Skeleton of a Laundry Room

While all of us would agree that the major things in life -- air, food, water, shelter, safety -- are all that is essential to our existence, we also know that there is a great difference between existing and living.  I admit, I am a spoiled child of creature comforts.  I like the "little" things that we have worked hard to get: a dishwasher that cleans a load of dishes at night, a warm bed and a ergonomic pillow on which to rest, a warm shower to awake me in the morning, and even the ability to be in Florida and not freeze fingers off while filling the car with gas. Such things make "living" comfortable.

As a spoiled Northerner, one of the Florida traditions that has always struck me as wrong was washing the laundry in the garage.  Obviously, for climatic reasons, in the North our washers and dryers are either in the basement or in a separate laundry room in the house, but here, especially for these old houses like Gladys which did not originally have air conditioning, having the hot washer and dryer in the airy garage just made sense.

When we looked at houses to buy, we saw many strange locations for laundry facilities.  In some, the car had to be in the driveway in order to open the laundry appliance doors.  In others, the washers and dryers were cramped into corners, parked in entryways or hallways adjacent to the kitchen, or stacked in precarious towers unreachable for someone like me who only stands 5' 2".  One of the big attractions to Gladys was the fact that she had a more dedicated part of the garage for the laundry facilities.  The 3" step up the the "laundry room" separated it from any water or debris that traditionally might be hauled into the garage with the car.  Gladys had no wall to separate the dirt (and sawdust, in our case) from floating freely into the laundry area, so building that separating wall was our challenge for today.

A drain for the washer and sink.

Yesterday Rick worked hard to get the drain installed for the washer and, eventually, the laundry room utility sink. While that task took a little figuring, it was not physically challenging other than the need for cross ventilation to dissipate the smell of the cleaner and pipe glue.  As the picture shows, we needed a few twists and turns to get it to work, but in the end everything was fine.  Well, that is not completely true.  On the "maiden voyage" of the washing machine, we did have a leak.  Rick freaked out for a moment, but he soon realized that the glue joints were fine.  He simply forgot to tighten the clamps around the rubber gaskets that attach the plastic plumbing pipes to the steel drain pipe coming out of the wall!

Today was the day to build the outer wall. Because Rick positioned the new wall approximately 8" from the concrete lip of the laundry room slab, we will end up with a good size laundry room.  We will put in a fireproof steel door between the garage and the laundry room, add a pocket door from the kitchen to the laundry, and (eventually) have a utility sink and cupboards that tie everything together. The pictures show the true progress of our labors today.

The layout of our laundry room wall.

And the walls start to rise.

A view from inside the room from the back door.

The room starts to look like an actual place to clean laundry!

Tomorrow we will pour concrete to extend the slab between the old floor and our new wall.  While that cures, we can add the ceiling joists, the lighting, and the frame for the pocket door.  We will need to move the garage door opener and the light to the garage to a new location, and we still have to add insulation to the whole room since we plan to heat and air condition the room.  One step at a time. Stay tuned for the progress on the room as the days and weeks pass.  Gladys is getting some new bones grafted to her frame which will help her be better and stronger.