What do you get when you cross a 38 week pregnant woman who has a knack for projects at the worst of times and an (approx. 5 sq/ft) laundry hallway? The most stunning before and after that you’ve ever seen, thats what!

The post Laundry Room Makeover appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

There are a million and one tutorials online for how to install subway tile. Literally. Pretty sure that every blogger who has ever existed has posted a tutorial on subway tile. This is not that. Well, I guess it sort of is but here at VR I feel really strongly about sharing the things that I did wrong, just so you guys can 1. not repeat the same mistake and 2. know you are not alone in your DIY frustrations and suffering. Lets get this pity party started.

First things first, the tile that we used is Merola Soho Subway tile. The challenge was to take something very mainstream and make it my own, because I’m me and thinking outside of the box makes my heart happy. I contemplated installing it at complete random but after I thought about it for a minute realized that I still wanted it to look nice. So complete random was out. The look I realized was going for was planned randomness, the kind of randomness that doesn’t make you develop a twitch. There are about a million different ways to install subway tile  but in the general style that I was going for, it seemed like there were 2 options. An Offset pattern aka Running Bond ( 99% of people do this). Which is basically offsetting the tile above at the 1/2 way point from the previous row.

While I LOVE this pattern, its everywhere and wanted something new.

Option 2: A 1/3 Step pattern. Which is dividing the tile into thirds and setting the rows at the 1/3 mark and the 2/3 mark.

The problem that I had with this pattern is all I can see are diagonal lines, which I don’t love.

So in an effort to create controlled randomness I decided to install them in a 1/4 Step pattern. I have no idea if its a thing, I maybe just made the name up but I feel like we should just go with it.

Once I’d decided on a pattern, it was time to get to work.

We installed concrete board on the wall before we started tiling. If you have an exposed edge (that doesn’t end on a corner) backer board can make the tile really thick (because you have to grout over the edge of it and it can look pretty wonkfest. But because all of the edges of our tile ended against something, and because I wanted to ensure maximum protection against any washer/dryer vibrations, we spent the extra $15.

The next step was to start. We had to work really fast because my cute husband put a massive amount of thinset on and getting in the zone and working fast was pretty critical.

When you are installing a pattern like this, making sure that it is level is make or break. Because we’d just installed the countertop (and knew that it was perfectly level) our job was a little easier. But I still checked everything with a level every 2 rows.

We started the tile directly against the countertop (with a spacer between them) and that was perfect…until we realized that you cant tile down a wall, only up a wall. Such a forehead slap. So we had to install a ledger board that was level with the countertop to finish the section…and scrape off all of the thinset below that point. DANG IT. #pregnancybrain #gravity

Once this section of tile was set, I did some math and by adding the width of the tile + the spacers came up with the thickness that the first tile against the baseboard needed to be cut to.

Then we removed the ledger board and tiled up the wall.

Unfortunately (seriously this is like the song that never ends!) I overlooked putting a spacer against the baseboard and had added that 1/8” into my math, which meant that we had to move the entire section of tiles up 1/8” to meet the upper section and not have a big fat grout line.

Insert slasher movie music.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Mind you, this was all while I was literally a week away from giving birth. There was a lot of swearing.

Buuuuut dun dun dun dunnnnn! by some miracle it turned out absolutely perfect. Seriously. I dare you to find one spot on this wall that isn’t perfection. Man alive I’m pretty sure that this perfect tile job saved my sanity because had it have turned out wonky I would have lost it in the truest sense of the word.

So. don’t do what we did ok? Especially if you’re working with your spouse because people have been known to divorce over lesser things.

For our grout we used Fusion Pro in Charcoal. If you hear nothing else I say today, hear this. IT IS WORTH THE MONEY! Grout can be hard (you’ve got to have the perfect consistency, you’ve got to seal it, you’ve got to hope that it turns out true to the color etc.) This makes everything SO MUCH EASIER!!

A tip that I have when you’re using Fusion Pro is to wipe down your tile right before you spread it. This makes it so that it doesn’t stick to the tile surface as much and is easier to clean up. We used an epoxy float to lay the grout vs. a foam float and it was fantastic. You can get like 90% of the grout off of the tile before you even start washing.

