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Dear Steve,
My husband and I want to retire in our 3-bedroom ranch house. One obstacle is the basement laundry. Is it difficult to move the washer and dryer upstairs?
Yvonne
Y,
A one story house provides an ideal opportunity to move your laundry to the main living level, thereby avoiding the bane of retirement living…STEPS! Since you have a basement, it should be easy to the install electrical wiring and plumbing (hot & cold water and waste lines). If your basement is finished, the plumbing and wiring will be a little more difficult, but feasible none the less. Since your home is one-story, it will be easy to vent the dryer to the outside, either through the attic or through an exterior wall. By the way, building codes require venting the dryer to the outside; you can’t terminate the dryer vent inside the attic.
Now, where to put the Laundry Room. Well, it doesn’t have to be a room, especially if space is at a premium. If it’s just the two of you, then the vast piles of laundry that may have accompanied children are probably a thing of the past. In which case you can forgo a room in favor of an alcove. I’ve designed laundry “alcoves” located off a hall or kitchen. Smaller apartment type stacked washer/ dryer units facilitate such space limitations. Or the newer full size stacked front loaders are a good option. They consume less energy and use less water. But if you must have a Laundry Room, then you will need to build an addition or convert some existing space (perhaps a small bedroom) into the Laundry Room. I recently helped a client move their washer and dryer upstairs by converting their Sunroom into a combination Laundry/Master Bath. I used an under-counter washer and dryer with decorative cabinet doors to give a finished look to the room. The countertop (just like your kitchen counter) provides ample folding space and wall cabinets provide concealed storage as shown in the sketch below.
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Copyright 2009 Anton Architecture, Inc.
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