Put Tin on It

I think that "put tin on it" might just be our new catch phrase around here.

We've put tin below our downstairs kitchen bench.

We've put tin below our upstairs kitchen bench.

We've put tin above our upstairs kitchen bench.

We're planning on putting tin above our upstairs laundry bench.

So why not above our downstairs laundry tub, huh?

But first things first. Surprise! We now have a downstairs laundry! If we rewind a bit, see this old not-plastered-yet photo of the garage? The recessed area to the left is the laundry.

And here it was after plastering (and after the height of the floor was raised).

Then we painted the whole garage grey...

After which the carpenter framed out the little laundry nook opening properly with timber trim...

And then we were left with a bare opening. The flooring guys had left a little pile of bamboo floorboards behind when they finished the internal floors, so we decided to cut them to size and add them to the floor of the laundry nook ourselves. Unfortunately it didn't occur to us to do that before the laundry tub was installed, so we had to fit them around it much as we could without disturbing the plumbing fittings inside it.

The laundry tub itself we bought secondhand for $100 rather than buying a new one for over $200. It's in great condition, so why not save the little bit of extra cash?

And... we put tin on it. Actually, we put tin above it. We just managed to scrounge enough of an offcut after covering all of our other tin areas to wrap a little section around the corner.

And I sweet talked our tiler into silicon-ing the gap between the tub and the tin so that we wouldn't get any stray drips down the wall. Not bad, if you ask me! 

But we weren't quite finished with this little space yet. We had a few secondhand cupboards leftover from our downstairs kitchen and upstairs laundry fit-offs, so we figured we might as well pop a few in the little downstairs laundry for some storage.

Tom used his stud-finder to measure where we could screw the cabinets into the wall and actually have their weight supported...

And then set up an extremely sophisticated support system to temporarily hold the cabinet in place while he screwed it into the wall. If you ever want to replicate this support system yourself, Plasma TV and coffee machine boxes (which we borrowed from the new tenant) do the job remarkably well.

We had three little leftover cabinets in all, but unfortunately the laundry nook was just a little bit too narrow to sit them each side by side. We thought about every possible configuration to include all three, but just couldn't manage it. And we wanted to leave vertical space for a dryer above the washing machine, so we left it at two cupboards.

We're quite proud of our little laundry nook! And considering that the only things we actually had to purchase for it were the $100 laundry tub and a $25 mixer tap, we can't complain about the cost!

What do you think? Are you jealous of our tenant?