See how the tiles look random but aren’t? Awwww yeah.

Check out the other projects from the laundry room here!

The post Lessons I Learned While Installing Subway Tile Cause I’m an Idiot. appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

Hellloooo!! Ok so, I feel like it is so easy to get in a rut when it comes to things that maybe aren’t conventionally DIYed. Do you know what I mean? When I was working on the Laundry Room Makeover I found myself searching for a really fantastic towel rack that I could mount on the underside of the cabinet. Let me tell you, I found a few good ones…the problem was that they were SO expensive. Ugh, why?!!

Per the usual, I decided to take matters into my own hands and pulled out my trusty staples, leather and copper. I think they are critical to a DIY MacGyver’s arsenal. You can make anything!

To make this project you’ll need:

Leather Scraps
(1) 24” piece of 3/4” copper pipe
(2) 3/4” copper caps
Grommet Kit
Screws

Trust me when I tell you, you‘ll want to get your grommet kit at Home Depot. Their prices are significantly lower than the kits that you can buy at the craft store.

Start by cutting your leather into 2” strips. The length will depend on how low you want it to hang, mine were 10” long.

Fold the leather in 1/2. Using your grommet setter (or if you want to technically correct tool you can use a leather punch) punch a hole in the leather 1/2” down from the ends.

Set a grommet in each side.

Next, fold your leather in 1/2 again and punch a hole 1 1/2” from the fold.

When it’s unfolded it will look like this.

Fold it back up and set 1 grommet through both holes to hold the leather together.

So easy right!?

To mount them I put screws through the grommets into the cabinet. **When you’re doing this, make sure that your screws aren’t too long or they’ll poke through! My cabinet is made from 3/4” MDF so I used 3/4” screws (because of the space the grommet creates.

To be completely honest I wasn’t sure how much weight this would actually hold (I was fully prepared to take it down if I had to) but it can hold a whole dryer full of my clothes no problem! Hooray for projects that are pretty AND functional!!

Check out the other posts in this series below!

The post Copper and Leather Hanging Bar appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

Hey guys!! Lets get the laundry room tutorials goin’ shall we?!

When I was planning the laundry room makeover I knew that I wanted the countertop to be wood. Wood just adds so much life to a space and with all of the tile and painted surfaces it needed some liveliness! It also needed to be budget friendly so spending a $1000+ on butcher block was just not going to happen. Factor that in with the 2 week turn around and it was even more far fetched. Do you know what I love? Projects that just seem completely impossible, that is where creativity thrives (when you read the word thrives picture jazz hands!)

We pulled this whole job off for under $90! WAHOOO! And in case you were wondering if we were still loving the stacked plywood look, the answer is a resounding yes. We get so many compliments on the tables at Durango’s, it just makes my life.

To make this project you’ll need:

(2) 4×8 sheets of plywood (1 premium and 1 not-so-premium)
Wood Glue
Finishing Nails
Wood Screws
Feet
Brackets
Polyurethane

Start by measuring the size that you want your countertop to be. You’ll need to leave at least an inch between the top of the washer/dryer and the countertop and an inch on each side. I had some people ask about their dancing appliances. If your washer/dryer move around when they are cycling they need to be balanced better, it shouldn’t effect your countertop design. Heck maybe it will help tone it down a little?

It was super important to me design wise to have the wood grain waterfall down the side (so that its continuous) because plywood comes in an 8 foot length you’ll want to keep that in mind if you are planning on doing the same! We used the entire 8’ length for our countertop.

The first step is to glue your sheets of plywood together. You’ll need 1 sheet of premium plywood (ours was Birch) and one sheet of regular plywood. Using the regular plywood on the second layer will save $, which is always a good idea. We started by gluing together the sheets of plywood with Titebond III wood glue and letting it cure for 48 hours. You can use wood clamps to hold it together while its curing, or you can use screws. If you are using screws, just make sure that they aren’t placed where you need to make your cuts!

Once everything is dry, use a table saw to cut it to size. Make sure that the side that waterfalls down is cut at 45 degree angles so that they match up! (You’ll do this by setting your saw blade to 45 degrees before you make the cut!)

