Swingin' into Action

Well, it's more like laundry.  Swingin' into laundry is precisely what we (and by we, I mean me, since I am the laundry-doer in the family) are doing now that we have added a door to our laundry room.


Our laundry room is directly off our main living space, and when the washer, or dryer are working hard, we're working hard to hear each other talk, or really just think.  


We had the idea that a door with swinging hinges would be the best thing to put in the empty doorway, instead of going to the trouble of putting in a whole new, regular door, that would be hard to open and close with a pile of laundry in hand.  


After a hard fought hinge hunt by us, and both sets of our parents, my parents finally came across some swinging door hinges. Score!


Here's what we were working with, and as you can see, the only advantage to having this open was the little bit of natural light that came in through the back door, which we will miss. 

Here's the closet side, primed bi-fold doors with only one knob.  I promise I was going to finish painting these one day. 

And then, the washer and dryer - dirty clothes and all.  Like I said before, we like to keep it real around here. And, Baxter's play yarn. He loves my yarn, and that's precisely why a certain new space in our house is off limits to him (more on that a little later).

First, we had to give the new door a quick trim to ensure there was enough space for it to swing, and then some glue and clamps to fix the lightweight hollow door right back up.  


The hinges and door were installed, and we now can now finally hear ourselves think when laundry is being done.  Also, with the addition of the door, we were able to take the bi-fold doors off of the closet across from our washer and dryer, freeing up more space and making it much easier to access our deep freezer and additional storage in the closet. Now, I really don't have to finish painting those things! 

One little pet peeve about our new door is that in the winter, we keep our firewood right out our laundry room door, and it has gotten pretty grimy from our dirty hands pushing it open with wood in tow.  We will have to come up with a solution for that one, or just magic eraser it every so often to keep those dirty finger prints at bay. Note to self: pick up more magic erasers.   


Happy Swingin'! I mean, laundering.