Green Giants get huge... unless you are truely dedicated to sheering them regularly, I wouldn't recommend them. Also, how will you sheer the fence side? They are awesome trees, but they really want to get big. If you do plant them, they should be at least 3ft of the fence. I don't have any personal experience with Italian Cypress, as it cannot grow here, but it seems like a good choice for your situation. Because they are narrow, you could plant them pretty close together or create a double staggered row. I think 3ft spacing between them it correct for a hedge. If Green Giant grows in your area, you could also consider using Thuja occidentalis 'Degroot's Spire'. They are a really nice, narrow evergreen Arborvitae. You could even mix and match, with a backrow of the more shade tolerant 'Degroot's Spire' and a front row of Italian cypress.. Staggered Row: x x x x x x x x x x For more ideas, head over to the conifer forum. Those guys are very active, experts, and eager to help. I know there are plenty of people who live in your zone that can add more ideas than I can, and with first hand experience.

Norm - hope you pick up on this .. hopefully it's helpful for your project. I would have included this for you earlier, but I had this info stashed and it took some hunting for me to re-find it. For any soil that goes into landscaping there are three classes to know: bank soil, loose soil, and compacted soil. "Bank soil" is soil in it's naturally settled state, without machine or human compaction. An open lot, untouched, would have a bulk density of bank soil. Dig that soil up and the bulk density decreases as it becomes broken and aerated. That is loose soil. Take soil and compact it, like running machinery over it, it becomes compacted soil. The typical relationships for bulk density are bank soil is the reference = 1.0, loose soil expands and has 80% of the bulk density of bank soil, and compacted soil has a density about 1.05-1.1 of bank soil. Why is this important? A big part of permanent landscaping is establishing a stable and permanent grade. You want stability after installation. When you buy soil for a landscape you get loose soil. But when you are filling and grading to native settled soil you have to match surrounding bank soil for grade and drainage. That means for a soil comparable to the untouched surrounding soil you will actually need to overfill and gade with loose soil to allow for the settling. Typically by about 10-20% for topsoil. The soil supplier should be able to guide you on how much. The danger is that if you don't allow for that natural settling, you will end up with a low area where you had filled as it later settles, and if that area is planted for permanence there is little you can do without upsetting the plants. A part of the consideration is the filling soil's organic content. The more of that there is, the more the soil will settle over time - it cannot be directly replaced in permanent landscapes. You can only strive to maintain it via top dressing / mulch in those permanent grade and planted areas. About as good as you can maintain that way is ~ 5% organic matter. If you start with a higher OM content, then you need to allow for that much additional settling over time. This post was edited by TXEB on Fri, May 17, 13 at 3:34

First, difference between gas and electric dryer are nil in the grand scheme of life. Plus you're not limited to an electric dryer since you have gas there you could run a gas line and electric outlet and have gas. You could put a stackable unit in there and have both. Do some upstairs and some downstairs. That way not lose as much room. You say you don't like doing laundry. Why? If it doesn't include going downstairs or the related, this probably won't force you to enjoy laundry. Maybe you need to do other things? Have kids sorting their stuff? Have kids help with laundry? I would love to have a first floor laundry. It would help me so much. But it doesn't sound like that's the case with you. My thoughts, FWIW: 1-we would lose the shoe and dog feeding area Wouldn't lose it all with the stacked unit. Not sure you'd totally lose it anyway with some modification though. 2-not really any room to separate dirty clothes This could be a bit of an issue but a small wall hanging sorter might take care of it too. Or using hampers. 3-no rod to hang clean clothes as they come out of dryer Fold down rod or rod hung from ceiling? 4-the area would seem cramped "Seem" or "be"? That's two different questions 5-not sure about electric dryer- do they work as good as gas? Yes, as addressed before. We've lived with the current configuration for as long as we've lived here (13 years) Sounds like it works for you, but... BUT--I don't like doing laundry sometimes and I wonder if moving it up from unfinished basement would make it more enjoyable? Again, is it the darkness? The steps? What is it that bothers you? Darkness can be addressed with simple lights. Maybe a fresh coat of paint? A chair and a TV? Also, the clean clothes in the basement often don't make it up to the bedrooms so the kids run downstairs every morning to grab something. Well, if you don't finish laundry down there, it's not likely you'll finish it upstairs unless something else changes. Maybe you need to put shelves/drawers in the basement to store the clothes? Then just go there for your clothes. Or have the kids bring all of it up and put it away rather than one at a time? There's a number of issues here. I don't think a new location will resolve the underlying issues. If it's working, stay with it and work on improving it. Although again a stacked unit might be a possibility. Would you put clothes away if they were on the main floor? Can the dog eat somewhere else? Do you have that many shoes that you need a special room filled with them? Maybe check out some design magazines or something at the library and some organizing ideas. Might be helpful. I know this is an old thread but might still apply. I'm curious what happened.

I am attaching a floor plan with measurements of our current laundry room. As we walk in from the garage, the laundry room is on the right and is a rectangle (12'10" x 6'). We are able to steal an alcove type area from our current family room to add to the laundry room. This area will be a total re-do and our goal is to add a toilet and create a mudroom (bench, hooks, landing zone) type area. Dh and I keep going back and forth on whether we should put in a stackable washer/dryer into the alcove, or if it would make more sense to put the toilet there. I've also attached a current photo of the area (not staged). We've only been in this home a couple of months so things are still a bit of a mess! Appreciate any advice!