I just closed on a beautiful condo and I don’t have many complaints except this closet door situation.
The closet in question contains a washer and a dryer side by side. Underneath the washer is a plastic draining pan, I guess to catch potential flooding from the washer. Problem is the closet doors are all jacked up because the doors won’t close properly on account of that draining pan sticking out at the bottom. This has caused some damage to the doors. Right now they are all messed up, won’t close or align on their track, and bound to get worse. I had to remove a screw from the left door that was damaging the door and preventing it from closing. I don’t understand what the screw was supposed to do. The left side still won’t close, but it’s better.
I consider this a significant issue because these closet doors are parked directly adjacent to the garage entrance door to our house. When they don’t close, they block the entrance. Every time I need to bring something inside from the car, it’s an ordeal.
The right side door is about ready to fall off. I don’t think the plastic pan can slide back any further under the washing machine to give clearance to the doors. We’d remove the pan, but we’ve been told by friends and family that the draining pan is a good idea. We talked about removing the doors and installing curtains, but my husband is convinced it will be too loud/ugly. The washer and dryer are adjacent to the kitchen and dining areas and noises would interfere with conversation.
If you look at the top of the doors, the ceiling area clearly shows the track was moved once already to accommodate the drain pan. There’s a tiny maybe 0.5 to 1.0 inch space where we might be able to move the track further out - but would it make a difference?
Neither of us are handypeople. Please tell me how to to go about solving this issue. I have enclosed pictures so you get the idea.
Notes:
I can’t think of anywhere else in the house to put the washer and dryer
2. We are weaklings and would probably have to hire someone if we needed to move the washer - I can’t get it even to slide around in the drain pan
We had a healthy budget for furniture and appliances until we had to get a new A/C this week. Buying a new washer/dryer is not out of the question, if it would help…but I’d rather exhaust other options first.
Can you buy a different sized drain pan that will fit? You can hire a handyman who can either replace the drain pan or realign the doors. Finding recommended local businesses is one thing (the only thing?) that NextDoor is good for. A good handy man won’t be too expensive and may have some ideas for you too.
Those pans are a fairly recent invention, say 15-20 years. Lots of HWH & washer/dryer closets were sized before the drain pans became optional then later mandatory in many multi-family dwellings. Which I assume your condo is.
Very obviously, your drain pan is not original with the condo. It was added at some point, probably during the slapdash renovations done for its sale to you. So the bottom line is you can have that drain pan, or doors, but not both.
I have a slightly similar situation in my apartment with very similar doors. Which are generally flimsy & a PITA. My solution was to remove the doors and replace it / them with a stout curtain spring rod and a curtain. Not ideal, but stupid simple & stupid cheap.
Heck, for WAG $30 each for rod & curtain, you could remove the doors, leave the tracks, and install them as a stopgap until hiring a handyman and getting a real solution fits in your bandwidth and budget.
Looking at the photo. Yep. Something will have to go.
The drain pan is going to be the cheapest way to do it.
They are a good idea, of course. And maybe a permit thing in your jurisdiction.
The permits are not needed now. You own the floor. You own the W/D. You own the doors.
If…if it were me, I get that drain pain outta there. Trust my floor. Trust my washers not gonna flood like a cartoon washer over flow. Have a great mop.
And not have to do construction or buy new doors. Those bi-fold door ain’t cheap.
This is what I suggested, but Spouse Weasel was not enthralled with the idea. I was looking around at noise-reducing curtains, which are apparently a thing. Does anyone know if these are effective?
you can install a block to raise the doors so the bottom will be higher than the drain pan. Each door is mounted at one point at its base by the door jamb. install a spacer there. There seems to be ample room at the top, so you likely won’t need to cut the doors down.
I don’t know the particular terms, but we had closet doors that slid past each other; they were both on small wheels with a track anchored to the top of the doorway frame. I’d bet you could buy just the hardware and adapt it to your present doors.
I just Googled “slide past closet doors” and found exactly what I was talking about. Check it out.
The problem with those is that you may have trouble getting into both machines at the same time. You might have to open the door on the washer side, pull out wet clothes and pile them on top of the dryer, slide both doors over, then load the dryer. That would be a major PITA.
It’s too late for this now, but didn’t you notice this issue before you closed on the condo? Or was the space empty every time you saw it?
ETA: I have a solution: Install very large doors that swing out. Trim the bottoms of the doors to clear the pan. The only time the doors will be open is when you’re actually doing laundry, otherwise they’ll be closed and with them trimmed at the bottom to allow them to close fully, you’ll be good to go.
Seems like there’s a good chance that the drain pan is just a catch pan - if it was actually plumbed to a drain, there would need to be a trap, and since it doesn’t flow except in an emergency, it would need a trap primer valve, and, and… so the nuisance pan is likely just a way of delaying an overflowing/broken washer leak by about 10 minutes…
Maybe. I agree about a trap, etc., if the drain line was plumbed into the building sanitary sewer drain lines.
But everywhere I’ve lived that had these kinds of catch pans, there’s a separate HVAC condensate drain line system and often a catch pan drain line system that are not connected to the sanitary sewer and have none of that trap stuff.
As a side note: since you just moved in there, you likely have no idea how old the hoses are that feed the washer. I would have them replaced, although it’s easy enough to do yourself. Get high quality replacements, though. It’s cheap insurance against a flood. You can also have a new valve installed that has a flood sensor and shuts off it if senses water in the pan. Also cheap insurance.
I got my mother a new laundry machine set a couple of years ago. Rather than go with the at-the-appliance gizmo that you’re talking about – a very good idea, by the way – I went with a whole-house version that wasn’t dramatically more money.
My mother has had 4-5 water incursion ‘disasters’ in the time she’s had her townhouse. No more.
It’s working quite well for her, even as she travels the world (app for her phone):
ETA:
Also a very good idea. IIRC, they’re referred to as being “high burst strength” hoses.
The sound dampening curtains might work..I think it needs to be completely closed off. Hard to manage if you are going to the w/d several times in one morning you’ll spend all your time adjusting them.
But really who washes or dries clothes during meal times?
My first house had w/d in a closet in the dining room. We ate in there 3 times a day..everyday
I don’t remember the laundry being an issue at meal times. It was adjacent to a great room we did all our stuff in. TV, game playing, music, hobbies. Never interfered.
You can do this. You will have dozens of little kerfuffles. One day you’ll look up and say. Nothing is broke, acting weird or gonna cost me more money. Yay!
'Bout that time the kid will bring a stray dog with a leaky butt in and your husband will fall thru the ceiling.
Home ownership is a hoot!
ETA…not to get too motherly, I’ll tell you like I told my son when they bought their first home. “Just work the program. Fix little things as they pop up. Plan for bigger things. One thing at a time.”
