Washer/Dryer Woes

We have to both get rid of the old washer and dryer, and pick out a new stacked unit.  This is frustrating because it turns out that nobody wants to buy a perfectly good washer dryer, and because new stacked units are pricy. 

Our old washer dryer is a matched set, in perfect working condition.  The general craigslist value seems to be about $200 if you cannot offer a warranty or delivery.  We have been unable to get any interest on ours so far, because we refused to discount them that much at this point.  At some point, we may be better off donating them to Habitat's Restore and taking the tax write off (but that will require itemizing and I didn't get receipts for everything else we donated so it would be frustrating to do it now.) 

Our new washer dryer is the GE Unitized 27" with gas dryer.  The 3.4 cubic foot capacity is still twice the capacity of our old washer, so we're pretty excited.

I'm sure some people might wonder why anyone would go with one of these units:

(source)

instead of two of these bad boys stacked on top of each other:


(Source)



 

Ultimately, it came down to two issues - price, and convenience.  In the three weeks we've had a front loading dryer, I have hated taking clothes out of the low dryer.  One of the reviews I read talked about how painful it was to bend down to get clothes out of a front-loading washer.  We decided that a stacked unit is more convenient for a number of reasons - it's much easier to just put the clothes from the top loading washer into the dryer, and it's much nicer to not have to bend down at all to put the clothes in either the washer or dryer.  Also, the front loaders would set us back at least another $500 more than the stacked.   There were generally mixed reviews about the front loaders, saying they don't get clothes clean enough, etc.

With the new unit, it will be just off the kitchen and pretty visible, so I might end up being disappointed that we didn't choose the more aesthetically pleasing unit, but hopefully that's going to turn out to be one of those things I really don't care about.

 



Closet makeover

The house only has two closets.  So when we realized that one of them was taken up almost entirely by shelving and a vent, we knew some demolition was in order.  I also wanted to paint the inside of the closet a sunny, fun yellow color.  I spent a lot of time on Pinterest looking for tutorials for redoing the closet, and Home Depot for materials.  It turns out that that is a huge waste of time.  Here is how you redo a closet. 

1. Measure your clothes to figure out how much space you need (this can include length, so you can hang your rod as high as it needs). 
2. Measure your new closet to figure out how much space you can have.
3. Measure your new closet to figure out how big a shelf you can fit over your closet rod.
4. Measure your bins that go on the shelf to figure out how much space you need to leave between the shelf and the ceiling.  Alternately, wing this. 
5. Go to home depot. You can choose between the expensive wooden rod that you can saw yourself, the metal rod you need a hacksaw to saw (but is cheaper, except not really, since you have to buy a hacksaw) or the adjustable metal rod that already has easy screw in end pieces.  You can also choose between shelf brackets that also support the closet rod, and ones that don't. I opted for ones that do, since they were cheaper.  You can also choose between wood and the particleboard coated with plasticy stuff that I can't remember the name for (I'll just call it Ikeaboard).  I went with the Ikeaboard and I like that it already has a finished look.  Plus, it was half the price. 
6. Crowbar out the old closet shelves.  My husband did it for me while I was out on a run, so I have no instructions for this.
7. Remove the old closet rails. 
8. Prime and paint the new closet. (A friend and I did this, and she did most of it while I sat, stepped in, and knocked over paint and very poorly painted the area behind the vent, which was time consuming and hard to get to.) I skipped the primer, and to be honest, it looks really terrible. If I had taken the extra ten minutes to prime it, it would look much better. 
9. Install the new closet shelf.  Start with the brackets.  Then screw in the shelf.  It is very important that they be level and at the same height.  You may need several attempts.  Also, be sure to use drywall anchors and the correct size screw. 
10. Add the closet rod.  If you bought the cheap adjustable one, it already comes with mounting hardware.  Ta da!

Before:

 

After!

As much as I would have liked to have shelves in the closet, they simply didn't make sense where they were.  I'm planning on putting shoe storage in front of the vent, since there is about 10" of space there. 

It also took an entire quart of paint to pain this closet, probably because we didn't prime it.  But, I have four feet of hanging space for clothes, so it's a significant upgrade.