Upstairs Laundry Room

[MrsK]

What about a babe cave for you?

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This is my cave. On the main floor off the foyer and great room.

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[TulipsAndSunscreen]

I was picturing an interior room with no windows but I feel like the lighting situation could definitely improve in there with a few tweaks no matter what you use that room for.

Would you consider getting a stackable W/D downstairs as a first step to make more room in the laundry room?


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[MrsK]

Could you stack the W/D in the laundry room? Our new laundry room will also be a mudroom and I’m thinking of stacking ours simply because I want more floor space.


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I'd have to replace them with front loaders and take out cabinets. I really don't like front loading washers. I've seen smaller families in our neighborhood put smaller stackable units in their laundry rooms but we need the bigger machines.

Someone suggested a garage mudroom. Many of our neighbors who have teens have done that and made their garages into man caves with bars and TVs and sofas, etc. Ours is mostly full of bikes, outdoor toys, and gardening equipment at this stage. Thing with the garage mudroom is that it gets crazy hot and also very cold here. I just get creeped out at the thought of mice in our boots, dirt, snakes, etc. Also, kids need their backpacks and stuff inside the house. I'd much prefer to keep it all indoors.

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[rufflesanddots]

Nice babe cave! Your cousin sounds funny.

How much would it cost to create a window in the odd room? Wondering if that would some some problems. I feel like being able to open it if you're in there running laundry while crafting or something would be ideal. Our apartment gets so hot on laundry day. I'd definitely be opening windows if I could!

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[MrsK]

Nice babe cave! Your cousin sounds funny.

How much would it cost to create a window in the odd room? Wondering if that would some some problems. I feel like being able to open it if you're in there running laundry while crafting or something would be ideal. Our apartment gets so hot on laundry day. I'd definitely be opening windows if I could!

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My cousin is absolutely hilarious. She has 9 children, plays the bagpipes, and she's one of the wittiest people I've ever met.

I'd looooove to have another window in that room. The little corner ones are not helpful for letting in light. Just heat from the sun all morning.

I guess I'm thinking that if I could make the room super functional, we'd actually use it. We don't *need* an office or a home gym because we prefer to work and exercise elsewhere. But we need to do laundry and prefer to do it at home. If we could have a pleasant/convenient place to do laundry while also making that room function for storage/office/craft, it would be used daily.





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[Phoebe]

My cousin is absolutely hilarious. She has 9 children, plays the bagpipes, and she's one of the wittiest people I've ever met.

I'd looooove to have another window in that room. The little corner ones are not helpful for letting in light. Just heat from the sun all morning.

I guess I'm thinking that if I could make the room super functional, we'd actually use it. We don't *need* an office or a home gym because we prefer to work and exercise elsewhere. But we need to do laundry and prefer to do it at home. If we could have a pleasant/convenient place to do laundry while also making that room function for storage/office/craft, it would be used daily.





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We had an upstairs laundry in our old house. Loved it! In the house we built, our main floor laundry is extraordinarily small. We had an extra closet upstairs where we put a stacked washer and dryer. I love having it upstairs.


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[MrsK]

My brother, his wife, and my nephews stayed with us last weekend. Lambie woke with a nosebleed this morning, and K1 wet the bed. I have 4 upstairs beds that need linens washed today plus towels plus a weekend of household laundry and my basement guestroom. Four trips to bring everything downstairs and one to bring laundry up fr from the basement. It's at least 7 loads of laundry. We do this often. I'm so wanting that upstairs laundry today.

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[TulipsAndSunscreen]

Do it. Sounds like you'll use it.

I think you can see on the thread that you'll want to keep it flexible as some of us would have used it as an upstairs office but if you design with that in mind, I don't see why you wouldn't do something that would increase the functionality of the house for your own use.

[medpedspouse]

As far as the lighting and the temperature, these are easy/fairly inexpensive fixes. Have you considered one of those ductless AC units that can either be attached to the ceiling or an outside wall? They are not window units and fairly unnoticeable. For the light, I am a huuuge fan of sky light tubes. They look like recessed lighting inside but can add so much light to a room. What do you think of those? We installed two in our kitchen and rarely turn on the light during the day.

[MrsK]

As far as the lighting and the temperature, these are easy/fairly inexpensive fixes. Have you considered one of those ductless AC units that can either be attached to the ceiling or an outside wall? They are not window units and fairly unnoticeable. For the light, I am a huuuge fan of sky light tubes. They look like recessed lighting inside but can add so much light to a room. What do you think of those? We installed two in our kitchen and rarely turn on the light during the day.

No matter what we do, we need to resolve the lighting and temperature issue. I don’t know how the prior owner had an electric fireplace in there. I’d just suffocate. They probably just staged it that way for sale. It didn’t have a door on the room then either so maybe it was more tolerable.


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[MrsK]

And last night, Lambie wet her bed and K1 snuck a chocolate bar into his leaving a mess. So much laundry.

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[JDAZ11]

My brother, his wife, and my nephews stayed with us last weekend. Lambie woke with a nosebleed this morning, and K1 wet the bed. I have 4 upstairs beds that need linens washed today plus towels plus a weekend of household laundry and my basement guestroom. Four trips to bring everything downstairs and one to bring laundry up fr from the basement. It's at least 7 loads of laundry. We do this often. I'm so wanting that upstairs laundry today.

