Sixth House Renovation Plan - The Powder Room/Laundry Room

Hello. I apologize in advance. I'm sure you've figured it out by now, never has it been more apparent though that I am not a good small space photographer, nor am I skilled at drawing, than it is here. Yikes. Hopefully by the end of this post I will be able to somewhat accurately paint a picture of the plan in your mind at least.

The powder room, laundry room and garage door entrance are the last areas on the main floor on the renovation plans. In case you've missed a few, here are the links for the entry, library, sitting room, great room/family room, kitchen, and dining room. Just a small project we have undertaken here!

For the previous posts I have started with listing photos to give a point of reference for what the room/space looks like. There is only one listing photo of this space and this is it:

A beauty, I know.

I have taken some pictures of the space too to get a better idea of what the space is like. I am loathe to show pictures of this house since we have moved in. She's not at her best, this house, indeed she's not. After living in a rental house for fifteen months while our house in Holland was being built - where we stored as much of our things as possible in the basement bedroom and then basically threw the remainder of our furniture where it would fit in the house - I am now skilled at (resigned to) living in a house where there is no order and where there won't be until we reach our end goal. That doesn't mean I want anyone else to see it in all its glory though. You will only get a peek in the photos of these spaces and I will try to keep it that way for as long as I can. I know I will have to take pictures of the upstairs hall bath as there were absolutely no listing photos of that (good choice realtor) and I may not have a choice when we start talking about decorating with our existing pieces - no matter what, I'm going to keep it as minimal as possible.

Moving on now to today's topic. The house has a hallway that leads from the kitchen to the garage door, the powder room and the laundry room. That's where we are today and here are my photos:

This is the doorway in the kitchen leading to the space. The powder room is straight ahead. Down the hall the garage door is on the right and to the left, across from the garage door, is the laundry room.

This is a few steps in to see the garage door:

Another angle of the powder room:

The hallway looking back towards the kitchen:

The laundry room seen from the garage:

A few more of the laundry room:

Here are my goals for these spaces:

1. Square off the entrance to/from the kitchen (you can see in the first and fourth photos above that the entrance to/from the kitchen is angled). We talked about this in the kitchen renovation plans too

2. Put a window in the powder room

3. Remove the door into the laundry room and enlarge the opening to the width of the hall and the height of the ceiling so that the area feels more spacious

4. Replace the exterior door in the laundry room

5. Convert the laundry room into a mudroom only (we purchased these counter depth machines when we moved in for our ultimate plan which includes moving the laundry room upstairs - we'll get to that when we start talking about the upstairs renovation)

When I first started drawing out ideas and plans for the house before we moved in, my plans moved the powder room to where the washer and dryer are and moved the mudroom to be at the entrance from the garage door. This included moving the exterior door, adding a window for the powder room, moving plumbing and walls. After moving in and starting to see and grasp the true scope of our project, I decided that was too much and not necessary. I really liked the idea, visually, of having a mostly glass door straight down the hallway from the kitchen, and I loved the idea of all of that natural light, just too much for a small space when looking at everything, I think, though. Here is the plan for the first iteration:

After moving in, I revised the plan to this:

Here is the mark up of the changes to the space:

You can also see on this plan the changes to square off the entrance to the kitchen. That change will decrease the length of the hall by about three feet. Currently this hallway is so dark that it always looks light nighttime when you look in there. Adding the window to the powder room and opening the space more to the kitchen will be very transformative.

Here are the plans from Brenda Parker, the architect. The second picture clearly shows the squared off entrance from the hallway to the kitchen.

Here is a rendering of the closets in the mudroom. I have a few thoughts on revising this, something I will try and hash-out when we talk design/decorating.

Now for the embarrassing part, my attempt at marking up the photos to give you another way to look at the space. I abandoned my attempt at drawing the mudroom closets and benches because it was so awful, I opted instead to just red pen it. Hopefully it gives the general idea though.

This picture is showing the non angled doorway from the kitchen to the powder room, garage and existing laundry room.

The closer view:

The window in the powder room. Let the sun shine in!

The view back towards the kitchen attempting to show a non-angled entrance and the centered sitting room doors in the background:

Oh my gosh, if you thought those were bad, the worst are the laundry room becoming the mudroom photos. Here goes....

The final way to look at is the revisions shown on the blueprints. The white is the removal of walls, the blue shows the new line into the kitchen and the red are the additions of the mudroom and the powder room window.

This concludes today's post and the renovation plans for the first floor. Thank you for sticking with me thus far and I sure hope you stay tuned. Next post we will start to look at the renovation plans for the second floor-some big changes and some minor tweaks.

I'm glad you're here,

Kerry