A True Wash Room

During the major house renovations, we redid the upstairs bathroom and added a second. But we neglected the downstairs bath. Until now.

The previous house owners were elderly and had troubles making it up stairs. So they were using an addition off the back of the house as a bedroom and created a handicap bathroom. The bathroom included a huge toilet (I'm pretty sure this thing could have competed in cavernous-ness with the grand canyon), a really old vanity, an equally old medicine cabinet, and a handicap shower.

Seeing as we have 2 full baths on the 2nd floor and no bedrooms on the first, we had no need for a shower on the first floor. I've also been complaining about having to take clothes from the 2nd floor down to the basement to do laundry (I got spoiled with having laundry in my apartments). Thus the idea was born to turn the handicap bathroom into a half bath/laundry room.

We decided to leave the layout pretty much the same as it was and just exchange the shower for a washer/dryer to save money (less pipes to move). The old giant toilet and vanity made it awfully tight, so we opted for a smaller toilet (standard size) and a narrower vanity. We went with a 'euro vanity' which allowed for a full depth sink, but a narrower cabinet. This made the room appear bigger without making the vanity/sink seem undersized. To keep the house cohesive, we used the same tile as both upstairs bathrooms for the floor (plus we just love the tile).

While opening up the walls for a bit of plumbing and to change out the door (we were going to use an old door in the basement to replace the plain front door to match the rest of the house), we ran into a bit of a snafu. The load bearing wall lacked a proper header. Since everything had to get ripped out to fix, we decided to increase the opening a bit more and install double doors for better access to both sides of the room.

My favorite part of the room: the washer/dryer. We got an all in one machine. This allows us to put in a load, set the wash cycle, set the dry cycle, and forget about it for a while. It also has a delay start feature of up to 19 hours and a cool down cycle of up to 4 hours after finishing drying. I've actually put in a load of laundry at night, set the wash to start in the afternoon of the next day, and come home to washed and dried clothes. And it even sings to you when it's done.

With a towel hook, toilet paper holder, and some shelves for laundry detergent and storage, the washroom was done.  It looks so much better than before (at least in our opinions). And it's great to not have to go down to the basement for laundry anymore. Take a look!