Easy - get a big piece of foam soundproofing stuff and cut it to fit the doorway. Snap into place when needed. Paint a doorknob on it and you can even pretend it’s the real thing.
You can just lean it against the dryer when you don’t need it .
Easy - get a big piece of foam soundproofing stuff and cut it to fit the doorway. Snap into place when needed. Paint a doorknob on it and you can even pretend it’s the real thing.
You can just lean it against the dryer when you don’t need it .
I had this exact same scenario in our last house. Utility room that had two doors because it was the garage pass-through. And yep, one door was removed by previous owners. We ultimately decided to put the door back precisely because of a noisy washing machine.
Maybe the same builder, lol.
Pure genius!!
I had the same issue. Idk who thought that a McMansion with 5 BRs would be fine with a 5’ by 5’ laundry room off the kitchen (where the door opening takes up a quarter of the space) would be fine
First thing I did when we moved in was have laundry hookups installed in the basement. Makes for more steps to do laundry but works way better. And we put shelving in the original laundry room and made it a pantry.
You gotta be careful “conversing” with someone who can rip off a door.
Our minivan had a sticky sliding door that was getting worse. Mrs G was a little frustrated with it, and ripped it off the van. Literally ripped it off the van, only connected by electrical cable. You can imagine I don’t mess with her.
Current house just had laundry in the basement, near all the duct work. Just a hole with concrete floors and <6’ height. Took us a year to get the basement finished, but now we have a 9x9 laundry room with a window and a folding table.
Plus, a few of the old kitchen cabinets had been moved to the basement. I’m not sure if they were here in 1912 but they are old, I’d guess 1940s at the latest. I stripped them and painted them and that’s our laundry storage now.
You have a laundry chute? Grew up in the 70’s in a house with one.
Sort of. It’s currently not functional but I plan on fixing that over the summer. Short story is they ran wires up it during a remodel and there are copper pipes blocking the bottom. So it needs some tweaks and I think it’ll work again.
In your last house did both doors (out to the garage & into the house) open in to the utility/laundry room?
That’s our current set up. So not only do we have washer, dryer, a couple cabinets, coat hooks,
& shoe rack in a small ~5’ x 5’ space, but the doors both open in & almost hit each other if they’re both open.
Worst part of this house (& that’s saying something).
Our doors did both open into the laundry room.
The doors were close enough to one another that while the door panels wouldn’t touch, the latches would touch under certain circumstances.
Maybe we had the same builder, too.
5’x5’ sounds tight. Mine is 7’x7’ and feels like the right size, except when the kids dump all their shit on the floor when they come home from school. The door to the kitchen opens into the kitchen, and that probably helps. I do have cabinets and a storage bench with coat hooks that are also mostly ignored, but I think it would all be pretty good with some cooperation from the family.
By all accounts,coats are hung on the stools by the kitchen island. Even if you have to walk by the front closet to get there.
Last time I was house hunting, my kids were like 7 and 9. Fell in love with an old cape cod and had several showings thinking we would close. First time we took the kids:
Them: what’s that?
Me: It’s a laundry chute. You put dirty clothes in it and they slide down to the laundry room.
Them: COOOOL!!!
Me: Ok, Rule number 1 in this house is NO getting in the laundry chute!!!
Pause
Rule number 2 is NO putting your sister in the laundry chute!
Pause
Rule number 3 is NO putting the dog in the laundry chute!!!
My grandparents had a laundry chute and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Unfortunately the laundry room in my house is not situated underneath the second floor, so there’s really no way to accomplish a laundry chute in the current house.
Maybe you could rig up a laundry catapult
Now the house of the family my ex SIL used to nanny for? That had a laundry chute and adjacent dumb waiter. That’s where it’s at. Of course this was a 3 story probably 15,000 square foot house. Still… jealous of the dumb waiter.
Laundry wonkavator?
I have one single, solitary piece of baseboard left to strip. But this whole side is done. Just put the quarter round back on and painted the ceiling - the plaster came loose in the corner and I’d repaired it but had not repainted it.
That’s my grandparents’ Zenith console radio there on the right. Circa 1951 or 1952 per my grandmother.
We didn’t have a “chute”, but there was a hole cut in the floor by the toilet that went down into the room where we had the laundry (not really a “laundry room”, more of an unfinished bathroom). The hole was never really useful for laundry, but while we were small enough to fit it was a lot of fun to climb through.