Laundry Pass-Through

In my last post we had just finished off the bathroom floor by completing the hex tile install! So hard, so satisfying. Here’s a pic to remind you of the before and after….

From this:

To this:

(I apologize again for the awful, slightly hazy iPhone photos…. I promise I’ll do lots of fun detail shots with my actual camera later on.)

The next step was getting ready to tile the walls. I had been using this image as my inspiration bathroom and I love the tile wainscot. (incidentally, is this pronounced WainsCOAT, or WainsSCOT? We may never know….)

In addition to texting all these photos from my iPhone to Russell, I had also been keeping my mom and sister in the loop. My mom loves old details as much as I do and sent me a text that said:

“I saw laundry chute ideas on Houzz. Wish you had one from the bathroom into the laundry room :)”

Oh dear….

I really liked this idea. Really really! The little wall that you’ve been spying is the wall on the other side of the laundry room. We’re very lucky in that our laundry room is upstairs, with all the bedrooms upstairs as well. Now, we don’t really *need* a laundry pass-through as it’s not that hard to walk around the corner and ~~toss the laundry on the floor~~ place the laundry in the correct hamper based on color. BUT, the idea was just so fun and neat. One of my favorite things about an old home are the small details that make it special. Telephone nooks, little odd rooms, built ins everywhere….a pass through was just what this bathroom needed to go from “oh that’s nice” to “oh super cool!!!”

So the next text Russell got a few days later (after casually mentioning my idea to him in passing) was this pic:

Have I mentioned how patient and kind my husband is? And how he doesn’t ever freak out? Well, he didn’t. I spy you little laundry room!! As you can see there was a major stud in the very center of this wall. There was no way to avoid it since this wall is so small. I had been texturing the walls (you can see the not-yet dry mud on the walls in the top of the pic) right before I decided to break into the wall. Our walls had previously been super flat with high gloss paint. Since I was putting up a tile surround, I didn’t need to texture or paint on the bottom half of the wall.

I’m not very awesome at cutting straight lines in drywall. I don’t have a rotary zip saw, so just banged a couple of holes in the wall with my sledgehammer and started cutting to the size I was envisioning with a small serrated hand saw. I wasn’t pleased with the size and so the pic at right below is a bit larger of an opening, sans stud. I wasn’t all that worried about my opening being super level. I knew I would level the framing on the inside and I also knew I could cover up the crooked drywall with outside framing.

My next step was removing the stud and framing it out to disperse the weight. I do have a reciprocating saw that occasionally works. (haha) I cut the studs (two right next to each other) and then used my miter saw to cut framing for the interior of the wall….one for the top and bottom and two for the sides. These were attached to the studs all around with wood screws. These pieces of wood were simple 2×4 pine. I wasn’t worried about the screws because I would be covering this opening with yet another cabinet grade wood that I would paint later on. I also repaired my drywall with tape and mud at this point.

Here’s the pass through framed out on the interior….bunch of other stuff going on also in the tub surround, on the walls, baseboards, etc. I used cabinet grade poplar wood for the interior. These pieces were carefully leveled and you’ll notice there are slight gaps (especially underneath the bottom ledge) where the pine 2×4 wasn’t level and I shimmed the poplar on top. I attached the poplar and shims with my nail gun – a purchase I made in my kitchen revamp and probably the best purchase I’ve made tool-wise.

Here is the almost-final before/after of the pass through. Lots of steps on the walls were taken before this pic was taken and I’ll be posting all about that soon! This was such a fun detail and I’m so glad my mom texted me this great idea just before I tiled this wall. Had I already tiled, it would have been too late to add this fun new-old house detail.