Trapdoor or Chute, the Dummy Version

This is a laundry chute, dummy!

Laundry chutes were a common feature of classic houses, especially ones built in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. The concept was surprisingly simple: instead of schlepping your dirty clothing from the second (or third) floor of the house down to a laundry room in the basement, builders installed a slick-sided chute inside the walls and let gravity work its magic on soiled clothing. Why modern houses don't have these conveniences any more comes as a mystery to our staff (and to many others, we note). Well, Novel Treasure over at HubPages.com decided she and hubby needed one,  so they proceeded to create their own – and then she wrote a-a-a-all about it in "How to Install a Laundry Chute in the Floor." That seems to be par for the course for the women of the HubPages.com niche "dengarden" when it comes to DIY: perform a little household project (or watch someone else do it) and then write a "how-to."

Treasure goes through the steps starting with the usual disclaimer about building codes. Is there a building code in the world that prohibits laundry chutes? Well, maybe there's something in a fire code somewhere... Novel's "chute," as she calls it, is in a bedroom closet – but it's not in the wall: it's in the floor, instead. And then there's "watch out for plumbing and wiring in the floor"... the floor?

In fact, the more we read Treasure's little how-to, the more confused we became. "That ain't no chute!" we said. And then came Novel's declaration: "Because our closet is located right above the laundry area in the basement, we decided to forgo a chute style and use a laundry hold with a trap door..." Yep, that's right: Novel Treasure simply cut a hole in the floor so she could kick dirty clothing through it. She wasn't even right when she called it a "trap door," because the dumbass didn't put a door on top of the hole. Now she has a hole in her closet floor; not even something as advanced as what she termed "A raised laundry chute with a locking door..." WTF?

Around here, we consider that a bait-and-switch. These aren't instructions for a laundry chute or for any kind of chute at all. These are just instructions for a hole in the floor! A chute has a length dimension, longer than the thickness of your carpet and subflooring -- even this idiot realizes it's just a trapdoor, or it would be if there were a door on it. In reality, it's just a hole (and not a very safe one).

We consider that kind of misdirection evidence that the writer is eminently qualified to own a Dumbass of the Day award. Sheesh. 

copyright © 2015-2022 scmrak

DDIY - CARPENTRY