Dodgy Door

This little bit of carpentry is really just a hole in the wall. We're looking from inside the laundry room to the outside, where there's some scrap wood and a big tarp. Not terribly exciting, really.

The hole is about 9x15 inches and it's for the dryer vent. Modern front-loading washing machines and dryers are too low to the ground, so I built a little platform for them to sit on. In the process, I also moved the dryer vent so that it didn't have to make a pair of 90-degree bends. And finally, we scooted the washer and dryer closer to the wall and lined them up better.

But of course, there was a wall stud directly behind the dryer, exactly in the path of the vent. To get around that, I cut away the stud and put in the cripple stud you see here. I had to rip and plane a modern 2x6 to make it fit the size of an old-style 2x4. You can see the fresh, pale wood next to the older, seasoned wood.

A little insulation, a new vent pipe, some drywall patch, and we're all set.

Just a heads-up: washing machines are a lot heavier than dryers. Kathy and I struggled to move the washer from its original position, and struggled even more to get it back into its new place. Then you have to adjust the little leveling feet, which are underneath the beast. Tip it up; adjust one foot; let it down; measure the wobble; repeat several times; administer beer. It's even less fun than it sounds.