Laundry Room Makeover

[Brian Livingstone]

Hello,

I am redoing my laundry room, which is about 6 feet wide by 16 feet long.  I am going to go all out on the cabinets, using my Festool tools of course.

I have a newer front loading washer and dryer.  I am contemplating builidng a base cabinet 14 inches high, with drawers that will serve to emulate the commercially available base units that sometimes are purchased with the front loading appliances.

Has anyone ever buit something like this ?  If so, any advice would be appreciated. I am primarily doing this, so there would be less bending when placing and removing launrdy in the machines.

I am installing 18 inch square tile, however, I am not going to tile under this base cabinet. 

Thank you.

Brian

 

[nclemmons]

We have the front loading machines with the available metal drawer units under them.  They are attached with brackets so you can easily move the washer / dryer out when they need service.  While our machines are only about 4 years old, we have had a couple of service calls including one with a faulty pump hose connection resulting in water leakage.  So keep in mind that the metal units can withstand moving and water perhaps a bit more than a cabinet.

You might keep that in mind as you are designing the units -

We also made the decision to make the base cabinets in the laundry room at a higher level - I think we went to 40" on the base units to make folding laundry a bit more convenient and less straining on the back.  If you are building your own, you could easily set them to a comfortable height.

Finally, we did face frames and openings sized to fit laundry baskets, so that the cabinet bases opposite the washer / dryer could hold four laundry baskets that slide in and out.  The bottoms of the laundry baskets are wrapped in adhesive felt from Rockler to protect the cabinets from wear.

Good luck in the planning!

neil

 

[bkharman]

I am looking at doing a laundry makeover early next year (kitchen is in process and first  )

2 things I will note.  First decide if you want to bend down to get your clothes out and fold on top by way of some sort of countertop, or if you want to bend down less and fold elsewhere (countertop directly across, on the bed, etc)  If you elect to put them onto of some sort of cabinet to raise them, I highly suggest that you do NOT bolt them too tight to the cabinet structure.  you will get serious amounts of vibration throughout the entire house.  We never bolted them down and re-enforced the sub floor to eliminate the "shake".  I have mine on top of the LG matching stands and the vibration is minimal.  A friend of ours thought they would do something as simple as boring a few holes for the feet to rest in and stay in place, they quickly had me fix that for them as it felt like their house was right next to a rail station every time they ran the spin cycle on their washer!

If you want them on the base cabinets, get some sort of isolation pad to help reduce the rumble and test it out a few times before you build the rest of the structure... just my .02