Saturday, August 29, 2009

My beautiful laundrette*

Losing the utility room meant that I lost the space for my stacked washer/dryer. While I try not to use the dryer much I do use the washing machine almost every day and the prospect of endless trips to the laundrette was somewhat depressing.

After a casual conversation with one of the contractors who said that they had previously connected washing machines on patios temporarily, Nigel and I got to work.

After a quick trip to Ace Hardware for hoses and an 18 gallon bucket we had created our temporary laundrette in a rubbermaid shed on the deck. We also get the benefit of greywater for the garden while the sprinkler system is out of action due to construction.


Nigel and I have been congratulating ourselves on the Heath_Robinson nature of the setup. I think that in the USA, Heath Robinson is not well known and people use the reference to McGuyver to describe this sort of cobbled-together contraption.


* I was shocked when I looked up the reference for the film to discover that I saw it in 1986....makes me feel old

1 comment:

alce said...

Good for you with the greywater, too! When I was in grad school in Tucson, I had a washing machine on my back porch that wouldn't spin to extract the water. So I hauled the sopping laundry to hang dry on the clothesline. Anything to avoid the laundromat, even if the towels always dried scratchy and yukky.

I remember that movie; I probably saw it in Tucson. A very young Daniel Day-Lewis.