7 Quick Takes

---1---

My kids are lying in their new "house" watching old episodes of Cyberchase as I type.  The house is a large washing machine box that they  decorated the inside of and hung a zebra-striped curtain over the door.  Fortunately, they can use Daddy's ipad to watch TV since the magic-marker TV in the house only shows Chopped, and it's not very exciting to watch static televsion.

---2---

They got a new house because I got a new washer and dryer.  Our dryer died its 2nd death, and we decided that the first resurrection cost too much to attempt it again.  We've had them 16 years and they've been through a LOT of loads of laundry with 6 kids!  I'm excited about the new washer because it is a high-efficiency top-loader---I'll be really glad to save water and electricity, though I wonder about the electricity since a wash cycle takes twice as long.  

I'm kind of "meh" about the whole thing because we have a totally first world problem in that our laundry room is super small.  I can't get fancy front-loaders in the room, and had to buy my machines based solely on size.   A lot of the new machines just. won't. fit.  I seriously think the architect of this house was a single man who had most of his clothing dry-cleaned and did very little other laundry.  There was no consideration for the thought that someone might buy this 4-bedroom house and fill it with actual people that store things and do more than the occasional load of laundry!  

---3---

My laundry room is tiny, but at least it's pretty now!  I simply could not face the idea of having the room empty and then putting new machines in on top of the wrinkled, torn, vinyl flooring!  So, when I was out with the kiddos buying the machines, we stopped in the tile section to buy luxury vinyl tiles to retile the floor.  We had a lot of fun moving out the machines with our dolley skateboard, and ripping out the old floor.  The tiles are easy to use and we were proud of ourselves for learning how to cut them to fit.  The last 2 had difficult corners around the door molding, but we struggled through and finally finished after dinner with ONE tile to spare!

Priming the plywood

Installing tile

---4---

Of course, once the room was empty, I had to paint it, too.  We had plenty of pretty, blue paint left over from Katie's bathroom downstairs, so we slapped that up on the walls, too.  You know we had less than 24 hours to get all this done?  We worked All. Day. Long.  And then dh had to get out the tall ladder so I could reach the ceiling with the paintbrush.  I was so happy to fall into bed after a hot bath that night!

Oh, and my Dear Hubby was very surprised because while he knew about the w/d, he had no clue that we were totally redecorating the room!

---5---

The last time we painted the laundry room, I made the mistake of allowing the painters to paint over the family growth chart.  This time I didn't make that mistake.  I left it intact and unpainted.  I did mask off a line below the shortest measurement and paint below that, though.

---6---

Not a very pretty picture of the finished product, but you can see the floor and the walls (and the ugly laundry sorter, but we won't talk about that).  It's sooo much prettier now, and the paint is semi-gloss, so it's much more cleanable and ligh-reflecting.  See how small the room is?  But I'm happy to be able to do laundry again.  Shocking, I know.

---7---

For anyone who is visiting from Jen's today, you might want to stop by Caffeinated Catholic Mama's to read my conversion story for a little extra Friday fun.  Don't we all love conversion stories???

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Join the fun at Jen's for more 7 Quick Takes!