We didn’t attach the corner together until we were installing the countertop. I didn’t want the waterfall side of the countertop mounted to the brand new tile, so to stabilize it we used feet. That way they could be adjusted to the exact height and easily level everything out.

To brace the countertop we installed 2×4’s into the studs along the back wall and corner brackets along the side wall. Make sure that they are level and at least an inch above the height of your washer and dryer.

We secured the top of our countertop to the brackets using wood screws.

To join our 2 pieces to make the waterfall, we put brackets on the top piece and secured it to the side of the vertical piece.

Once everything was installed I gave it a light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth everything perfectly and applied a coat of Triple Thick Polyurethane.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, I’ll be happy to help answer them!

Don’t miss any of the other tutorials in this series! Check them out below:

The post $90 DIY Plywood Waterfall Countertop appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

Hey guys!! Happy Wednesday! Thanks for all of the love on the laundry room reveal! Hands down the most popular question was about moving the water hook ups for the washer, so lets dive into it shall we?

When we unstacked the washer and dryer my first reaction was a swear word. I mean, I was thrilled with the new found space but surprised at how high the water lines were. Isn’t that the way that it always is when you tackle something new?!

Water lines that are too high are a massive eyesore and tackling something that is so unfamiliar can seem overwhelming. I totally get it.

My first reaction was to find a way to hide the box.

Should we put the washer and dryer on pedestals?

Could we build a cupboard door?

Or have a removable tile insert?

What about building up a wood backsplash instead of using tile?

How about a really great plant?

Ultimately though, to get the look that I wanted the lines just had to go.

I jumped online to see if it was even legal to move water hook up lines (because I don’t know, what if there are some crazy rules about it?!)

Everything that I found about height said that they can be as low or high as you prefer, as long as they are not lower than the highest water level in your washer. The great thing about that is front loaders don’t fill up all of the way so it wasn’t really a concern. But even installed at the new level it is still higher than the water level could ever reach so we were good.

The first step was to cut away some of the sheet rock to see what types of pipe we were dealing with. Our house is about 12 years old, so I knew it wasn’t going to be a very hairy situation.

Court just used a utility knife to do this. If I were doing it myself I probably would have used a steak knife, isn’t that what kitchen utensils are for? Spatulas for stirring paint etc….

The hoses are standard flexible plastic. We decided to replace the washing machine outlet box to make things easier, so we took the measurement for the pipe and went on a quick date to Home Depot. The replacement box was about $40 and was so easy to use!

After I decided on the countertop height, we trimmed the plastic pipes and attached the new box. (They just push onto the pipe, its so easy!)

Once the hoses were connected Court attached the box to the studs and install was done. All in all it too about 20 minutes.

The last step for this project was to patch the hole in the drywall. Because we were putting up concrete board for the tile, we just filled it in with sheetrock and didn’t worry about patching it more than that. (Sorry I don’t have a pic of just the drywall patch without the countertop!)

Pep talk time. If you have waterlines that are making you crazy, moving them is SO SIMPLE. Don’t be scared, just do it!

Don’t miss any of the other projects in this series!

The post Moving Water Lines in the Laundry Room appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

I’m convinced that there is nothing more motivating than the “Holy crap, we’ll never make it” deadline. We started the laundry room makeover mid Dec. and HAD to have it done before the baby came (Jan 5.)  The great thing about making over such a small space is that 1. It’s small! Projects that would take days in a large space can be done in just a few hours! 2. You can do really awesome stuff without worrying about space overwhelment <—Look mom! New word!

Like I mentioned in the Before post, the space is tiny, really nothing more than a hallway with a bump out for a washer and dryer. But it needed to be better. It needed a pep talk Coach Taylor style. (Tim Riggins I’ll always love you!) And it needed to happen now.

Not so great.

Want to see what it looks like now?

So much better!!

