The laundry / washroom

I've had the misfortune to live in a variety of houses where the laundry is a small, impractical, inefficient and an undesirable place to be. Lets face it - very few of us like doing laundry but since it is a necessity of life, at least being in a room you actually like makes the chore far more tolerable. In our case, the laundry also doubles us as the washroom for trips back from the beach so we wanted a space that would work across a multitude of functions. It also needed to improve on the original Queenslander laundry that was usually under the house and often open air! Not ideal if you need to sneak down first thing in the morning to find some spare clothes.

The original laundry was pretty dire - I'm sure the photos below confirm that. It was really an after thought and the only good thing about it was the old school concrete double laundry tub, which we've painted up and are now using as a herb garden in the new laundry courtyard area.

So, the laundry / washroom was designed to sit below the dressing room and perform a number of different functions: a place to wash clothes, a place to cleanup after returning from the beach, positioned adjacent to the clothesline, and a transition point from the end of the downstairs hallway to the northern side of the house. As a result we have a long narrow laundry with a large pair of casement windows centred in the middle of the room, facing west, and a lovely port wine and green hopscotch patterned door, facing north, that came from the original cottage. Situated beside the downstairs bathroom we continue the back and white tile theme and used a chessboard pattern of black and white square tiles reminiscent of 1930's style art deco flooring.

Installing built-in cupboards was an obvious way to maximise the storage area, so we opted for one tall cupboard to put brooms, mops, buckets etc and a hanging rack for ironing. The rest of the cabinets are 900mm high and sit under the window across the room. We really need to use the space for a while before deciding whether we also need shelves and hooks but I'm pretty sure I'd like some - even if just to put some "pretty" things and a few bits of artwork to personalise the area a bit.

The best part of the laundry, however, is the laundry courtyard area. I'm NOT a fan of walking great distances to hang out clothes like the old days when the stand alone hills hoist stood as a "garden feature" somewhere in the middle of the lawn. I also don't like having my undies on display for visitors to come across as they arrive or depart from the house. Sooooo....we paved underneath the front deck and put up a clothesline. While the area doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, it is northern facing so it does have loads of mid-morning to late afternoon sun and there is nearly always a coastal breeze to help quicken the drying process. I know, it's not a particularly exciting interior design subject, but it really does make life much easier and I'm secretly very chuffed with my secluded laundry courtyard - complete with a laundry tub herb garden. Now all i need is two wrought iron style chairs, a small circular table for two with a terracotta pot of lavender on top and a few hanging plants to kickstart my french / british country cottage courtyard garden!

More photos to come.

Details as follows:

• Laundry handles: Jackson square chrome pulls. 17.1cm long, 4cm deep. (Supplier: Schotts Emporium)
• External and internal doors: Reclaimed from the old cottage (external door), and a 3 panel high waisted door (with arctic glass in the top panel) that gives some more light into the hallway if the door is closed (reclaimed from my sister's renovation of her Queenslander house).
• External door handle: Mortice knob milled edge chrome 52mm (Supplier: Traditional Hardware, Code: 1009)
• Internal door: Deco knob latch chrome plated (Tradco: 1090), and satin chrome door stop - magnetic 75mm (Tradco: 1538)

The old boiler

The original laundry. No words needed.

The framing starts on the new laundry once the house is lifted

Our old laundry tub has scrubbed up nicely with a coat of paint and repurposed as a herb garden!