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Does anyone have thoughts on an upstairs laundry room?
My house has an odd room on the second level. The room is strangely shaped, has poor lighting, it’s hot, and it is only accessible through my bedroom. We’ve attempted using it first as an office and later as a gym. Neither has worked out. Neighbors who have the same floor plan have tried using it as a dressing room, nursery, craft room, or TV room with limited success. Nearly everyone has said it’s wasted space. We pretty much just dump stuff there that doesn’t have a home or that we need to hide from the kids.
We also have a tiny laundry room on our main floor and no mud room. The laundry room is so small that there is barely room for me with our huge washer/dryer and daily baskets of laundry. My kids shoes hang on a rack by the garage door and their coats/back packs hang in my kitchen. I have a chest of drawers in the kitchen for gift wrap, craft supplies, batteries, charging computers... I dream of having a mud room and having additional storage on the main floor. Right now, the only storage on the main floor aside from hooks and dressers I’ve added is a small coat closet which holds guest coats, boots, the vacuum cleaner...
Today, I had a friend who is an interior decorator visit my home. I showed her the odd room and we brainstormed what we could do with it. She was stumped until she started asking me what I do. (Do you do yoga? Meditate? Craft? Watch TV? .....Um, I do a lot of laundry. Laundry.all.day.long.) I mentioned that I’d suggested making it an upstairs laundry/linen/storage/desk/craft area and then converting my main floor laundry room into a mud room but my husband vetoed the idea. He is concerned about flooding, ventilation, heat, vibration, noise.... He also felt that it would be cumbersome for guests or our children to do laundry because the room is only accessible through our room. Also, the expense of the renovation intimidated him and he’s never intimidated by expenses.
The decorator says that she can address all of his concerns. She said that the ventilation and vibration shouldn’t be a problem, flood damage would no worse than it would be if a second floor bathroom flooded, we can add a second layer of dry wall behind the machines to reduce sound. We can install fans to control the temperature. There is already plumbing there because the odd room is above our kitchen....
She proposed pushing out a wall from K1’s room (the smallest bedroom in the house which also is the only room that shares a wall with the odd room). This would add about 3 feet to his room and expand his closet space, reduce the size of the odd room (which is already the smallest upstairs room) and make the shape of the odd room less odd. The room would be almost rectangular then and would be about the size of a very large walk in closet. Then moving the main laundry upstairs while leaving a small stackable washer/dryer, slop sink, and mud room/storage functions in what is now our laundry room. We would leave the smaller laundry function downstairs to accommodate kitchen linens (dish towels, table linen), sports/swim gear, and guest laundry.
This is a huge, expensive project. We’d be doing it in conjunction with several other smaller household projects (flooring being the most significant, the others being nominal in comparison), so we’d most likely have to do the renovation in phases as I’m not about to do a $50k renovation all at once. Such as, first expanding K1’s room and doing the flooring throughout the house so we wouldn’t have to re-do flooring once we were ready to move the laundry. Second, installing plumbing, ventilation, etc. in preparation for moving the laundry upstairs. Etc. I’m worried we could be living with renovations for years. It sounds like the biggest expense and inconvenience would be in the first phase.
The decorator is telling me that this project would be a benefit when it comes time to sell the house because everyone hates the odd room in this floor plan. She says it’s a big house and upstairs laundry rooms are becoming more desirable and that we would be able to recoup about 80% of the renovation costs when we sell. Homes in our neighborhood are desirable (good schools) and we intend to stay here indefinitely, but, you know, medicine is a bitch. I love the idea of making this odd room super functional but, OMG, this is so expensive that it makes me sick and what if it’s a huge mistake?
Thoughts?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
My house has an odd room on the second level. The room is strangely shaped, has poor lighting, it’s hot, and it is only accessible through my bedroom. We’ve attempted using it first as an office and later as a gym. Neither has worked out. Neighbors who have the same floor plan have tried using it as a dressing room, nursery, craft room, or TV room with limited success. Nearly everyone has said it’s wasted space. We pretty much just dump stuff there that doesn’t have a home or that we need to hide from the kids.
We also have a tiny laundry room on our main floor and no mud room. The laundry room is so small that there is barely room for me with our huge washer/dryer and daily baskets of laundry. My kids shoes hang on a rack by the garage door and their coats/back packs hang in my kitchen. I have a chest of drawers in the kitchen for gift wrap, craft supplies, batteries, charging computers... I dream of having a mud room and having additional storage on the main floor. Right now, the only storage on the main floor aside from hooks and dressers I’ve added is a small coat closet which holds guest coats, boots, the vacuum cleaner...
Today, I had a friend who is an interior decorator visit my home. I showed her the odd room and we brainstormed what we could do with it. She was stumped until she started asking me what I do. (Do you do yoga? Meditate? Craft? Watch TV? .....Um, I do a lot of laundry. Laundry.all.day.long.) I mentioned that I’d suggested making it an upstairs laundry/linen/storage/desk/craft area and then converting my main floor laundry room into a mud room but my husband vetoed the idea. He is concerned about flooding, ventilation, heat, vibration, noise.... He also felt that it would be cumbersome for guests or our children to do laundry because the room is only accessible through our room. Also, the expense of the renovation intimidated him and he’s never intimidated by expenses.
The decorator says that she can address all of his concerns. She said that the ventilation and vibration shouldn’t be a problem, flood damage would no worse than it would be if a second floor bathroom flooded, we can add a second layer of dry wall behind the machines to reduce sound. We can install fans to control the temperature. There is already plumbing there because the odd room is above our kitchen....
She proposed pushing out a wall from K1’s room (the smallest bedroom in the house which also is the only room that shares a wall with the odd room). This would add about 3 feet to his room and expand his closet space, reduce the size of the odd room (which is already the smallest upstairs room) and make the shape of the odd room less odd. The room would be almost rectangular then and would be about the size of a very large walk in closet. Then moving the main laundry upstairs while leaving a small stackable washer/dryer, slop sink, and mud room/storage functions in what is now our laundry room. We would leave the smaller laundry function downstairs to accommodate kitchen linens (dish towels, table linen), sports/swim gear, and guest laundry.
This is a huge, expensive project. We’d be doing it in conjunction with several other smaller household projects (flooring being the most significant, the others being nominal in comparison), so we’d most likely have to do the renovation in phases as I’m not about to do a $50k renovation all at once. Such as, first expanding K1’s room and doing the flooring throughout the house so we wouldn’t have to re-do flooring once we were ready to move the laundry. Second, installing plumbing, ventilation, etc. in preparation for moving the laundry upstairs. Etc. I’m worried we could be living with renovations for years. It sounds like the biggest expense and inconvenience would be in the first phase.
The decorator is telling me that this project would be a benefit when it comes time to sell the house because everyone hates the odd room in this floor plan. She says it’s a big house and upstairs laundry rooms are becoming more desirable and that we would be able to recoup about 80% of the renovation costs when we sell. Homes in our neighborhood are desirable (good schools) and we intend to stay here indefinitely, but, you know, medicine is a bitch. I love the idea of making this odd room super functional but, OMG, this is so expensive that it makes me sick and what if it’s a huge mistake?
Thoughts?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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