It is week 5 of the One Room Challenge and we are talking all things laundry cabinet. When we were taking this homeowner through houses she wanted a place for her laundry to be upstairs. She is a young youthful grandmother yet she didn’t want to be carrying heavy bags of laundry downstairs. She also wanted to live in the Historic neighborhood in our town where everything has charm and is walkable. Yet, most of these old homes laundry units are down in the basement.
The one thing we liked about this house is that the master had this extra closet….that never was used as a closet. When we purchased the house our original thought was make this the laundry room and renovated the current bathroom.
That vision started to change when we realized we had no space for a walk in shower. Our client knew that this one house bathroom really needed a bathtub if she ever sold it, yet she really wanted a walk in shower. We could use the entire space for all of those things but she would not have room for the laundry. There is really no other place upstairs to put the laundry. Bummer.
Our fix was a laundry cabinet with a European size stackable washer and dryer.
This is not the only brand of stackable Euro style washer and dryers out there. There are a few that are under $1000, but in our circumstance worth the cost. The number one reason is this brand of dryer has a heat pump. This means it does not need to be vented out. What! Yes…. no venting out.
Our plan was to buy an IKEA Sektion pantry like you see above (without all the drawers), build it out a little bit for our needs, buy the island side panels to cover our adjustments, and purchase doors from Semihandmade with cut outs for glass. Great plan right? If Covid timelines wouldn’t mess everything up. I had planned on heading to Ikea in Kansas City the moment these came back in stock. They never did and still havent. So…. Plan B.
Enter Plan B
A beatup melamine Kitchen cabinet from the Habitat for Humanity Restore. The plan was to simply modify the cabinet to our needs. Here were our needs:
- 28″ Deep (it was 24 so we needed to build it out from the wall with some 1 x 4 wood.)
- 30″ opening inside and no more than 33″ outside finish
- 7″ of venting above the dryer.
- Vented doors
- We had to build the cabinet onsite because a cabinet this size could not fit the doors yet a 24″ kitchen pantry could fit through
- Its not a need but I wanted the cabinet to be finished like a piece of furniture and the base trim to go all the way around it.
- Yet, building a platform ended up being a need because this cabinet needed some support to hold the washer and dryer.
- Sliding pocket hinges so the cabinet doors can fully be out of the way.
We built the platform and then we pushed the cabinet out to the edge. We braced the cabinet to the wall with 1 x 4 framing and then skinned the outside and inside with cabinet grade plywood.
Trimming out the bottom made it feel more finished
The doors are being made as we speak but in the mean time…
We are starting to paint and caulk everything. I got the side fully painted because we installed the vanity. Now to paint and caulk the rest. Up next week….. all thing storage.
Follow along
- Follow My ORC renovation here: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4
- Follow the featured designers week 5 progress here.
- Follow my fellow guest participants here.
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