Archive for category laundry room
The best $70 I’ve spent on this house so far
Posted by aaron in laundry room on 27 January 2009
I never posted about this, probably because it seems so insignificant in the scheme of things. My washing machine a) was noisy as heck on the old wooden beams of the house and b) liked to take a walk every time it was used. A search online reveled only one really good sounding option, and man were they worth every penny. You can still hear both the washer and the dryer, but it no longer sounds like they’re about to crash through the ceiling. The washer hasn’t moved an inch since I installed these things. Plus the company is family run, they pack their product in those corn-starch-based packing peanuts that dissolve in water, and they donate some of their profits to charity. It’s like Ben and Jerry’s for hard rubber disks. Brilliant, and highly recommended.
And also today…
Posted by aaron in laundry room, shed on 22 October 2008
Put up a small shelf in the laundry room, and picked up the permit for the shed. Hey look, I’m legal:
Quick fix
Posted by aaron in laundry room on 22 October 2008
The dryer vent hose was just tucked in the back room’s partly open window, which made for a draft when it was in use. To vent it out without keeping the window open – and this is temporary until I decide if the washer and dryer are staying in this upstairs room, and if so where to put a vent in the wall – I built a quick… I don’t know what you’d call it, but it vents without keeping the window fully open. It’s just a board that runs the width of the window with a hole for an old vent pipe I salvaged. The dryer vent is just attached to the pipe with a screw-tight pipe clamp.
Two adjustments were necessary. First, the window sash is very old and unevenly worn resulting in some gaps between the sash bottom and the board. I just ran a strip of self-adhesive weatherstripping foam along the board.
Second was the making the pipe clamp work – the vent hose is about 1.5″ wider in diameter than the old pipe to which it’s connected. Tightening the clamp would tear the hose and/or provide a bad seal. Again, the weatherstripping foam came into play – ran it around the pipe a couple of times to bulk up its diameter, then put the pipe clamp over that section and tightened down a little. Seems to be working fine – virtually no fog on the inside of the window so it appears all the air is going out the pipe as desired.
This still needs two minor things – some caulk or spray foam to plug the small holes between the pipe and the board hole; and some insulation between the glass panes to keep drafts from coming up since the window is still partly open.
You know what’s useful?
Posted by aaron in closet, laundry room on 16 October 2008
These things:
Thanks to them, the new light in the upstairs closet is finally installed, and (since it’s mid-line on a circuit) the light in the laundry room is now back on.
And it only took an hour and a half (although fifteen minutes of that was searching for my wire strippers. Which still haven’t been located. Whatever – bedtime.)
This was the old fixture. Clearly it needed replacing:
Sick day
The big plan for today was to take down my old rusted shed and pull up a few roots/stumps to make way for a new shed (one of these days). I got the barn-razing (har) email out a little late, though, and I was feeling under the weather (don’t worry – a nap and some food and I was fine by evening), so that plan has been postponed for a bit.
Instead:
– finally hung porch door; need to either adjust middle and top hinge or shave 1/8+” off the other side to get it fitting smoothly in the frame.
– leveled washer; now need to get a vibration dampener
– started prep on wall in back bedroom – there was a cracked section of drywall; I started cutting and have wound up expanding to about 18″ square to get around various cracks and warps. There’s more to one side, but I don’t want to rip out too much, and what remains is at least level. Plan is to cut a section of drywall (looks thinner than normal), screw into the gap, putty edges, paint entire wall.
Daily log
Posted by aaron in bathroom, closet, laundry room, porch on 3 August 2008
I don’t know if this will help or just turn this into a mess of uninteresting posts, but I’m going to try posting daily (or close to it) even if that means only bulleting small things I’ve started or finished. For example:
Over the last three days:
– took down porch screen door
– prepped hinges for new (actually old) screen door to go up
– cut and hung molding for upstairs bathroom door frames (well, the verticals)
– cut old tongue and groove boards and two supports for shelving in my closet
– finished all pipe connections for washing machine
HaHA! (triumphant sounding)
Posted by aaron in laundry room, plumbing on 1 August 2008
All I can say is I’m glad I a) bought a hacksaw the other week and b) had the foresight to buy plumber’s tape a while back.
Eight dollars of pipe connections later and it’s hooray for cleaning of clothes.
Foiled again…
Posted by aaron in laundry room on 31 July 2008
Soldered, really. Here’s tonight’s fun project:
The two pipes with the blue handles are water pipes that are supposed to go to the washing machine I’m having delivered tomorrow. I forgot to double check the connections and find that the lower one – which is actually the hot water despite the handle color – just had a screw cap in the pipe end, but the upper one has a soldered pipe cap that my soldering iron won’t be hot enough to melt. I’m not totally sure how I’m going to get that off before tomorrow. Moreover, I’m realizing these threaded pipe ends are unlikely to connect smoothly with the hoses for the machine. Hopefully a trip to the hardware store for some spigots will fix that.