Mine is unfashionably (who knew) combined as well. It's one of the most-used and most loved rooms (by me anyway) in the house. My issue is that it's only about 8 x 13 and I had lived in the house part-time for a year when I reconfigured it. We walk through to garage so it serves as side entry. There's a 7 foot open hanging space for coats & jackets adjacent to the door, storage for ironing board and place to hang things that air dry. Along the unbroken wall I've got a d-shape sink (not large enough in retrospect), 1 drawer bank, a wine fridge and washer/dryer all under a 13-foot stretch of unbroken counter. Above I have a 13-foot row of Ikea upper cabinets for overflow dish storage and other things. That counter is major -- everything goes on there. In retrospect I could have done without the wine fridge and had another bank of drawers. We really need a secondary closet downstairs. I find I need to change clothes in there when I go out to the garden, or if I'm around in house sweats and need to run an errand it's handier to change down there than run upstairs, come down, forget something, run back up YKWIM. I have an indoor/outdoor carpet in there that gets vaccuumed super well. When there's ironing, an old sheet helps with the floor issue. Fortunately, I used porcelain tiles in the whole back hallway area. Those are bulletproof so the floors are not an issue even with mud. I find the combo room super handy. I just would love to have it 3 times bigger with a huge bank of drawers so that the summer stuff could be stored during winter and the reverse. Plus I'd love to have a wall with really good light and storage for the sewing machine, mending accessories etc. Without seasons there would be much less pressure on that room in re storage. As for making the rooms separate, I'm one of those people who wants fewer and more efficiently configured spaces. I don't want to run from room to room. One the best spaces I ever had was in a rental house. The owners was an artist who had winterized the attached garage and converted it to a studio. It had big tables, bookshelves, storage plus a separate outdoor entrance. It was big open space and just great. So I'd be very happy with a multi-purpose laundry/mud/sewing/utility/closet/project room as big as the garage. Ha.

Annette, thank you for taking the time to answer. Apologies for the very rough sketch. I didn't explain that we will be adding the envisioned left hand wall, sectioning off the new laundry space from the current open garage space. The elevator and space at the bottom of the sketch are in the interior of the house. The door between the elevator and the stairs opens from the foyer into the garage. The closet I have drawn in there, we have now decided will be added to the laundry room and not the foyer. The lines I have drawn in the middle of the left hand wall will be stairs going down to the lower level of the garage. There will be a door there. The sketch I have drawn correlates to the right hand section of the blueprint. The perspective would be the equivalent of the first photograph. The new wall will be placed where the dotted line is in the blue print . Am I making more sense? (or any sense.... ;) ) I agree with you about putting the dryer on the exterior wall. I'm not sure why my contractor boyfriend is so insistent on them not being on an exterior wall. Were the Fl units you were using in the house on pedestals or without? I feel without the pedestals they will be ok. I'm short: 5'4"

I have other posts if anyone wants to see other parts of the house. My style is a bit on the side of transitional/transitional but with a comfy vibe. Room Is off our white kitchen that has edgecomb grey bm walls, simple white bm cabinets, with a bit of a rustic vibe - medium brown oak floors.

How many steps up into the house from the garage?