The final piece has fallen into place. Late last month, Baird Brothers delivered two hundred pounds of wood to our front door. On top lay the behemoth 127 inch maple top destined for our newly renovated living room. Below that sat something a bit more foreboding: an 88 inch, one hundred pound, butcherblock-style walnut desk top. The most difficult part? This top had nothing to sit on top of. We would be floating this beast against the wall using a 2×4 fastened to the studs we hoped to find. We also added a leg from The Container Store, but it’s less structural than you might think.
Long before we began budgeting for our first floor reno, Hannah knew the one thing that needed changing. Being a Cape, our home had one bedroom on the first floor and two on the second. As you can see below, the first floor bedroom was destined to become our laundry-cum-office.
That brown wall? That’s cork. Not only was it a mess to remove, it smelled horrible. Once it was down (and before the contractors got in there), Rich spent more time than necessary planning and installing our home’s would-be network. You see, the other side of that wall houses our entertainment unit: TV, Xbox, receiver, etc. Directly below is where our FiOS connection enters the house. By connecting everything via CAT6, we never have to worry about spotty Wi-Fi.
Another big deal for this project was laundry space. Previously, we would need to trek down two sets of stairs into the basement. On top of this, the washer and dryer that came with our home were a bit, shall we say, dated. It was time to upgrade to a gas dryer! We ended up stacking the LG WM3770HWA and DLGX3571W. By the way, if you’re a Massachusetts resident, don’t forget to check out current Mass Save rebates.
Next, router, network storage, and printer were all precisely measured to ensure our order of semi-custom cabinets left us with no space wasted. Once installed, we were finally able to empty the last of our moving boxes. To the left of our new storage space, we did something a little different. What good was a laundry room without space to drip-dry? After a trip to Home Depot, we set to painting and installing rods built entirely from plumbing parts. Industrial and functional! Finally, the walnut desk went in. It has been a lot of work (and more heavy lifting than either of us had anticipated), but we couldn’t be happier with how the room turned out!
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