Friday 3 June 2016

Projects - Create A Utility Room

This is something i have wanted to do since we moved into our house back in 2011 - turn the old coal cellar into a utility room (our house is mid-terraced house built around 1950's).
The previous owner has tiled/plasterboard-ed most if the area in question, but as the old walls were never knocked down it feels cramped.

I have done quite a lot of research on load bearing walls, and my conclusion is that the walls we would be removing are not load bearing.  The large wall that runs the length of the space runs parallel to the beams on the ceiling/floor of the first floor.  The second wall that connects the middle wall to the back wall includes a door frame, but I believe this to have been put in after the house was built and is not structural.  I will seek advice from the builders before we have it removed as our bedroom (and our actual bed) sits directly above it.

The back wall currently houses our fridge freezer in a little cubby hole under the hot water tank, far left is a cupboard with the boiler (and Johns golf clubs, camping table & chairs, parasol, various garden tools, etc.) in it and beside it a tall narrow cupboard with our lawnmower in it.

Firstly, I would like to remove all the yellow sections seen here on the image above.

Then I would add a full length worktop (that matched the one in the kitchen), house the washing machine under it where the fridge freezer was and add tumbled dyer on the worktop directly above it. The new combination boiler would go as close to the wall as it can go (if there is room perhaps it will go on the same wall as the back door along with the light switch), the bin will be closest to the back door, beside it there will be space for food waste and recycling bins. Lastly there will be space for dirty laundry underneath the worktop and space for clean laundry sorting on the worktop.
As the water pipes are already there for hot water tank (these are connected to the main cold water supply) so once the tank was removed, these could be reused to connect to the washing machine.
We will have to add a waste pipe for the washing machine though.  I also haven't decided if the budget affords a condenser tumble dryer or if we should add a duct on the wall for a vented tumble dryer.

The middle wall in the kitchen stores a shelf unit (or makeshift pantry as I call it) and nothing else but a doorway.

My idea is to knock down the wall beside the shelf unit (highlighted in yellow above) and add a sliding door to this doorway (below).

Below is a floor plan of the way I would like the finished utility room to look.

As we are about to pay for our full roof to be redone, this project may have to wait awhile.  But I shall have much fun costing it up.

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