Chutes, Ladders, and Laundry

When Cody was growing up, his family had laundry in the basement and the coolest way to get it there: A laundry chute.

When I was growing up, I used to watch this movie, Dunston Checks In, where Rupert Everett chases a monkey around a fancy hotel. There's a part in that movie where Everett sticks his head in a laundry chute to coax said monkey out from hiding.

Clearly, both of our childhoods led to this moment: We were going to make a laundry chute.

Actually, it wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I realized that houses could have laundry chutes. Dunston had always led me to believe that these were only available in luxury hotels. Thanks, Hollywood.

Anyway, we started with a cabinet.

This one!

 

This came from a Craigslist set of cabinets we got right after purchasing the house. They've treated us well! To see how we turned one of these cabinets into a bathroom vanity, click here.

 

We wanted the chute to be big enough to fit clothes into easily, but not so large that it would take up too much room in our closet. So, we removed the doors, cut off the edges, and turned it on its side.

 

Good start...but one side is bigger than the other.

Jig saws are my favorite saws to use.

Even!

 

It was a little short, so we built a stand for it. We also added trim pieces on the top for a more finished look.

 

It's starting to look like...something?

 

 

For the next step, we had to be ready for paint. This means my favorite part in all of woodworking: Sanding.

 

I'm so thrilled here.

 





 

All of that is completely sarcastic.

 

I do not like sanding, Sam I am. I do not like it on a boat, I do not like it with a goat. Okay, maybe it would be more enjoyable on a boat. I've never done that before. Regardless, sanding is not one of my favorite activities. BUT, it doesn't take very long when you have a good electric sander. All in all, I guess it's not that terrible. I guess.

 

The next day, Cody went to work and I stayed home to paint. We painted the bottom stand gray (the same color as our walls in the bedroom/closet. We painted the main part white (the same color as the trim).

 

The stand almost blends in to the basement floor. Look closely!

 

This is where I'm lucky to be engaged to an engineer. Cody designed the door to make it open like a mailbox. I would have had no clue how to make this work, except for moving the hinges to another side. So, I just let him do his thing on that one. After lots of math and drawing, here's the result:

 

Math! You can use it in the real world!

 

The next part was scary. We had to cut a hole in the floor. In our beautifully stained, recently finished floors! The horror!

  

Okay, okay. It wasn't that dramatic. We were nervous, though. Even when measuring and drawing out the square on the hardwood, I was holding my breath.

 

 

AAAAAAHHH.

 





To distract my nerves, I just held a vacuum cleaner and cleaned up all the saw dust.

 

 

Okay...not that bad.

 

From the picture, it looks like our clothes are going to fall straight into the sump pump. I think it's just my terrible photo angle. Plus, we'll end up framing that in, anyway. We couldn't think about that too much, because we were too excited to put our new product in the house! We attached our custom-engineered door, trimmed the bottom out with baseboard, and then marveled.

 

 

Whaaaaaat!

 

Of course, we had to test it out. But, we haven't built the laundry table to keep the clothes in a basket instead of on the floor (or in that pesky sump pump). So we used a ladder. Who knows? Maybe it would sort the clothes for us. You know, darks on top, lights down the steps?

 

(This is a video!)

 

Yeah, the ladder idea was just wishful thinking. However, we're super happy with the results. Dirty laundry is out of sight, and I don't have to drag it downstairs to clean it. Win-Win!

 

 







Setting the Bar

After we moved in to our new-old house, we were really excited to start the fun projects. The most successful one thus far (I think), is the bar in the kitchen. We talked forever about what we could use as the bar, and wanted to recycle something. We thought about barn wood, but we don't have any barns. We did have a ton of extra hardwood flooring, though! The old hardwood from the patch in the bedroom was in a pile in the basement. Could that work? Yeah, maybe.

First, the before pictures. The bar between the kitchen and the dining/living room was on the accent wall. With the kitchen coming around, the absence of the bar made the whole thing look really unfinished.

We also wanted to match the half wall above the basement stairs. But, we were kind of sad to cover it up. Apparently this piece of wood used to be in some kind of bar/hang out spot. It was covered in names and phone numbers from, well, who knows when?

Who are these people?!

So. Step one was to cover both walls with the shape of the bar/covering. We also added supports underneath.  

The wax paper was added so that we could paint these braces later. The idea came from Phillip, when we put up the interior door trim. We figured the same thing would work for this. It did. 

The next step was to add the hardwood and nail it in with the nail gun. The nail gun is totally my favorite tool to use. It always makes me feel like a badass. 

 Gettin' it.

Worked on the other wall, too. 

The best thing about using hardwood floor on the wall and the bar was that it was really easy to do. We just picked the pieces and made sure they looked randomly placed. When a piece was too big, I'd just ran out to the garage and saw it in half. The only hiccup was matching it on the edges. 

Tricky.

For the first picture, we had to rip a piece of hardwood in half using a table saw. For the second, we had to get rid of part of the corner using the Rockwell saw. I started counting how many different saws we used on this project, and it was ridiculous. 

1. Miter Saw

2. Circular Saw

3. Jig Saw

4. Table Saw

5. Rockwell Universal Saw 

Considering I didn't even know that there were this many different kinds of saws before we got this house, I did pretty well. 

Next, we had to sand and stain the bar. We used the same stain as we did on the actual hardwood.

Matching: Check.

Though it looked awesome, we still weren't finished. We trimmed both spaces with boards using 45 degree angles on the corners. (Also, I know how to do that now.)

Nail gun makes an appearance, once again!

Hopefully no one will write their names on this one.

After touch-up painting and polyurethane, this bar is going to be ready for dining. 

This is my fierce nail gun face.

And that's how you make a bar out of floors.