floorplan help with FL

19 years ago

I'll try posting this is the "building a home" forum as well but you all are the experts on laundry rooms and I thought you could help.

We're building a house with a second floor laundry room. The dimensions, as they are drawn today, are 5 feet wide by 10 feet long. On the drawings, our builder is showing a washer and dryer set that's 2 feet deep and that's not at all realstic, but we didn't actually think about washer and dryer dimensions until very recently. The house is 90% framed with just a few interior walls remaining, the walls in the upstairs hall mostly, so we have VERY little time to act if we want to change up room dimensions.

We're looking to do a front load set because we want to put a counter over the top to conserve space. If our room is 5 feet wide, and the washer and dryer are set up along the LONG wall (the 10' wall), will we have room to stand in front of the machines to load them with the door open? I feel like it's going to be a tight squeeze.

Please vote if you think 60" wide is enough space for a front load set knowing we need to fit in that 60" space as well. :) The alternatives are:

a) steal 6 inches from the guest bath on the right side wall and 6 inches from the master bath on the left side to give us a 6 foot wide space

b) go with a top loader set which isn't as deep, but then we don't have our ideal countertop setup.

Help me decide today!!! Thanks in advance my brilliant laundry loving friends. :)

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Comments (4)

molly_2007
19 years ago
Have you considered putting the washer and dryer left to right at the end where it is 5 feet wide rather than putting it left to right on the 10 foot wall? I'm pretty sure they will fit that way and you should have plenty of room in front of you that way. I sure hate to see you have to take off anything from the other rooms. Even if you have a window at the end of the room that shouldn't make any difference. I will measure how much room I have left to right in my laundry room.....it is tiny. Good luck.
meg711
19 years ago
Sixty inches is probably enough room but just know that it is going to be tight. We're in the process of buying a washer and dryer for our new laundry room; we have 63" from kick molding to kick molding and it's going to feel tighter than I would have liked.

Unless you're looking at the smaller Euro models, most of the machines are at least 27" deep. The machines we're looking at are closer to 31" deep, and that's with the doors closed. You also have to take into account the clearance for pipes, venting and electrical outlets behind the machines.

If we're lucky, the front of the machines will be 36" away from our back wall. If you have a similar set-up, then you'll have 24" inches remaining. I believe the doors we've seen are around 20" or 21".

Good luck!
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dmlove
19 years ago
I vote for putting the machines on the short wall! If that's not possible, then I would want more space (I'd hate to build a new house, knowing that every time I do laundry, it's going to be a pain to access the front of the machines).
jcrowley99
19 years ago
You might want to consider making the laundry room larger if possible. A friend of mine just built a new house which is much smaller than their old house. She had a small laundry room put in that just fits the washer and dryer and is already regretting it. She has not even moved in yet! She is spoiled from her old laundry room, it is the size of our spare bedroom. She is actually considering selling the house they had built and building another one a bit bigger, with a much larger laundry room.