I am firmly in the camp that believes having things too sterile is actually bad for your immune system. My great aunt, who lived to be 101 and a half, could eat things out of the refrigerator that none of us young people would touch. Her resistance to bacteria was good and built up over time and exposure. All that to say that if you are not phobic about what lurks in your laundry room, then having it serve mutliple purposes can be fabulous. If you, like several of my friends, constantly use hand sanitizer and try to eradicate every lurking germ, then you are not likely to be happy with having other activities happen next to where you wash soiled clothes. We recently did a renovation and decided to turning an old garage apartment into a multi-function space. It includes a laundry area, mudroom, pantry, office nook, and a small bathroom. The mudroom's French doors are where a garage door was 50 years ago and now open onto a smallish front porch that connects to our driveway. The mudroom is modest in scale. The doors let in lots of light. It has a little stool for the kids to sit down to take off their shoes, a low shelf for storage, several pegs for school bags, coats, and my cloth shopping bags, a small table for important papers the kids bring home, and a small tower with basket that hold sunglasses, a brush, pony tail holders, mittens, hats, etc. A large pantry opens at one end and the kitchen is up two steps at the other. From there a wide hallway opens into the laundry area in the middle section. The washer and dryer are front loaders and mount under a long counter with a deep sink at one end. There are cabinets above the laundry area that hold detergent, stain stick, vases, cleaning supplies, unmatched socks, tools we use often, seeds, etc. Eventually I hope to add a wall mounted drying rack to a space I left blank. I have had my eye on one in the Ballard Design catalog, but cannot yet spend the $$, The ironing board is mounted into the opposite wall and has a lamp, an intergrated plug, hook for hanging a couple of items, and a place to store the iron, hot or cold. The whole set up works beautifully for sorting, folding,and ironing laundry. Seems everyone is willing to help with the laundry now, because it is a pleasant place to be and well laid out. We have deep shelves built into a sort of wall cubbie. There we store two large laundry baskets on each shelf. Dirty clothes are on the bottom shelf, clean on the next. We also use the other cubbies for beach towels, pool bags, my "gift closet" and clothes that need to be donated or mended go on upper shelves, as they are culled during washing. My children never want to get rid of anything, so I have to sneak these out of their sight. I use the laundry sink for flower arranging, cleaning out coolers after a trip, and sometimes as a place to store wet dishcloths and dust rags (on a little rack that fits inside the sink) so they don't stink up the rest of the laundry until it is time to wash a whole load. The countertop serves mutliple purposes too. When clean laundry is put away it becomes a place for weighing food for our monthly co-op splits, drying art works, starting seeds in trays, polishing silver, etc. Instead of a powder room, we located a small, but full bathroom directly across from the laundry work space. Though we often set up a drying rack in the large shower, especially in winter, it is great this time of year to come in from the garden or back from the city pool and be able to take off dirty or wet clothes, hop in the shower, and throw stuff in the wash without tracking through multiple rooms. Towards the back of the house, still open to the laundry area, I have a built in desk with large triple windows over my work space. My computer, filing cabinets, and office supplies are there and it overlooks the prettiest part of our back yard. When I finally finsih cleaning out my boxes of files, we will be able to get to the door that leads out to the terrace. Other than the kitchen where I spent most of my time and even with boxed, it is still a nice space. If I had it to do over again, there would only be two changes I would want to make. First, I might make it a little bigger, as the children always want to be here with me and I would love to have a work space for them too. Second, I would add a bar for hanging up clean clothes until we take them upstair. I asked the cabinet contractor to do this as part of his work, but it didn't happen. I have since decided I would prefer the drying rack for now anwyway, but if I had more room, I would add a small closet or hanging bar. Happy deciding! Perhaps I can post some photos soon.

This is an interesting topic. In our previous home our laundry room had a sink, in our new home that we our building our laundry room is not laid out as well( I know crazy right?). I decided to eliminate the sink to create better space for the lockers, and added a slop sink in the garage, which is much better for my sons mud on everything which is really what I used the sink most for and filling the dog bowls, but my dog bowls will not be in the laundry room in the new house. I am not worried about it, I will have a bathroom sink and a wet bar sink on the same level, I really never soak in a sink(use washer) but can't remember the last time I soaked something. The contractor and plumber both said I needed to heat the garage for the sink, but I agree with a previous poster we had a hot/cold faucet in our last unheated garage and it never froze, what is the difference? If I was in a warm weather state I wouldn't think twice about it.

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.

Size is important and cp and Sophie are correct about 36” being the preferred size for a 30” cooktop. Jh is correct in that most homes have the same size cooktop and vent hood. As far as size is concerned, you do the math. You decide whether losing 3” of cabinet space on each side of the vent hood is worth it for better ventilation/capture. To me it is. Maybe it’s not for you. Just so you know, fitting under a cabinet doesn’t mean a vent hood is powerless. Under cabinet hoods are one style, and the style of ventilation you choose depends on many things including your layout. Power here is determined by the number of cubic feet per minute (cfm) the vent hood moves. More isn’t always better. Once you cross into 600+ cfm territory - especially if you have a newer home - you have to consider the need for make-up air. If you’re budget conscious that’ll be a deal breaker. Stick to the 400 cfm category, check your local code (which is usually clear as mud), or discuss this with your contractor before you buy anything.