What Do We Call This Room?
Is it a laundry room, bathroom, mud room or utility room?
When we moved into this delightful fixer-upper in 2016, we were already familiar with a few of the many challenges we would be facing in our brave attempt to pull it into the 21st century. Some were simple cosmetic alterations, but more had to do with the actual design of the house. Two of the original design curiosities were the location of the master bathroom, and the laundry room.
Let's begin with the master bathroom. For some unknown reason the builder of the house had decided it was a great idea to place the master bathroom at the opposite end of the house from the master bedroom, just inside the back door across from the kitchen.
The former “Country Style” master bathroom
The laundry room was on the bottom level in a room also used as a second kitchen for downstairs renters. So you must go up and down the stairs to mind your laundry. Also, there had been no dryer ventilation designed into the house. The dryer vented into a Rubbermaid tub with water in it and holes in the lid. The humidity in there was terrible when the dryer was on!
So we devised a plan that would fix several issues in one:
The former parlor adjacent to the master bedroom would be converted into our new master bathroom. It's a huge space which means we could add a walk-in shower, separate tub, dual-sink vanity and walk-in closet.
The old master bathroom would become the laundry room. By stacking the washer and dryer we were able to keep the space as a full bathroom, + washer/dryer + utility sink and folding counter. The original built-in cabinetry was removed and a modern space-efficient cabinet was designed, built and installed (thanks Dad!). The dryer now vents out the exterior wall properly.
There was much more to this wonderful (and sometimes downright disgusting) reconstruction - - including installing a pocket door, tile, tile and more tile in both rooms, scraping OFF layers of wallpaper and popcorn ceilings as well as scraping UP layers of linoleum, painting and more painting .....and the process took a full two years.