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I had the smallest upstairs laundry room in our old house and I still loved it. Even without room to fold, it was great. It was a little loud for a few minutes during a spin cycle, but I’m sure we could have done something to minimize that.

Laundry shoots do help too, but you still have to carry it all back up. I know it’s so expensive to put new hook ups in though. Big jobs spending on the access to the plumbing. (Weirdly, our last washer drained into a sink - I didn’t like it, but I assume something like that might save you money). But then you can’t have things soaking in the sink during a wash cycle - which bothered me a lot.

If we had stayed in our old house I was going to put hook ups back in the basement for a second larger set. (Our second floor stackables weren’t huge). In that house, the garage was part of the basement and so we used a section as a mud room for shoes and coats etc. In our current rental, our laundry is in kind of a huge mud room, and I love making my kids get undressed in there after school or getting dirty outside (honestly I kind of want one of those dog baths in our next house... we don’t have a dog. I just want to be able to hose them off sometimes. Lol - the parks here almost all have sand. It’s gross.).

I think you should do it. It sounds like the best possible use of the space. Laundry is (sadly) such a huge part of life. It’s a good investment in your sanity and physical wellbeing (I had a nasty fall down basement stairs in an apartment building once while carrying a laundry basket... it sucked).


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[JDAZ11]

It didn't work as an office because the lighting was poor and the room is hot. It's just uncomfortable no matter how we decorated it. Like being in a windowless box. Its out of the way so it is often forgotten and just became cluttered. We started it as an office and it ended up being treated just as storage for projects to be done "later". DrK prefers to work at the kitchen table and doesn't study at all at home. He wants to study at the library, exercise at the gym.

The prior owner of our house used the basement bedroom as their office and staged this room as a sitting area with an electric fireplace.

We've seen others as nurseries for babies but then those families move out when they decide the baby needs a proper bedroom. Other neighbors made them into dressing rooms but our master bath/closet are bigger than most people's kitchens so there really is no point. It really is a space that no one with the floor plan is using for much other than as a dumping ground.

My cousin suggested that I wallpaper it with Donny Osmond posters and build some sort of shrine in there just to freak people out.

If we put laundry there, we would also use it as a craft/storage/office area. I'm thinking of something like these pictures. We would keep the connectors for the downstairs laundry in case someone wanted to convert it back in the future.

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I’ve seen a lot of this while house shopping lately. It’s popular. Craft/laundry type spaces with like cabinets for wrapping supplies etc. way more popular than I would have guessed. Some even have like multiple desks so it kind doubles as a homework space. You could probably easily fit two sets of stackables, a sink, and a bunch of cabinets in a room the size of yours.


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[MrsK]

I had the smallest upstairs laundry room in our old house and I still loved it. Even without room to fold, it was great. It was a little loud for a few minutes during a spin cycle, but I’m sure we could have done something to minimize that.

Laundry shoots do help too, but you still have to carry it all back up. I know it’s so expensive to put new hook ups in though. Big jobs spending on the access to the plumbing. (Weirdly, our last washer drained into a sink - I didn’t like it, but I assume something like that might save you money). But then you can’t have things soaking in the sink during a wash cycle - which bothered me a lot.

If we had stayed in our old house I was going to put hook ups back in the basement for a second larger set. (Our second floor stackables weren’t huge). In that house, the garage was part of the basement and so we used a section as a mud room for shoes and coats etc. In our current rental, our laundry is in kind of a huge mud room, and I love making my kids get undressed in there after school or getting dirty outside (honestly I kind of want one of those dog baths in our next house... we don’t have a dog. I just want to be able to hose them off sometimes. Lol - the parks here almost all have sand. It’s gross.).

I think you should do it. It sounds like the best possible use of the space. Laundry is (sadly) such a huge part of life. It’s a good investment in your sanity and physical wellbeing (I had a nasty fall down basement stairs in an apartment building once while carrying a laundry basket... it sucked).


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The room I’m looking at is directly above our kitchen. So, the decorator is telling me that plumbing shouldn’t be a problem at all. She says the pipes (but not hook ups) are already there. I’d probably do the sink in the mudroom so we could dump the really messy stuff into it right when the kids come in through the garage and not schlep it through the whole house.

I think, if we don’t move the wall to my son’s room but just enlarge and square off his closet which intrudes into the odd room, we may be able to make the awkward alcove that is already there into a closet for the washer/dryer. That would probably be the least intrusive way to make the renovation. We might be able to actually put doors on the opening so it can be totally enclosed separately from the office/craft/folding/storage space when not in use. (Ha! My washer is never not in use.). If a future owner of the house wants to use the room differently, they could probably convert the laundry portion of the odd room into a large storage closet. The room itself would then be rectangular with a big storage closet and not so odd to use as an office or whatever.


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[JDAZ11]

Yes! The pipes are already there, so that’s the expensive/ hard part. Would you try to keep the downstairs hook ups in case someone wanted to move it back? I am just asking - I don’t think actually think anyone would want to.


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