Laundry Room

I suppose part of living in an old house is having a dank basement. Ours certainly is. It doesn't help that it's leaky and the walls need to be patched and painted and it constantly fills up with junk no matter how many dumpsters we fill up. We could have spent the whole summer just fixing up the basement.

Our basement is also where the "laundry room" is, which, up until recently was a scuzzy lineoleum-covered platform with an ancient, rusty, scuzzy washer and dryer on top. Usually our clothes came out moderately more clean than when they went in - enough that we were able to put off a new W&D for about 2 years - but it was seriously NOT a pleasant place to wash your skivvies.

So with a sweet little Schmichbaby on the way and the prospect of washing all those tiny, cute, sweet little onesies, not to mention cloth diapers, "Buy new Washer and Dryer" quickly made its way to the short list of things to get done this summer, pre-baby.

And let me tell you, I was secretly pretty happy to be able to pull the Pregnant Card and not have to work on this, because it was a DISGUSTING project.

Here's the platform after the old W&D were moved off. They're hanging out stage left:

Mold, filth, and scuzz. Awesome.

Ben started ripping things apart:

He was so into it, he even ripped out this stupid under-stair closet that had been bugging him (the beige bit, etc):


Post- ripping:

Then he swept and swept and shopvacc'ed and swept. And filled 8 garbage bags with DIRT.
But the results were worth it:


We imagined that we'd have to replace the platform to keep the floor level for the lovely new W&D, but it turned out the concrete floor wasn't so bad, and uh... we were running out of time.

Ben moved the new W&D into place, hooked up the gas to the dryer, and even routed the washer drain into a major drain pipe without incident. The nasty old shop light was replaced with some brighter spotlights. We even put a rug down and bought a new laundry basket AND switched to baby-friendly laundry soap and dryer balls.

The results? I think you'll agree they're pretty great.




It's awesome. It is so awesome. This update has already completely changed our lives for the better. The new washer and dryer (Samsung HE - blue! we got the blue ones!) are incredible and beep and ding and have settings especially for towels and actually clean our clothes. (We've washed almost everything in the house - the rabbits are watching their backs). And going down to do laundry isn't nearly as unpleasant. It's bright and, though still a bit dank of course, at least cleaner and much much much more pleasant.

Oh yeah, and helping along this Before-and-After masterpiece is the fact that we got a new camera! We've been cursing our old crappy point-and-shoot for years, and finally did some research and got a wonderful new one, a Canon Powershot SD1200. It's. Glorious.