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I. Noah GuyHandyman ServicesI. Noah Guy Handyman Services, LLC

Laundry room remodel — window closed up, brick wall built, shelves hung

This laundry room in Washington County, Utah went from a failing painted-shut wood window to a finished thin-brick accent wall with stained floating shelves. It is the clearest example on this site of why one person across several trades is worth something: closing an opening properly is framing, insulation, drywall, texture, paint, masonry veneer and finish carpentry — seven steps, four trades, one person accountable for whether you can still see where the window used to be.

4 stages

  1. An old pale-green wood double-hung window exposed to the studs with the drywall cut back around it, power tools resting on a washing machine1. Before

    The starting point — drywall cut back to the studs around a painted-shut wood double-hung. The handwriting on the glass is Joe's: "found it like this, left my mark."

  2. A large taped and first-coated drywall patch where a window opening was framed and closed, with pencilled dimensions written on it2. Framed and closed

    Opening framed, insulated and drywalled, with the layout dimensions pencilled straight onto the patch. Taped and first-coated.

  3. Two chunky dark-stained floating shelves mounted above a white washer and dryer with a laser level line visible on the wall3. Shelves hung

    Wall finished and painted, and two stained floating shelves hung — anchored into the framing that went in when the window came out.

  4. A finished laundry room with two stained floating shelves on a hand-laid thin brick accent wall above a white washer and dryer, styled with plants4. Finished

    Hand-laid thin-brick veneer behind the shelves. Nothing in the finished room says there was ever a window in that wall.

Why this job is on the site twice

It shows up under drywall repair, under finish carpentry, and under everything else, because it genuinely is all three. That is the argument for hiring one person who does several trades rather than three people who each do one.

The sequence

Closing up an exterior window is not a patch. Done properly it is:

  1. Pull the window and cut the drywall back to sound framing
  2. Frame the opening, matching stud spacing so anything hung later has something to hit
  3. Insulate
  4. Hang, tape and float drywall flat to the surrounding wall
  5. Match the existing wall texture
  6. Match the paint
  7. Patch the exterior

Only after all seven does anything decorative happen. The shelves in stage three are anchored into framing that was deliberately placed in stage two — which is the kind of thing that only lines up when the same person is doing both.

The mark on the glass

The first photograph has handwriting on the window pane: Joe Denter · I Noah Guy Handyman Services · found it like this, left my mark.

He signs and dates the framing he opens up, on the surfaces that are about to be covered over. Nobody sees it again unless somebody opens the same wall in thirty years — which is rather the point.

The trades in this job

Tell me what needs doing.

Describe the job and send a photo if you have one. The person who reads it is the person who will do the work.

Get a quoteCall (435) 229-2187