Downstairs wc & utility - which would you do?

[SpearmintTea]

We want to take some space off the garage to add a downstairs toilet and a utility room. The utility room would need to have three doors - to the kitchen, garage, and toilet. If we have washer and dryer side by side, then opposite the door to the wc and a sink, that leaves 1.1m for the toilet, or we could ditch the utility sink, have a wider door to allow for bringing larger items through the garage into the kitchen and have a more spacious room for the toilet, maybe even space to add a shower. (When the cooker was delivered we had to take the door off its hinges to fit it in, and even then it was a squeeze!)

What would you prioritise? It's a 3/4 bed house & we're also looking to add a small en suite upstairs, so would have 3 bathrooms in total.

I think a small downstairs toilet is enough. Nobody will want to shower downstairs. A utility sink is useful. Why can't items come in thru the front door?
As an alternative could you not put a small toilet under the stairs?

Do you need to have a door into the garage from the utility room? Tbf, our utility room does has all three doors (into kitchen, downstairs toilet and garage) but although we use the door into the garage a fair bit, it does add drafts and is more of a security risk.

I hate these downstairs shower room/utility room combos. Who wants to walk through a utility room and kitchen wrapped in a towel, then all the way upstairs to get dressed? If you are adding an en suite upstairs, then you've got two places to shower upstairs. You don't need an additional shower in an inconvenient and non-private place.

If you take space off the garage, is there still room to park a car? If not, you might as well convert the whole garage.

The utility needs a door from the kitchen but not from the garage.

Downstairs toilets are really useful. If there isn't room for a toilet, utility and full size garage, I would prioritise the toilet and then choose one of the others depending on what's most important to you. If you can put a door to the toilet from the hallway rather than through the utility, that would be better.

I'd agree with pps, toilet downstairs is essential, but shower seems a bit is od. Unless you're ticking a box to sell or you have someone with a bedroom downstairs.

DH and dc use the garage for exercise, so need access from the house and it would be hugely expensive to put a door anywhere else. Plus it's used for bikes. One bedroom is downstairs so shower not totally daft idea as it might at first seem, plus would future proof in case one of us should have mobility problems in the future.

Bringing things through the front door is tricky due to a kink in the hall, which also doesn't lead directly to the kitchen.

I did this. I took about a third of the garage for a small utility/wc. In the utility the one wall has a door, then enough space for a washer and a dryer next to each other then nothing else. THere is then a stud wall and a small toilet with basin in there. I don't have a sink in the utility. I have a worktop on top of the appliances and on the other wall I have a small radiator and coat hooks. Perfect space. So pleased I did it.

Same as FinallyGotAnIphone here, we don't have a utility sink, we use the sink that's in the toilet room just off the utility room instead if need be. I use that sink if I want to pretreat washing with stain remover before it goes in the machine for example, it does just fine.

We did the same sort of thing in our previous house and space was very tight so we had our tumble dryer on top of the washing machine, obviously would depend on your height if you could reach the controls. We are both average height and tumble dryer only has the dial and 2 buttons so very handy for our utility. When we moved and had a bigger utility I loved the set up from the previous house so we kept them stacked and built them in to a unit with the vent for TD so it's really neat and tidy now

I like downstairs showers off utility rooms with external access if you have an active family. Teenage boys come in from rugby - strip off in the utility room, mucky kit staight in washing machine and they step straight into the shower. Keen mountain biker or runner? Same deal.

How about, instead of a utility room with toilet/shower, you make it a decent shower/toilet room, with a utility cupboard? I'm thinking deep cupboard wide enough for washing machine and dryer side by side, work surface over the top for laundry baskets, and a hanging rail over the top of that.

Turning the garage into more of an official gym and they can shower and shove their smelliest straight into the machine then too.

Good to know that I probably wouldn't miss a sink in the utility room.

qwertytrewq I thought about stacking the washer and dryer, but if we keep them below a worktop we can have drying space above it.

I think DH is warming to having a shower in there - he mentioned this morning that it would be handy for when we're all going out somewhere together...

I have a couple of fell runners and football players. A downstairs shower would be great. I would stack your washer and dryer, maybe get one of those dryers on a pulley fixed to the ceiling if you need to save space. A decent sink can double for laundry and handwashing.

Silenceoftheprams I think we need to keep the utility out of the toilet or we could guarantee that someone would need a vital piece of clothing from the dryer whilst someone else was in there. There's a chimney breast at one side which would limit how far over the door could go, so the appliances would be tucked away one side of the path through to the garage and the toilet/shower room the other side.

Can't you stack the washer and drier one on top of the other?

Agree you don't need a downstairs shower. Who's it for??

Agree a utility sink (or 'dirty sink' as I think of it) is a useful thing.

We need a diagram

I also demand a diagram

Here's a quick sketch, not to scale, but with the important measurements included. The width is obviously fixed, the depth we can adjust but are keen not to take too much off the garage.

I'd say it's crying out for a pocket door or two. If you're going to be knocking through from the kitchen into the utility, you could put one in there to save having a door opening inwards in the kitchen. If you put one in the partition between the utility and the shower room, you may be able to include a shower within a smaller room and perhaps create a dumping ground/coats and shoes area in the utility corridor.

I would have a sink in the utility if possible. Really useful for washing mucky stuff.

If your family would benefit from a shower downstairs then i'd seriously think about having one put in. If space is a problem then i'd think about maybe changing the washing machine to a duel washer dryer and then put your solo dryer in the garage. This would mean you'd have the benefit of extra floor/wall space together with the benefit of an in house dryer and an extra dryer for your higher load days.

I like the idea of a pocket door mousehouse123, I think that could make a difference between the utility and the shower room! I'm not sure it's feasible for the door to the kitchen. The only thing I can't figure out is how a pocket door would lock. I'd prefer something that could be unlocked from the other side in an emergency, so the obvious hook on the inside to hook onto the wall wouldn't work.

Appleby if only that were feasible. The builder suggested a washer dryer to DH and he had a good laugh at the idea. We have a 9kg washer and it's normal to do 2 or 3 loads back to back, so nothing would get dry. They're all high load days when we're in. I have a dirty family I guess

Our tiny bathroom has a washing machine and will soon have a stacked dryer. You dont need much space. You can have a sliding door with a proper lock.

Also if someone needs something they just walk in our house!

I would stack the dryer on top of the washing machine and have a utility sink in the space saved. As you've got the downstairs bedroom, then I would seriously consider putting in a shower as well as the loo and washbasin.

When we ordered our pocket doors, you could just specify a normal handle or a lock. We've got locks on some of ours and they have a slot on the outside (a bit like a public toilet) so that you can turn it from the outside in an emergency.

It may be feasible to put one in the kitchen doorway. You essentially need to knock through a hole twice as big as the doorway and then you end up building a hollow stud which is plasterboarded to cover the 'pocket'. That may be more work than you want to do. Only thing is, you can't hang much off the wall where the pocket is as you're only going into plasterboard/stud so wouldn't work if, for example, you wanted to hang wall cupboards off that part of the kitchen wall.

Just when I thought I was more or less decided not to have a sink in the utility, I found this. pin.it/4nGaWYZ What do you guys think?