added because Ev now puts her shoes away and on all by herself!  

 After we had it almost done, I decided it was missing some contrast and a shelf for the items you reach for most when you are doing LOADS of laundry - and we do lots and lots of loads here between the 4 of us! So we followed a simple DIY tutorial by Young House Love and I love love how it turned out.  Tom cut it (he does all the cutting because I have a fear of power saws) and I stained it with this easy to use gel stain.  The color is called Prairie Wheat and it really shines with a nice golden hue which I like. http://www.younghouselove.com/2014/09/come-pet-our-tile-the-musical/

I added some pretty bowls- One for stray kid socks and one for loose change and such.  Oh and I couldn't resist adding an extra motivator to my laundry routing : Key Lime Pie Marshmellows! That may or may not have been a mistake to show Ev.

 The beadboard was all cut to size at Home Depot.  Tom cut the 1x6 which is topped with a 1x2 picture ledge.  We replaces the baseboards with simple 1x3 MDF.  Brad gun was used to adhere it all to the wall very quickly.

Material Cost Breakdown:

• Tile: Daltile Porcelain plank style, on clearance at the showroom from a return: $75 or $1.88/sq ft
• Cement Board Thinset,  Grout, Sealer: $100
• Beadboard, 1x6 and 1x2 and 1x3 MDF): $75
• Pine Board for shelf: $17
• Gel Wood Stain in Prairie Wheat: $16
• Paint : $40
• Allen Roth Sliding Wire Shelves (x2): $40
• Basket and square laundry baskets: $20
• New Ikea Hardware on cabinet doors/hooks: $10
• Fun Laundry accessories from World Market: $30
• Tiled subway backsplash+ Mastic: $30
• Ikea Sign and Etsy decal : $29
• New Doorknob (which i need to switch out again on both doors) $20
• LABOR: $0!!!
• TOTAL: $500

Tools :

Miter saw

Ocillating tool

Tile Saw

Brad Gun

Drill

Let me know what you think! And if anyone has any ideas to get our dryer vent not to take up so much room please let me know!

~damsel in a mess

What's In A Name Anyways?

So sometimes, God sends you a message that He is real. And sometimes He sends it after the fact, years after the fact, and if you let it....it will blow your mind.  This was one of those moments.

Yesterday in our attempt to clean up and declutter, we came upon this little piece of paper.  It was a handwritten translation of a German "play" passport given to Evelyn by her Aunt Bronwen.  Reading the last two words "little bird" just kind of stopped Tom and me in our tracks.  We must have missed it the first time we received it almost 3 years ago.  But it was like this little sign from God that He always intended for her to be called Evelyn,  and he put her name on our hearts as if it were our own great choice, and then let us in on the little secret later.

"Dear Evelyn- your name is an English name.  It comes from the English form of the French name "Aveline." This is in a turn a familiar form of "Ava", the meaning of which is "Little Bird."

As many of you already know, we chose not to find out the gender of our babies until they were born. 

So flashback to my pregnancy with Evelyn before we knew she was a girl and before we had named her.  We are living in our little humble apartment, and Tom is singing in the kitchen a little tune as usual- but this time it caught my attention...it just had such a sweet tune.  I don't know why, because I never asked him to do this EVER again- but with THAT song in particular, I asked him to sing it to our baby in my belly.  Can you guess the title of this song?  "Little Bird" (tune is in this youtube video if you are interested). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMpo0YDiDY

We had picked out a boy name and a girl name for the big day, initially it was Collin or Monica.  We were pretty set on these names, but towards the end of the pregnancy I started feeling more and more that this baby was a girl and I thought harder on what name felt right.  The name Evelyn popped in my head, and I talked it over with Tom and he was like "Yea, Evelyn was on our list of names before we were ever even married, I have it here on a word document because I am a nerd." Sure enough, I had forgotten all about that conversation but there it was on his hard drive.  So we kept Monica as our number 1 pick and Evelyn as a back up if baby M was to be a girl.  When she was born and was in fact a girl, I took one look at her surprising little blonde head of hair and her face and the decision was so easy- she was definitely meant to be an Evelyn.  

Tom continued to sing the tune "Little Bird" to her almost every time he rocked her to sleep, so much so that she eventually would make him stop because she had wised up to the fact that this song indicated it was time to SLEEP, which she never liked much.  

Finding out that her name literally meant "little bird" was just mind blowing to me! It is not an easy translation to find by a simple google search since it has to be traced back, and had it not been for Bronwen writing that note(thank you Bron!)- I would have never made the connection.  

I guess what this immediately brought to mind was wow God really does know us by name, knows our children by name in the womb before we even have a chance to name them ourselves.  It specifically made me think of the very verse I chose to post on the day our sweet Evelyn was baptized:

Isaiah 43:1 

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine."

Perhaps this is God's little way of nudging me along, as I pursue my own baptism this Easter- to remind me that he knows my name just as he knows Evelyn's. 

People often say to me, "what a beautiful name Evelyn is, was it a family name? " I never really know how to explain that this name was just meant to be hers, but now you know.  There is a lot to a name, even if we never can quite put our finger on it.

Our Little Bird, aka Evelyn