A whole new washer and dryer.

This project started back when what the previous owners had installed in our primary bedroom, an LG combo trying-to-be-all-the-things-and-pretty-much-failing-at-doing-anything washer/dryer died. As we considered our options, K asked the question: "What would we have done if we designed this?" It's a question we've taken to asking anytime we need to redo or replace or rebuild something.

Specifically, that LG unit wouldn't drain. So I replaced the pump. No joy. It still didn't drain, and there'd be water pooled up in the basin after every load. To add to our gripes, that combo unit failed us in pretty much every way:

• As a front-loader, it smelled dingy even when we left the door open
• As a combo, it collected lint everywhere
• It required random, annoying maintenance like emptying the drain at the bottom left corner, which necessitated us keeping a baking pan nearby to awkwardly catch the water (the drain was only about 1" off the floor)
• As a front-loader, the door would lock the entire cycle so no adding a forgotten piece of laundry
• The dryer was only 110v and ventless so it never dried anything more than to the point of still being slightly damp
• It took roughly 8 hours per load to get not super-clean clothes that were, yep, still slightly damp

Yeah, a real gem of an appliance. When we first considered replacing it for a hot second, we discovered all of those conveniences come with a hefty price tag. Like two grand-ish. That's when K asked that question.

So we took a step back and considered our options. Basically, there were two:

1. Ditch the potential convenience and upsell of having a dedicated laundry in our primary bedroom and turn it into a storage closet
2. Figure out how to do it right, which would mean running a dedicated 220v branch circuit from our garage to this second story in the middle of our house location and figuring out how to vent it properly through the attic

The potential convenience outweighed the uncertainty, so I dove into exploring how to first get that branch circuit wired. Turns out, it was actually pretty straightforward. Fast forward and we now have a fully-vented stacked washer and dryer in our bedroom.

At the same time as this project was kicking off, we were having the rest of our downstairs flooring replaced. So we had ripped out some wall-to-wall Ikea Pax cabinets with the intention of building a new, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling combo of cabinets plus desk. After a bunch of measuring between the garage, the basement underneath, and our first floor sitting-slash-play room, I realized right where those future cabinets would go was directly above our breaker panels. So I cut some holes in the drywall, drilled some holes in the framing, and started exploring.

I made cutouts where the top of the wall and ceiling met and one down at the floor. After having K pound on the floor of the laundry closet upstairs, I determined it was directly above the kitchen. So I cut out a whole in that ceiling too. That would be the only one I'd have fully patch because the other holes would be behind the future cabinets.

(That red PEX water line is the hot water supply for our laundry closet)

Feeling good about snaking a cable up from the garage along the wall in the sitting area, across the ceiling and then up through the floor above the kitchen, I ordered a scrap 45' length of 10/3 Romex off Ebay. It was $65 vs. $250 for a new 50' spool. Pro. Then got to work at the breaker panel.

It's a bit of a process snaking cable through walls that I've learned has to be done with some forethought, determined through a combo of necessities and preferences. For example, it'd be impossible to find the hole in the bottom plate of the first story access from the garage, so I knew I had to fish the tape down through that hole into the garage. Then pull up most of the 45' of cable through that hole. Not preferred, but necessary. With just enough left to add the new circuit in the box, I wired it up.

*** This is not a how to wire a new 220v branch circuit! There are plenty of more helpful tutorials for that, and still use caution. ***

Knowing how to do this by running branch circuits here and there, it's in fact quite straightforward. In under fifteen minutes everything was set at the panel, all per code. 

Next, I snaked the cable across our play area room's ceiling and up through the hole I drilled in the bottom plate of our laundry closet.

From there, it was a simple matter of wiring the 220v 4-prong outlet.

In seemingly short order, we went from not knowing how we'd get power up there for a real dryer to checking that off the list. Next up was researching what exact model we wanted because that would determine the location of the plumbing and venting.

After a lot of ChatGPT conversations, we learned there really aren't a lot of stacked units on the market. Even fewer that met our criteria. Ultimately, we landed on and committed the rest of this project to the GE GUD27. Our requirements were:

• Absolutely NO front loading! We wanted old school lift-the-lid that we didn't have to awkardly keep open and could toss a missed item into mid-load
• Speaking of old school, we wanted knobs - NO touchscreens, no fancy circuit boards, nothing
• We wanted the most capacity we could fit into the door opening and closet space while taking into consideration the venting and installation space minimums

I've mentioned this location is upstairs. What I haven't mentioned is that the stairs are original to the 1920s farmhouse and only about 27" wide with no railing. Oh, and they contain a 90-degree bend two-thirds of the way up. So there was no way to get the old LG out (we ended up disassembling it on our balcony and tossing all the parts onto the driveway - S had a blast with that!) and there would be no way of getting a new unit up. We'd cross the how to get it up to our closet bridge in time, trusting in the notion where there's a will there's a way.

All that to say, once this thing was installed it'd be really, really difficult to uninstall. We wanted something we could trust. 

