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Building a Home

Utility Room (Space actually needed?)

4 years ago

I have this weird little space left in my plans that I am trying to squeeze a 4*2 closet and shower/toilet/sink space for my son on the right side (his bedroom is right of my screenshot), a W/D and possibly a 4*1 closet space for vacuum/cleaning supplies, etc. I also need to squeeze in the utility room. We are hoping to find water to put in a well, so I will have a pressure tank, a Geothermal furnace, a radon system, and I am planning to do 2 tankless water heaters and later add a whole home filtration system. Currently, our W/D is in our utility room...and I hate it. This W/D is just for the kid's and guests laundry, but would still prefer side by side units. They were originally planned where the french doors are showing. If I do them off the hallway, I'll do french doors or a barn door (I know, gasp). I love the idea of turning them and having them sort of in a hallway to the utility room...but that makes the utility space really small. I am also trying to keep the exercise room as large as possible.

What am I not thinking of that will need to go in the utility space? If I just need enough space on one side for the furnace and the other side for the well pump, then the back wall for water lines, I don't want to devote too much space to the room. I've done some redesign to eliminate both a full bath and a powder room from the basement (kid's rooms are in walkout basement) and moved the guest bedroom to the walkout wall, and gained the exercise room. Now that I have gained so much from the last minute changes, I hate to not make my son's bathroom and closet space perfect...and also don't want to scrimp on the 2nd W/D or make the exercise room smaller than it needs to be to make the utility room larger than it needs to be! I do realize that my HVAC guy does not want to be cramped when working on the HVAC....but am also trying to be realistic about how much space I actually need as I am trying to maximize every last sq inch in the basement.

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This is our first remodel project and we've certainly learned some lessons. We interviewed 4 companies - 2 design build firms and 2 architects. DH's uncle is an architect in another state and he was our sounding board as we went through the process, and gave suggestions on floor plan. Ideally, we would've had him do our house, but we couldn't afford it. We liked one architect's design portfolio, but decided we didn't have the money to do what they could've designed to really take advantage of their creativity. One of the design build's firm work was more in line with what we knew we could pull off. The floor plan they came up with is a good use of our space. If we had unlimited money, we would've gone a different option. Be prepared to consider options. We were dead set against touching the 2 bedrooms as we needed the space to live in, but the weird walk-in closet in one bedroom was the perfect location for the master bathroom. There were 2 closets in this room and it was minor change - building a 5' wall to close it off from the bedroom and creating a doorway in the other wall for access to the master. This one change made the entire layout work. We did consider minor changes, but they didn't fix underlying problems with layout. That's why people are suggesting you consider relocating kitchen or opening up some walls. Yes it is more to do that, but it costs so much to do anything in the first place and it may be worth it. You won't know until you check.
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