Of all the changes we’re planning for our house, the laundry room and closet combo might be the thing I’m looking forward to the most. I can’t stop dreaming about and planning this room!
I’ve never had a proper laundry room before. In our previous two houses, the washer and dryer were in the garage. In the apartment we lived in right after we got married, we had a laundry closet that was right in the entryway. And in our house now, the washer and dryer are in the “sunroom”, which is a pretty name for the worst room in the house that now only looks slightly better than the picture below because I did some organizing in there a few weeks back.
I’ve been wanting to tear that room down since we bought the house, but it’s basically a storage room that also houses our washer, dryer, and hot water heater. So until I can relocate those things, the room has to stay. At least it stays behind these closed doors, though, so neither I nor our guests have to look at it…
Because this will be new for me, the idea of having a nice room where I can have my washer and dryer, nice cabinets, and organization, is thrilling to me. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I love the idea of a laundry room and closet combo. It just makes sense to me.
So I spent some time this past weekend using IKEA’s Pax wardrobe planner and their kitchen planner to plan each side of the room. I really wish they had one integrated planner where you could use a mix of cabinets and wardrobes, but they don’t. So I had to use one planner to plan out the closet side, and the other to plan out the laundry side. The kitchen cabinet planner is much more robust than the wardrobe planner, which has far fewer bells and whistles on it. It’s still very helpful, though.
The room I’ll be turning into the laundry room and closet combo is our current guest bedroom. It’s the room that we’ve been using as our main bedroom for the last three years (I think). That room looks like this (when it’s clean 😀 )…
Actually, it doesn’t look like that anymore even when it’s clean. The painted floor hasn’t held up as well in this room as my studio floor has. (I used different paint, and the paint I used on the studio floor is far superior.) Also, we no longer have that wood bed base because it didn’t work with our adjustable bed. But everything else is pretty much the same.
This is the room labeled “guest bedroom” on our current floor plan, and it’s 11′ 4″ x 15′ 10″…
And once all of the changes have been made that we’re planning, this room will be the laundry room and master closet in this area that will make up the master suite.
By the way, my mom and I spent about an hour at lunch last Wednesday going over the floor plan with a fine tooth comb, seriously weighing the suggestion that several people had to keep the guest bedroom and the home gym where they are, and turn the addition into the master bedroom and laundry room/closet. We considered every possibility, made a pro and con list, and discussed it in excruciating detail, and we both concluded that the home gym and guest bedroom should stay in the addition. I’m not going to go over all of that discussion, reasons, pros and cons, and details, but just know that we considered everything. And for us (Matt and me), this arrangement works the best.
What I envision is that when I walk into the room from the hallway, the right side will be the laundry room side of the room. And after trying many different arrangements (including stacking the washer and dryer), this is what I came up with…
I wanted to keep the washer and dryer as close to the window wall as possible because, as you can see on the floor plan, that part of the room juts out further than the neighboring room. That means that the dryer can vent outside without having to have a long run of duct inside the wall.
But I didn’t want the washer shoved right up against the wall, so I added a very narrow cabinet there where I can store tall, skinny items like an ironing board, a fold-up drying rack, etc.
If you’re trying to keep your bearings, that view above looks like this view below right now…
And then the rest is pretty straightforward. I wanted as much tall cabinet storage as possible, but I also definitely want a sink in there. So I had to have at least enough countertop space for the sink. But I didn’t want it to feel crammed in there, so I gave it some breathing room (and gave me some elbow space) with one more low cabinet next to it. That left room for two tall cabinets on the right end of the wall. And then I filled in with as many upper cabinets as possible.
That view above looks like this right now…
Two things that I want but couldn’t show in the IKEA planner are (1) a place to put a hanging bar for empty hangers so that they’re easily accessible close to the dryer, and (2) a countertop over the washer and dryer.
Here’s an view from above, which I always find to be helpful so that I can be sure that there’s some wiggle room. I don’t want any cabinets jammed up against the walls, and I want to be sure that there are some extra inches in there to build cabinets around the washer and dryer. And as you can see, there’s plenty of extra space for all of that. The IKEA planner doesn’t have lots of fine tuning that allows you to get things into place down to the centimeter, but as long as I can see that I have some wiggle room, I can work with that.
The cabinets for the laundry room side of the room come to $6,594.88 according to the kitchen planner, but I’m sure that’s not exactly correct. The final price will depend on which doors and drawer fronts I choose, as those vary in price depending on the style. And that’s just the cabinets. I’ll also need a sink, faucet, and countertop.
Next up, I used the PAX wardrobe planner to plan the other side of the room, which will be the closet side of the room. I couldn’t even figure out how to add doors and windows with the PAX wardrobe planner, so the door that you see below is one that I added by taking a screenshot of the IKEA planner, and then using my photo editing software to add the door. Anyway, this is what I envision for the left side of the room, although I may swap out the deep shelves for more hanging storage. I need to think through that before ordering.
The first time I played around with this planner, I only had the cabinets lined up on one wall with nothing wrapping around to adjacent walls. But that plan used 24-inch-deep shelves for things like shoes, purses, and folded sweaters. I personally would prefer not to store my shoes, purses, and folded sweaters on such deep shelves, so I found that if I changed the unit on the end to the 14-inch-deep style, I would have enough room to wrap another 14-inch-deep unit around to the adjacent wall. I can get an additional 39-inch unit in there and still have a couple of inches between the side of the unit and the edge of the trim on the door. It’s a tight fit but it fits!
I also started out with a narrower cabinet on the long wall, which left me with totally unusable space in the corner behind where the two cabinets formed the “L” in the corner. I swapped that cabinet on the long wall out for a wider cabinet. I figured that the hidden area can be used for items that are out of season and I don’t need access to at the moment. I want to squeeze every inch of storage space out of this room as possible, so I didn’t want that corner being 100% unusable dead space.
The cabinets for that side of the room come to $2178.80 according to the PAX planner. I think that number is closer to being accurate because I don’t plan on using doors on the wardrobes. The price may change as I add/subtract the number of shelves I order, and as I think through if I want to add any drawer organizers. But I think that number won’t change drastically at all.
I want to get this plan finalized soon because I’d like to order the cabinets within the next couple of weeks. My studio is pretty much finished other than a couple of small projects. Next, I’m going to work on and finish our new bedroom. And by the time I’m finished with the bedroom, I want to have everything ready to start on this room. But every time I open up the PAX planner, I see a notice that they’re having supply issues right now, so I want to get everything ordered pretty soon so that I’m not waiting around for cabinets when I’m ready to start installing them.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