With the exact model determined, I could move forward planning out the plumbing and venting. The existing plumbing needed to be dropped down a few inches because the dryer vent for the GE output directly where the existing plumbing hookups were located (of course!). I ordered a new wall box and got to work. Thankfully, it was just a matter of shortening the drain line (keeping it above the code minimum of 30" above the trap) and the PEX, as opposed to having to lengthen anything.

I had to use a PEX crimp cutter to cut the old brass crimps and remove the leftover piping, along with a 1/2" PEX crimper to reattach the pipes. I picked up a couple of Sharkbite caps so I could work under less pressure. Get it?

In order to make the brass supply fitting fit the new Oatey box, I had to drill the holes a little off-center.

With new holes in the box, I secured the supply fitting in the box before strapping it inside the wall.

Installed! Along with the repositioned 4-prong outlet.

Then I quickly patched up the drywall with a couple of 2x2' 1/2" repair panels cut to size. Since this will never be seen, I only put two coats of mud on the tape and called it good. We don't have this particular paint to match, so I didn't even bother priming or painting it.

To create a "bathtub" of sorts in case of a leak, I installed 1x4" PVC molding and caulked all the seams between the tile floor and walls. Spoiler: We ended up ditching the plastic catch tray because it proved impossible to get the 76" tall unit in the closet with that thing on the floor.

With the closet updated for electrical and plumbing, it was time to move onto venting. Per the instructions for a closet installation, I had to create 120 square inches of airflow: 60 square inches on the bottom and another 60 on the top. For style, I opted for Fittes 6x10" vents rather than an old school louvered vent. I cut holes for the top vent above the door and the bottom one around the corner.

With ventilation figured out, it was time to move up into the attic to determine the run of 4" rigid vent piping. It was actually pretty straightforward: Directly up from the appliance with a vertical, extendable "periscope" vent and one 90º bend out the side of the house that we never see and already includes several vents. Once laid out, I cut and fit everything before taping all the joints and sealing up the inside of the exterior vent hole with fire-safe spray foam. Worth noting: I made sure the vertical run up from the dryer was taller than the exterior vent so the horizontal run had a downslope in case of condensation during the cooler months as it exited the attic. Finally, I strapped the horizontal run to the roof trusses.

Bother I ended up cutting (from the inside) the 4" hole slightly too high for the vent housing to sit flush on that section of siding. A quick notch took care of it, but a little annoying.

Inside the attic, the run looked like this:

Lastly, given we wouldn't be able to reach around the unit once installed, I cut out an access hole in K's closet to reach across the back and potentially unplug or shutoff the supplies. Really only in case of an emergency.

With the electrical complete, the ventilation taken care of, the plumbing relocated and the venting installed, it was time to cross that bridge. The bridge of how to get a 250-pound applicance up three stories from our driveway. We tried all the angles, from calling the local crane company (they charge by lift radius, and the ginormous crane would have to park out at the street, easily 60-feet away), to custom home builders (never heard back from any of them wanting to take on the project), to thinking maybe we could use the Genie lift we had parked in our driveway over the weekend (whilst our new washer/dryer stood in the garage).

Then, with the help of ChatGPT, I landed on a Genie materials lift. The ol' SLC-24. United Rentals over by the airport rented them by the day, and if we picked it up on a Friday we wouldn't have to return it until the following Monday morning. So I reserved one, then removed the bed from our Sprinter campervan to haul the 350-pound lift while K called some friends. Last Saturday afternoon, we gave it a shot.

Spoiler: it worked.

I ratcheted some tiedowns around the top and bottom of the box, so a couple of folks up on the balcony could 1) use them as guylines in case it got wonky 24' up in the air and/or 2) use them to pull the appliance onto our balcony railing. Once the rig was leveled with all the outriggers in place and the wheels locked down, Trevor took the honors of cranking. 250 pounds of GE metal and what-not went up with ease.

Once it was––finally––in our bedroom, I could wire up the 4-prong plug the Costco delivery crew included, along with that periscope vent. I'd have that in place for when we shoved the unit into the closet, then lower the vertical vent stack from the attic onto it.

The last thing I did, given the cramped nature of the space and lack of accessibility, was to drop in one of our Stitch wi-fi water sensors. It'll beep and send an alert to our phones if there's ever a leak back there.

With that, this project was wrapped. We fired up the washer, then the dryer. I climbed back up onto the roof to check the damper on the vent and make sure hot air was forcing it open (it was). Everything seemed awesome. We sat back and reveled in the sound of an appliance quietly doing our, well, dirty work. Right in our bedroom. No more trucking loads of laundry down and up two flights of stairs. This time, the job is done right. We could wash clothes while the dryer ran and it finished loads in short order.

Granted, if we couldn't do all of this ourselves, who knows what it would have cost to pay contractors to run electrical, redo the plumbing, run a new vent stack, and lift that thing up to our balcony. Five grand? Ten grand? Bottom line is we wouldn't have paid it. We'd have converted that closet to storage. But... here we are, another project in the books. Now onto the next one!