Laundry Rooms, the Dummy Version

Typical laundry room

A somewhat surprising number of the questions that contributors to eHow.com answered were, if you thought about them for a while, just plain dumb. That never stopped some of the site's crackerjack "contributors" from answering them, however – even if they had no idea how to answer them! One such contributor we've already caught blathering about construction techniques (even though she's a psychologist) is Judi Light Hopson. Well, she's back again with a Homesteady.com post about "How to Add a Laundry Room to an Older House."¹

We're sort of at a loss as to why anyone would have googled that in the first place: are there really older houses that have no laundry facilities? Not even a sink in the basement? We doubt it: what we suspect is that the OQ wanted to know how to add a laundry room as part of a remodel. That's not what Hopson thought, though:

"You can add a laundry room to an older house by first looking for appropriate space. You can usually find this space by carving it out of an existing garage or living space. The biggest challenge will be figuring out how to run water lines, drains and electricity."

Hopson apparently lives someplace warm, because you can't "find this space by carving it out of an existing garage" without HVAC and insulation if there's even the slightest possibility of a freeze. And what homeowner would actually,

"Consider building a laundry room in a spare bedroom or in a large closet space [they] don’t need"?

That's not to mention that Judi forgot about running gas lines... an omission she compounded when she instructed her readers to,

"Ask a local electrician to help you evaluate electrical needs as well. Remember that you will need to install a 220-volt plug for the dryer and a 110-volt plug for the washer."

Ummm, Judi? You need to run a 220-volt circuit to the dryer, not just install a "plug"! And then there's this:

"Inspect the crawlspace of your house to see how easily plumbing can be placed in the new laundry area." Perhaps Hopson's unaware that not all houses are built on a crawlspace. Some have basements (some of which are finished), some are built on slabs. In either case, if you want to "carve out" existing space, the simplest solution is to put the hookups and plumbing on a wall that already has plumbing. We assume that the OQ really wanted to know how to include a laundry room in a remodeling project. Of course, we'll never know – but we suspect we're a lot closer than Judi, our Dumbass of the Day. We also know we'd never say that people need "lumber boards" to complete their project, but maybe that's just us...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   homesteady.com/how-5943564-add-laundry-room-older-house.html

copyright © 2018-2022 scmrak

SE - REMODELING