2nd floor laundry

[pandorica]

We've been in our house for 3.5 years and are finally getting around to adding a second bathroom on the second floor! I'll probably be back with questions about that.

I'd also like to move the laundry from the first floor up to the new bathroom space on the second floor. However, our house is almost 100 years old and I've been told anecdotally that second floors in older homes aren't always capable of supporting that. Does anyone have experience with that? Is there any way to improve that second floor space to make this doable? Do we need an engineer to take a look at it?

I don't feel like I know enough about houses and renos to even be able to ask the right questions about any of this.

[InBetweenDays]

I don't have any knowledge with this. We do have a second floor laundry but we added it when we completely redid our house about 12 years ago.

If you don't get enough feedback here - when we were doing a lot of reno projects on our previous house (which was built in 1895) I would post on home improvement forums and got a lot of good feedback there. The one I used most was www.gardenweb.com, which looks to now be a part of Houzz.

ETA: Gardenweb used to have different forums for woodworking, home improvement, etc. So those may now be under different titles on Houzz.

[froggy76]

I don't really have knowledge to share, but we are planning a major renovation and addition to our 1938 house and we were told it would cost $7k-$10k to move the laundry from the basement to the second floor. So we scrapped the whole idea.

[pandorica]

Jan 22, 2021 13:28:11 GMT -5 froggy76 said:

I don't really have knowledge to share, but we are planning a major renovation and addition to our 1938 house and we were told it would cost $7k-$10k to move the laundry from the basement to the second floor. So we scrapped the whole idea.

Oh yikes. That is not what I wanted to hear hahah. I think we'll probably scrap it too if that's the add on cost!

[froggy76]

Jan 22, 2021 13:34:48 GMT -5 pandorica said:

Jan 22, 2021 13:28:11 GMT -5 froggy76 said:

I don't really have knowledge to share, but we are planning a major renovation and addition to our 1938 house and we were told it would cost $7k-$10k to move the laundry from the basement to the second floor. So we scrapped the whole idea.

Oh yikes. That is not what I wanted to hear hahah. I think we'll probably scrap it too if that's the add on cost!

Hopefully you'll get a better answer since you're planning to add these to a bathroom area. We didn't have room near the upstairs bathrooms so we had identified a different spot. Getting plumbing to that part of the house (even while it's gutted and under construction) was probably driving most of the cost.

[pandorica]

Jan 22, 2021 13:45:56 GMT -5 froggy76 said:

Jan 22, 2021 13:34:48 GMT -5 pandorica said:

Oh yikes. That is not what I wanted to hear hahah. I think we'll probably scrap it too if that's the add on cost!

Hopefully you'll get a better answer since you're planning to add these to a bathroom area. We didn't have room near the upstairs bathrooms so we had identified a different spot. Getting plumbing to that part of the house (even while it's gutted and under construction) was probably driving most of the cost.

Ah, good to know. We'd be moving the laundry up one floor almost directly over where it is right now (same for the new bathroom) so hopefully that's easier.

[devonpow]

We have a second floor laundry in our 1905 house - it’s all original floors/supports etc so no issues with supporting it. It’s not a full laundry room but a stackable unit in basically a closet area. It’s next to the master bath so I imagine it was easy to run the plumbing etc.

We also have a full laundry room in the basement (that we added). I know it’s sounds crazy that we have two washers and dryers but I love it. The 2nd floor one is super easy for kids clothes etc and the basement one (where we have front load/bigger machines) is great for bed linens, and bigger loads, plus has the folding area and utility sink - all the stuff we couldn’t fit in the 2nd floor laundry.

[mrsukyankee]

We have a stacked washer and dryer on the 2nd floor that we put in a closet next to a powder room. It was easy for our plumber as the plumbing was right there and that made it cheap. Our house was built around 1905 and it was no big deal.

[lo]

I live in an 1897 home and we have 2 bathrooms upstairs, side by side. I thought it was kind of weird, but I wasn’t complaining. Someone stopped by that used to live here in the 70s and she told us one of the bathrooms upstairs used to be a laundry room, which is now located on the first floor. So, it can be done!

[pandorica]

Thanks for all of the positive anecdotes! I won't count this out as an option yet