De-Wallpapering and Orbital Sanding

I learned a couple tricks today from the best local DIY-er I know, my mother-in-law.

She showed me how to use the humidifier tool to remove wallpaper. It looks a little something like this...

Works pretty slick! At least for the wallpaper we took off tonight.

Now, when the wallpaper came off, there was this lovely thick layer of paint between the wallpaper, the chair rail that was lining the wallpaper, and the wall. She also had the idea to use Luke's (my *cough cough*) orbital sander to buff that ridge out so when we paint, the line won't show up.

Let me tell you, that worked like a charm. I was prepared to hand scrape the whole thing. This worked significantly better, and faster.

Those are my tips and tricks for today. Sorry I don't have better pictures for you...more soon. The house flip is never-ending!

Laundry Room Flip

Yesterday, I toyed with the idea of quitting this blog. To be honest, I'm still toying with it. I don't write nearly as much as I'd like, I have so much going on in my life right now with the move, I feel like I constantly have things to do, and hell, no one reads it.

But there are so many flips happening in my house right now, it's actually kind of fun, so we'll see if I can get a few of them posted.

Starting with the laundry room!

It was our first room that we needed to flip because the previous owners didn't leave their washer and dryer behind. We ordered new ones from Hoersch Appliances (I recommend, they were reasonably priced and family owned; they'll come out and fix anything if it breaks), but wanted to have the room done before they put them in so we wouldn't have to move them!

So the old laundry room had those stick on tiles, a few of which were peeling up. I knew pretty quick that I wanted new floors but didn't know exactly what kind. I thought maybe new stick on tiles, or something similar. We found some super nice slat fitting vinyl flooring at Menards that my husband and father-in-law worked their butts off to install.

Obviously we painted, got the floors installed, brought in the new washer and dryer, hung a few signs, repainted the door, hung some curtains, and voila! A brand new laundry room!

As you'll see through the projects, I'm eternally grateful for my mother-in-law. I have a rough idea of what I want in each room, but she's so much better at matching paint colors than I am. I've had the Gimbel's newspaper ad (antique shop in Scandinavia, $?) for a few years and wanted it to be the centerpiece of my "someday" laundry room. She picked a color in it, matched it, and suddenly I had a nicely coordinated laundry. She also found the curtains (Shopko, $12), which are adorable. The sign is from Hobby Lobby ($13), the rug from Kohls ($10ish). Oh and the magnetic valence rod, which I didn't know existed, Menards ($14).

Mind you, I might like to switch out the hardware eventually (ick, gold), but small potatoes for right now.