Day 261- The Sweet Smell of Laundry

I don't know about you, but I looooove the smell of clean laundry. Especially sheets. Confessions of a sheetaholic right there. Sadly, our house has been full of smells of molding MDF, snake musk and sometimes bacon, but it HASN'T smelled of laundry.

Today friend(s) - hey, I'm being optimistic- that all changes. As you learned in this post, we had a little issue with the dryer hose terminating in a void under some stairs. So we called in the big guns, otherwise known as my Dad. Dad was kind enough to fly alllll the way from California to help around the house, and he brought his hole saws with him. As a side note, my dad also attempted to carry on all these hole saws. This wasn't a good idea, as one might imagine. But onward!

No Sir, you may not carry those on

So this is how we blew a hole in the exterior of the house and vented the dryer outside.

First we figured out where the heck to make the exterior hole. We knew there was a void that was wood, we knew it was next to the exterior wall. But we didn't know how much concrete might be in the way. So after measuring and wandering up and down steps, we did the logical thing. We drilled a hole in the wall with a large bore drill bit, you know, to see where it came out.

Hey, go inside and tell me if you see the drill bit

Turns out there was no concrete in the way! Score one for us. 

Note the wood inside

From the inside

However, the stair support WAS in the way. Score 1 to the house. Hmmmm, we'll get back to that one. But not to be dissuaded, we carried on and put a four and quarter inch hole in the wall, and once the house was vented, we left and made a trip to Home Depot to find materials tame the laundry beast.

Cage

Expandable foam

Flexihose

True duct tape

By the time we got back, the Hubbs was chomping at the bit to get into this laundry action, so I became superfluous and fetched tools as the men needed them. At this point Dad decided that the portion of the step was supported well enough and we just drilled through that wood too. Now we have a nice clear space of the flexihose.  The cage was inserted outside, to keep all the cave crickets, spiders, skeeters and mice out of the vent. Birds too. Damn nesting birds.

Then we taped that bad boy to the flexihose and taped THAT bad boy to the existing hose that was nailed to the joists and just wasn't coming out.

How YOU doin'?

Now for the moment of truth, we moved the dryer into the room, hooked it up, plugged it in and..... IT WORKS. SWEET BABY JESUS, IT WORKS AND IT'S HOT... oh, there might be some crap in the hose, but who cares? I can dry clothes without fear of a house fire! There was a little air leakage that we couldn't get to with the tape, so it was spray foam to the rescue.We also foamed behind the siding and under the cage to discourage pests from even thinking of entering.  When in doubt, spray foam it out!

Nothing a little spray foam can't fix

At this point, I had to go to work, and let's be honest, they didn't need me anymore. So I went to bring home the bacon, and the men folk went to work on the washer. Turns out that we needed new hoses, but by the time I got home we had lift off. Needless to say, I've been washing clothes slowly but surely. I'm a little nervous of running the washer and dryer together, but so far I have clean sheets, towels and bathrugs. None have been eaten and they all smell wonderbar! The best gift of all is that doing laundry is also helping remove the musty house smell.

My lovelies

Here's the to do list in this room as of now:

1) Replace the sockets and painted over light switches

2) Switch hinges on dryer door

3) Close hole by vent pipe

4) Remove linoeum and MDF subfloor

5) Replace with hardibacker

6) Tile

7) Paint  (something cheerful)

8) Figure out storage

9) Replace basement door with a firedoor

8) Close entrance to foyer and create a closet

Oh and here's a cave cricket to give you nightmares. :)

Hello friends!

Day 252: C'mon on baby, light my fire (hazard)

Our kitchen, which you have now had the pleasure of seeing, flows into the laundry room. So if we are going to take out a whole kitchen floor, why leave the linoeum in the laundry room alone? Why not do it all? So that was is the plan. However, after the debacle of removing kitchen flooring we thought we might wait a little bit and actually get a new floor in one room before ripping out the floor in another. Don't worry, we bought 540 square feet of tile, something or someone will be tiled!

So instead of removing the floor immediately, we chose to remove the old washer and dryer. I wanted to keep them, well, because I'm cheap and if it ain't broke, don't fix it! But the Hubs convinced me that washers and dryers that have sitting around gathering dust shouldn't attempt to clean our clothes. So we took them out to the dumpster and found a lovely, non-vomit inducing scene under the washer.

Again, it case you didn't see it last time

If you have never moved a washer or dryer to clean under the appliance, may I recommend you do so? I'm still shuddering at the smell and feel of cleaning that mess. You'll also notice in that picture we have a wonderful plastic hose protruding from a rather large hole in the wall. We saw that and said, hey well get one of those new fangled metal pipes and close up that hole. It'll be like new! But we didn't have a washer or dryer, so it went to the back burner.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, we helped my coworker move and she gave us her 3 year old washer and dryer as a thank you. SCORE! Free washer and dryer, now we don't have to wash our clothes in the creek (ok, a friends house, but you get the point)! And last weekend we were finally close enough to being out of underpants done enough with the kitchen, to work on this hole/pipe situation.

First I scouted around the outside looking for the vent. No dice.  So I looked further up the house, closer to the roof for a vent. Still nothing. Then I remembered this weird screened in area under the stairs one could access from the basement.

That's a strange place for dryer lint

When we pulled the screen off the joists, this is what we found:

Yes, that is a cubic yard of dryer lint in the house. Thank goodness it didn't catch fire and burn the whole house down. I guess the previous home owners were of the opinion that dryers don't need to vent outside, they just have to vent to where you can clean the lint. Please note that is a terrible idea. So while replacing the pretty plastic hose with a better metal one, we will also be blowing a hole in the outside wall to vent the dryer.

 I will keep you posted. And someday I dream of having all clean clothes. Thank goodness we have 9 sets of sheets and an obscene amount of towels.