Peel and Stick

Haven’t done a laundry room update in awhile, so I thought it was probably time!

We tackled the floor last weekend!  Wooooo Hooooo!

(Also I may have discovered Instagram and forgot to take this picture with my real camera too…)

Steve has finished the mud room bench!  We brought it in (it’ll still get painted) so we could fit the tile around it.

Finally, we were ready to go.  We measured out a perfect angle in the center of the room, made our chalk lines, peeled off the cover on the back, and then got ready to stick.  Once we got started, we were on a roll!  Peel, stick, line up, stick.  Super simple.

Our favorite way to make sure they were good and stuck?  Some sweet dance moves.

We need to get the threshold and the trim in, but here’s a fairly accurate picture of the color of the floor.  It plays off of the paint fabulously.

We brought the sink in so we could get a feel for what the space will feel like.  The bench will be white and we’ll have the mudroom built up.  So far, we really love it and are excited with how well it’s coming together!!

So, once we were stuck, we needed to seal it up before we could move the washer and dryer back in.  We decided to seal to help keep the floor cleaner and keep junk from collecting in the seams between the tiles.  We bought a kit at Lowe’s, followed the directions, and it was pretty simple.  Be sure to wear a respirator mask for this, it’s REALLY stinky.  You can find it in the vinyl tile at Lowe’s.

It’s hard to see the difference, but you can see the unsealed lines on the left are white looking while the others and filled in and glossy.

The only other thing we added?  A new light fixture!  I’m kind of obsessed with it.  I love the geometric shapes of it and it provides quite a bit of light.

All in all, I’m happy with the progress we’ve made so far and can’t wait to get the mudroom section painted and installed so we can get this room wrapped up.  It looks SO much better already!

Anyone else forgotten to update their blog lately?  Play with stickers?  Stand in your laundry room and admire how pretty it is??  do tell!

Unexpected Spring In Our Step

This post was planned (in my head) to have a lot different title…alternate titles — how to clean up a flood in your basement from a frozen sprinkler line or how to dig up your whole yard to find broken sprinkler pipe…but in a SHOCKING turn of events, we turned on our sprinklers for the first time ever (we didn’t ever feel like messing with it last summer, so we just left them be) and they worked.  Not only did they work, but the book to program them was still sitting on top of the sprinkler system box and all the sprinkler zones were labeled.

Who cares about lottery jackpots…we feel like we already won the jackpot and no creepos are going to be asking for their share of our winnings.  See how optimistic and springy I’m feeling today??

and our glorious sprinklers in action….ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!   (and you’ll notice some new grass seed by the sidewalk, we’re going to attempt to actually have a lawn this summer, stay tuned…but so far, we’re off to a good start!)

In the absence of a “how to”, I decided to share some pictures of our spring outside work instead.  We started the sprinkler testing process in the first place because our front yard desperately needs some love…it’s basically dead.

First up?  Rake up the dead stuff.  Full disclosure — I took a nap and woke up to find the following picture in the front yard.  I had no part of this process.

Hindsight (I’ve been told) would be to never rake the front yard my hand ever again but instead rent a power rake.  Lesson learned for ya’ll.

Adding to our springy feeling, we have some gorgeous tulips growing out front (thankfully, I kept these bad boys alive until they bloomed out, green thumb win)

We have a long ways to go (tons and TONS of landscaping), but we’re excited about our progress so far and can’t wait to get the rest of the landscaping under way!  Anybody else had a sprinkler victory?  Getting started on landscaping?  Loving the weirdly warm weather??