So, our house is OLD - 175 years and counting. With it’s age comes a beautiful little quirk we like to call NO STORAGE. We have no closets. Literally, on the entire first floor there are zero closets. No where to place a broom, or my vacuum or a pile of shoes or even to hang our coats. This is a problem! Considering we spend 80% of our waking hours on the first floor, I desperately needed to find a place to hide our clutter!
In conjunction with that, we desperately needed a laundry room. Since we don’t really have a “room” to dedicate to the laundry, we are improvising. :) Initially when we bought the house, the laundry was located in the kitchen behind a double cabinet. While I appreciate the efficiency of stirring the pasta and changing the load to the dryer, I wasn't all that keen on having lint in my food or socks on my island.
And so this lovely stroke of genius was born. We were blessed with this lovely little built in that rests in our eat in kitchen (aka: the dining room – we aren’t formal dining people, so our eat-in is actually our dining room too)
The space had great bones - the structure was there, but needed tweaking and refining. And I thought that perhaps I could throw my washer and dryer in the middle section, no? Yes, it would be in my dining area, but it would be behind doors and the dining table that we never use could double as my laundry folding area, right? The idea had merit... and so I drew this baby up:
It took a lot more to make than we thought - the middle section had to be bumped out to accommodate the depth of the washer and dryer, and so the middle large doors ended up needing to be bifold doors with hidden hinges - otherwise when we open them, they would block the entire passageway.
I didn't take a lot of pictures of the process because I wasn't around when they were building it - my husband oversaw that project - but I did snap this when they were putting the washer and dryer inside...
You can see from this picture that we constructed the new doors and framing from 2x4's and MDF. It's heavy, but durable. We also put the washer and dryer up on a pedestal to save on my back. In the end, the only mistake we made was putting the washer on the right side instead of the left. When they moved the plumbing, they assumed dryer on the left. But what these (men) didn't consider (or ask me!) was that the door to the washer only opens to the left, so there is no easy way to swap washed clothes into the dryer. You have to carry wet clothes around the open door into the dryer. Unfortunately, the dryer door can change the direction it swings, but the washer cannot. It's not a huge glitch, but it's one that I curse every time I do laundry!!! lol.
The finished product. One day I'll take a picture of the interior - when it's actually organized. This is the only closet on the first floor so it truly is a catchall for everything. Pretty black doors hide the mess of an entire house.
The chandelier - in case you're wondering is from Overstock.com
I ordered the oversized gate handles online at Amazon.com, and the table is from Restoration Hardware Clearance center (scored that baby for $79) White leather keyhole chairs from Homegoods.
And just a note on black paint. Black is a hard color because most blacks lend themselves to have an underscore of color like blue or purple, etc. This black is a neutral black called Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams. It's beautiful and my go to for anything black.
1 comments
Love this!
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