AROUND HOME : Notes on Laundry Space, Dipped Candles, Tiffany Glass and Movado Watches : Hiding the Laundry
TODAY’S SMALLER HOMES and apartments no longer accommodate sewing and laundry rooms. Garages are full, service porches nearly extinct. Walls are coming down to integrate kitchens with overall living space. There seems nowhere left to hide bulky--but indispensable--laundry equipment.
But now, storage specialists have concluded that if kitchens can be integrated, so can laundry areas. Ingenious solutions often expand existing laundry space. The Kitchen Factory camouflages laundry areas in kitchens and bedrooms. One Wood-Mode or Kraft Maid cabinet door can conceal a refrigerator or clothes closet while another might conceal washer and dryer, pullout sewing machine table, swing-out hamper or adjustable linen shelves. Ironing boards and work tops unfold from cabinet drawers. Hanger-racks and laundry carts telescope out of sight. Sorting bins vanish beneath counters.
At Jack’s Kitchens, streamlined Crystal cabinets hide upper-floor laundry chutes and stacked washer-dryers surrounded by shelves. At California Kitchens, black-mirror washers and dryers enhance the beauty of Millbrook’s shiny black cabinetry.
Iron-Away and Sico make disappearing ironing boards with cupboard shelves, wooden or mirrored doors, swivel hooks and spotlights, electrical outlets, automatic switches and timers to turn off irons, hot-iron storage compartments and optional fold-out worktables.
To update existing facilities, Hold Everything offers a shop full of fold-flat laundry aids--boards, racks, bins, carts, lined baskets, multiple hangers, wheeled hampers and sorters, sweater and sneaker dryers. For antiquarians, Commercial Enameling makes a porcelain-lined cast-iron Victorian laundry sink with wrought-iron pedestal legs and old-fashioned wall-mounted fittings.
Laundry areas are designed and sold by the Kitchen Factory in Studio City, California Kitchens in Burbank, and Jack’s Kitchens in Thousand Oaks and Goleta. For ironing cabinets: Green & Roberts in Los Angeles, A-1 Home Appliances in Long Beach, and Ingalls Plumbing in Santa Barbara. For laundry aids: Hold Everything in Century City, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. For the laundry tub: Todd Pipe & Supply in Sepulveda, Hawthorne and Garden Grove.
