When the appliances in the kitchen were installed, it was time to install our washer and dryer. We moved our Whirlpool Duet front loaders, which we love, from our old house. So, as this story unfolds keep in mind these units were loaded on a truck, driven over 1700 miles and stored in a facility for 6 months before being installed in our old laundry room configuration.
When demolition began on this project, these units were placed in the garage and covered with tarps. The garage is less than 25 feet from where they were installed and running perfectly.
Construction took much longer than expected, or promised, for that matter. We were without a washer or dryer for a month already when Thanksgiving rolled around. Mercifully, my cousin and his wife offered use of their washer and dryer while we were up at their place for Thanksgiving. So, I did two loads there, which at least got us the important items. Other people probably would have gone to a laundromat. I've never used a public washer and dryer in my life and I wasn't about to now.
So, I couldn't have been more excited when our old favorite washer and dryer were installed in the new laundry room. The room is small, so I wasn't standing in there, but my husband says he saw them test both units and they worked.
I think the truck was still in the driveway when I started doing laundry. Load of wash worked great and then I put it in the dryer. Yep, seemed to work. But, when I went back in to unload, the clothes were still damp. I tried to set it again and the whole thing was dead. In a complete panic, we are calling back the electrician, who couldn't come back for a day or two. Mind you, it is freezing outside, so I am finding all sorts of places to air dry this load of laundry. Thankfully, I didn't start this project with bedspreads. All the electrical checked out, which means we now have to get our dryer repaired. Remember how we started this story? How could this thing be dead after all it had lived through? I was told the garage must have been too damp and the circuit board got ruined from that. Well, the washer has circuit boards. It still worked.
Long story even longer. We got a company to come out and look at the dryer and they determined it needed a new board. So, one was ordered and a few days later installed. The dryer only half worked. So, we called them again and they said it needed the other board replaced (thank God there are only two in the whole thing), but they didn't see why we would spend the money when it did turn on and run. Really? I've got a fancy dryer with all these settings and I'm going to settle for "incinerate" and have to time it myself so the clothes don't burn? Enter new company to finish this job. Second board was ordered and several days later installed. We had our washer and dryer back fully functional, finally.
The good news is that we love the laundry room. Here are some of the finishing steps:
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| We chose this dark amber glass tile and capped it with an ochre color travertine pencil. This is prior to grouting and you can see that we pulled up the trim piece under the window to make the tile installation easier. We put it back in when grout was dry with construction adhesive. |
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| I'm probably the only person on the planet that would tile behind the washer and dryer, or paint for that matter. But, it just looks better. |
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| Close up on the glass tiles before grout. |
The room really turned out great and we are very proud of it. We painted it the same color as our entry hall. Here is the final reveal:
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| View from the doorway looking in. |
Do you wonder what that black hole in the ceiling is? A laundry chute! It occurred to me, apparently months after my husband mentioned already according to him, that the master closet was above and adjacent to the laundry room with attic above the laundry room. It looked like it would work. This was another item that the contractor just couldn't get their head around, so we did ourselves. We considered options to build the chute, which would be very short and have an angle, and we decided on duct work. We had our heating and air guy put it in. Then we ordered a cabinet door that matched our bathroom cabinets and fit the space.
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| We put the basket for the dry cleaning right below. Either throw it down the chute or into the basket--easy. |
We also included a few other features in our laundry room. One is a folding table. It isn't too big, but it does the job. The way we made this work in a small space was to make it the lid to the laundry sorting bags.
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And I needed space for drying items that cannot go in the dryer. We had these in our old laundry room and loved them because they stored flat against the wall.
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We put the shelf in to give more storage and that allowed me to put baskets up there for the hand laundry items. Keeps it neat and clean and leaves all the workspace open and ready to use.
Next post will be about the great flood. Stay tuned.
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