Mudroom Renovation: Drywall Goes Up!

My husband and I have been renovating our mudroom, a project that has been in progress now for over a year. It started sometime during the summer of 2011 with the partial removal of the old linoleum floors. Then, we started accumulating items that we wanted to work into our new room, and the space became dysfunctional and cluttered. I decided that it was time to resurrect the project and create a more functional space. We had planned a long-weekend away at the end of October, but because of impending Hurricane Sandy, we decided to stay home and tear down some walls instead. We started by removing the walls forming the laundry “closet”, which essentially turned our mud room into a hallway leading to the laundry, basement access, powder room, and back door. The ceiling in the former mudroom was about a foot lower then the ceilings in the rest of the main floor, so my husband Matt suggested that maybe we should pull out the ceiling and raise it to match the rest of the house. The mud room area is in the rear of the house and does not have a second story above it, and has a separate roof that is slightly pitched from the middle to the outside edges. We pulled down the old ceilings, and decided that we would be able to vault the ceilings to match the pitch of the roof. So, we’re done with the demolition and ready to add some framing for the drywall. But, Matt has another idea–he’s decided that we should move the basement door. In the current set-up, the basement door opens up to a landing, space which could be reclaimed simply by pivoting the entrance 90 degrees, creating a nice little alcove for the litter box. Litter box placement in the laundry area was always an issue–previously the litter box was shoved into the laundry “closet” next to the dryer, which was out of sight but very hard to access. Originally, we had planned on building a cat door into a cabinet to house the litter box, but I had some concerns about it, so I was thrilled that Matt came up with a better solution. After moving the door, we added some framing to extend the existing bathroom wall as well as the wall behind the washer and dryer to meet the vaulted ceiling. Before commencing with drywall, Matt moved around some electrical wiring, and relocated the light switch closer to the new basement entrance.

The drywall begins. Drywalling our vaulted ceiling was quite challenging because of the intricate angels that it has. It was especially hard for the two of us (mostly me) to hold the large pieces of drywall up above our heads while trying to attach them to the ceiling studs. To help support the drywall, we built a “T” using a full length 2×4 and attached a short cut-off to the top to prop underneath and help hold it up to the ceiling. We managed to get all the drywall up on the ceiling, then called in the pros from JA Drywall to do the finishing work. The room looks great and is really starting to come together. Now it’s a race to pick out a new washer and dryer and cabinets for our new space.

Are you tackling a drywall project? You might want to take a look at these videos by DIYnetwork for some great tips and tricks.