I am so fucking happy to say it: I CAN DO LAUNDRY WHENEVER I WANT AND I LOVE OUR WASHER AND DRYER!!! The dryer is great – honestly I can’t tell the difference really between dryers – but our washer is AMAZING. AMAZING. AMAZING. (and full disclosure, no plug from the washer company or anything, I’m just really excited to be able to do laundry. And our washer and I are in looooove).

Last off, we were here

And then shortly after that my dad and Wendy’s washing machine broke, and so we really had to get our shit together so that we could wash clothes without having to go to the laundry mat. I know, serious #firstworldproblems.

The most important part was of course getting the sink set up. In our house we have always had the washing machine drain into the sink. A big faux pas for some people. A lot of time people have the discharge run back out through the drain line, but in Picardy and this house we have it in the sink. No biggie. But in order to get the washer to drain, we needed the plumbing for the sink hooked up, or so we thought…

Things got pretty desperate laundry wise. And we still didn’t have our counter top back. We decided on having a stainless counter. We liked the utilitarian look of the stainless cabinet and stainless counter in a utility space. We also wanted it to look really finished so we opted to have our plywood template clad in stainless by a steel manufacturer we frequently use for projects.

Because we have a very large utility sink our counter had to be a specific size. So Chris cut down two sheets of 3/4″ plywood and attached them together. He had to go back and trim a little here and there to make sure the sink fit (the curvature of certain corners was different)

After that we send it off to be clad in stainless to give it a seamless look. But it took longer than we thought. And the laundry was PILING up. As I spoke about in this post, I was running seriously low on underwear and we hadn’t done any laundry in nearly 2 weeks. It was desperate. It was Friday and we weren’t getting the counter back until at least Monday. So desperate times call for desperate measures

Yup. You’re seeing that right. We had our washing machine draining in a trash can. But we could wash clothes! It was a JOYOUS Saturday. We did 7 loads of laundry that day. And that might not sound like a TON, but we got a GIANT washing machine. I did a lot of research about what washing machine I wanted and spent far too many hours. But these were the things I wanted: front loading (an efficiency of space and water saving), really good at washing heavy duty loads (we get things REALLY dirty with the work we do), a good and fast quick wash cycle (when you’re in a rush) and a BIG capacity (we do so much laundry with work clothes, regular clothes and kid’s clothes). I settled on this one, a 5.2 cubic capacity LG washing machine. And it’s AWESOME. It came really well rated and satisfied all my criteria. We also got it on a pretty good sale for $999 when it’s usually listed a decent amount over $1k. We got the dryer in the pair for $999 as well.

Over that weekend (about 10 days ago) we got a lot of laundry done and put a lot of laundry away 🙂 Then we got the sink back and Chris worked on putting things together last week after a couple early days of work. The counter got put in, then the sink was attached and the faucet we got was installed

The drain line took a little longer than anticipated. And that’s not just because Merritt decided to help

It was quite adorable. Though sometimes she got a little too involved

Things were just a hair more challenging because Chris had 2 drains to hook up and because the hookups were on the perpendicular wall so we had to have drain lines that were longer than normal. But he got it done and it looked glorious

OMGGGGGG I love it

I know you might be a little shocked that I got a double bowl after I professed my hatred for the double bowl in our kitchen 🙂 But for the laundry room I find this practical for us: I don’t want one giant bowl because I’m not washing big ol’ pots. And because we have the washer drain in here it fees me up to have another bowl to be washing my hands, cleaning off a paintbrush or roller, or prewashing or soaking something without getting in the way of things. It feels practical for me in here. It works

I told my dad and Wendy that now with our washer and dryer hooked up they were free to bring their laundry over if they’d like. It seemed only fair 🙂 Alas just as things were getting desperate for them the repair guy we work with was able to get out there. Sadly their washer was irreparable and so they had to buy a new one. That kind of sucked. But at least everyone can do their laundry again

And the washer doesn’t have to drain into a trash can! 🙂

There are still some items to complete to finish this area: install the other cabinet on the other side of the dryer, install the cabinet hardware, get the counter fabricated and installed for the other cabinet and over the washer and dryer, and then tile wall to wall counter to ceiling. But this is perfect for now.