The biggest decision that I had to make was the wall and floor tile. Because it was a small space I wanted something show stopping. After hemming and hawing for all of 2 minutes on homedepot.com I decided on matte black penny rounds for the floors. That was an easy decision, but then came the grout. Grout can massively change the entire appearance of your tile, especially if you are installing something simple with no variation like black penny rounds. Even looking at a bunch of different pictures online didn’t help all that much. (They say its gray but it looks white!?) So I did what any good DIYer would do, I tested it. You can see my 5 options and how they each look over on The Apron.

For the wall tile, I went with this modified white subway tile from Merola. The shape is a little more elongated and slim compared to the traditional size and I loveeeee it! I’ll delve deeper into install in the tutorial post but man isn’t it the stuff dreams are made of?!

I grouted everything with Fusion Pro and it.was.life.changing. If you are embarking on a tile DIY, this is your MVP. It comes premixed (you don’t even have to stir it!) in a rainbow of colors. One thing that throws so many people for a loop when tiling is mixing everything to the right consistency. I know it happens to me! Fusion Pro takes the guess work out. We’ll go into more specifics in the tiling post but this gets 5 gold stars from me!

The countertop was such a simple DIY and I’m loving the waterfall edge! Can you tell we’re still obsessed with stacked plywood over here?

It can be a little hard for me to balance functional + beautiful sometimes but I feel like the cabinet storage is the perfect marriage. It has open shelving for pretty things, and cupboard doors for the not so pretty things that have to live in a laundry room.

The other reality that I had to deal with was cupboard doors. In order to make it so that they didn’t swing open into the walk way and hit the garage door/my head every time I walked by I decided that sliding doors would be so much better.

Simple things like the leather and copper hanging rod rock my world. Its so cute to look at and is completely necessary for a functional laundry room.

Having a countertop to fold things on is a complete game changer. In fact, my laundry couch is getting a little lonesome! Definition: Laundry Couch: The couch in your bedroom that you can never sit on because it holds all of your clean, unfolded laundry.

I cant wait to start sharing the tutorials and things that we learned (the hard way) for this space. But for now, hop over to The Home Depot Blog and check out my tips for picking out grout color and see how 5 different colors look with the black penny tile!

Massive thanks to my bestie The Home Depot for teaming up with me on this project!!

Don’t miss any of the projects in this series! Check the tutorials out below!

The post Laundry Room Makeover: Reveal appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

WARNING: Embarrassing real life pictures ahead!

You guys!!! Holy moly, how has it been so long? I swear the sweet smell of a new baby makes the world spin 15X faster than it did pre-baby. Its just the greatest thing ever and so intoxicating that I don’t want to do anything but hold him and smell his little neck folds.

But good news for everyone who is not within smelling distance of The Bremlin, Court and I managed to pull off a laundry room makeover in the last 2 weeks of December annnnnnd its time to start sharing it!!

I feel like our laundry room is similar to most peoples. Its little. Its dark (no natural light). Its often overrun with crap. Its not something that a lot of people see so it’s down lower on your DIY to do list. Who’s with me?!

Our laundry room is more like a hallway that connects the garage to the house and its functionality isn’t doing anyone ANY favors.

When we moved in we bought a stackable washer and dryer and threw up some cabinets (remember this is pre-blog when DIY was not a thing in my life.) The rationale was that if you stack them, then you’ll have more space to sort laundry and store things. .

SUCH A LIE.

Do you know what it did? It left big non functional spaces on either side of the washer and dryer that basically turned into a giant junk drawer for laundry and other household treasures. It was a MESS.

Also, I’ll be the first to admit that laundry isn’t my best subject as a human being so that could have been part of the problem…

Side note: They were stacked until about 4 minutes before these pictures were taken, Court is REALLY motivated sometimes and forgets about a real before picture.

Making the space more functional was the most important thing on the list. Actually I’d say functionality was tied with making it look awesome, because lets be honest, those cupboards? Bad. That paint? Bad. The linoleum? REALLLLLL bad.

I needed new floors, better storage, a countertop, and some dang personality!

All I can say is that its a good thing that Home Depot has everything I could possibly need to make it happen.

I’m posting the full reveal tomorrow, so make sure you come back! In the meantime, I’ve got to know, what would you change about your laundry room?

Don’t miss the goods! Check out all of the posts in this series:

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