What to Consider When Locating Your Laundry Room – Consumer … – ConsumerReports.org

In the home where I grew up, a rambling Queen Anne Victorian in suburban New Jersey, the washer and dryer were located just off the basement boiler room, next to a plastic slop sink. Two dingy hopper windows looked out onto the driveway where we shot hoops and played street hockey. I can still smell the potpourri of detergent, dryer exhaust, and mildew.

A few decades later, in the midst of a gut renovation of an 1882 Brooklyn brownstone, it was my turn to plan a laundry room. Given the presence of a garden rental apartment in the building, the basement wasnt an option. Thats just as well. Like most Americans these days, my wife and I wanted the washer and dryer on an upper floor, closer to where laundry is actually produced.

We didn't have a lot of room to work with in what will become an owners duplexabout 1,500 square feet. That precluded a full-sized laundry room along the lines of what you see on HGTV and design websites, with storage cabinets, a sink, drying rods, and other accessories. A laundry closet, with a stackable washer and dryer, was more realistic.

After several meetings with our architect, we decided to locate the laundry closet at the top of the staircase, by borrowing a few square feet from the master bathroom (see the Before plan below). But as one astute viewer pointed out during a Facebook Live chat devoted to the project plan, a single false step could send an unsuspecting laundry-doer tumbling backward down the steps.

At first we thought about moving the laundry downstairs. But after some back and forth, we hit on a suitable compromise: sliding the laundry a few feet to the right to eliminate the falling hazard (see the After plan). It seems obvious now, but in the heat of the moment, we worried that one design tweak would have a domino effect on the rest of the project. In the end we learned that sometimes on a major renovation, you have to make a few left turns to get going in the right direction. (See Use Virtual Reality to Visualize Your Home Renovation for more of the story.)

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What to Consider When Locating Your Laundry Room - Consumer ... - ConsumerReports.org