Saturday, October 29, 2011

Measure twice, cut once.....

With as much building as Andy and I do, you would think this concept would be drilled into our heads.

This is a story where that parable  comes into play.

Lowes was having a great sale on front load washers and dryers, and Andy and I were renting ours from Rent a Center. After making $75 payments twice a month for a few months, we did the math and realized that we would pay $3000 for our washer and dryer before we paid them off. That seemed excessive, so when we saw a front load washer and dryer set on sale for $800 for both (total, not each) we had to jump.

But one of our least favorite things about front loaders is how low they sit. It is really awkward to bend that low to unload and load your clothes. And we thought buying the pedestals was a waste of money when we kept seeing lovelies like this:






And this:


It didn't make sense to spend upwards of $500 on pedestals, when they looked SO EASY to build. (feel free to watch these words bite me in the ass)

We started by measuring our space, which we always do when building anything. It is important to make sure things will fit in your space. (also feel free to laugh at me at the end of the story for this.) We measured the width and height of our laundry room, which looks like this:


And took into account the height of our new washer and dryer to calculate the height of the pedestal. We then went to the store, bought all the wood, and got down to business. Now we don't have a table saw, so all long, straight cuts are done with a circular saw. While Andy does his best to cut straight, it is hard. After 2 big plywood projects, we have decided a table saw is really a must have. 

(we didn't take any assembly pictures...) 

So we had the pedestal in 2 pieces, and we took them upstairs to make sure they fit. We took the base, and tried to put it on the floor, and it got stuck... We could not get it to sit flat on the floor. When we measured the room, we measured wall to wall, but neglected to include the baseboards. STUPID! The top platform fit perfectly between the walls, but the bottom needed to be fixed. We were worried about amy major changes because the structure had to hold a washer and dryer, and if you have ever tried to pick one of those babies up, they are HEAVY! This platform just had to be sturdy. 

The baseboards included, our platform was an inch too big. We figured out that if we took one of the 2x4's off one side, and replaced it with a 1x4, that should fix it. It did, and we put everything together and it worked out fine. Until we had to put the washer and dryer on top. 

Come back on Tuesday to see how things got worse, before they got better :)





6 comments:

  1. [...] to share my new home with you all. I noticed in the move that I left you all hanging with our Washer and Dryer pedestals. I will try and wrap that up this weekend. Also this weekend we are planning on getting out our [...]

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