Laundry Room

One of the things that sold us on our house was the large utility room. The house lacked storage overall, but the utility room was the largest room in the house. And the one in need of the most serious facelift.

We converted the once utility room into 3 separate spaces; 2nd bathroom, pantry/storage, and laundry room. While we have been using the bathroom for months, and have the pantry stocked with food, we had not completed the laundry room.

Part of the hold up was the horrible plumbing job by American Plumbing Services. They came highly recommended and had great reviews on Angie's List. No matter ... they messed up our project. Lesson learned: Although a company may have overall good reviews, find out about the individual assigned to your job, and their personal performance history.


C, an Electrician Apprentice NOT Plumbing Apprentice, set off to redo much of the work we paid good money for. The problems stemmed from the fact the water supply was not recessed into the wall, the shut off valves stuck out from the wall 8 inches, the drain pipe was secured only by the fitting at it's base, and the exhaust pipe was 2 inches off the wall. All of this prevented us for being able to push the washer and dryer to the wall. Rather, we had to float them into the room about 10 inches; precious real estate to say the least. Another issue was the mounting of cabinets with the exhaust pipe running the height of the room.


Another problem we had with the plumbers was the drilling of holes in the top of our new utility sink. We had assembled a temporary stand, and in an effort to "help" us they drilled four screws, one in each corner, right through the top surface. The owner of American Plumbing Services promised to reimburse us for new sink. We have yet to see the results of that promise.

C cut into the wall, re-plumbed everything to include placing the water supply and drain in a tidy little laundry hook-up box. He then patched the wall and installed cabinets.

We shopped around for the cabinets and decided upon the self-assembly required Ikea cabinets. With a kitchen remodel in our future, we considered this an experiment to help us determine if we wanted to use a similar product for the kitchen. The assembly was simple enough for one person, and the initial install was also completed solo. The final tweaking did required two sets of hands. One thing we learned about the Ikea product was that while most items are in stock, cabinet doors are custom order. We were able to take the cabinets home on the day of purchase, and the doors were delivered a couple of weeks later. The hinges for the doors are pretty amazing, and we were able to snap the doors into place without take the cabinets off the wall.

My dream laundry room includes a shiny red, front-loading washer and dryer. My budget does not include those items. In order to achieve a colorful element in the room, we painted the wall beneath the cabinets and above the washer/dryer red. While the pictures don't show off the color, I feel like I have my red and didn't blow the budget to get it. Win-win!

Follow Up - New Windows

It has been a month, and we still love the new windows. Although we live on a dead end, we still experienced a fair amount of street noise from the gravel road. That has been greatly dimminished. But, most exciting is the cost savings on our heating bill.

Last week I recieved the gas bill and set out to do a comparison. If you look at the same period in the prior year, we saved $80 with the new windows. When I average the last 3 years bills for the same period, there is an average savings of $50. Of course, there was an investment in the new windows, but it is nice to see a cost savings in addition to the aethstic improvement.

Our windows were custom order insulated glass, installed by Classic Sash and Door.