Laundry Room Remodel

I found myself with a little free time this weekend and decided to make it count. I have been wanting to add storage to our laundry room for over two years (I even wrote this post about it back in 2011). I had been holding out for an amazing deal on an upper cabinet, and this spring I finally found one at our Restore for about $25. But... it sat in the garage all summer. My husband actually set this project in motion complaining about the current laundry room situation on Friday.

So this weekend we brought in my cabinet and I got painting. I had an inspiration photo to work from out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, so T.J. and I were on the same page. He had some carpentry to do, and I had painting to do! I even went to Menard's and found the shelving we needed myself.

This project was truly on a dime. I found shelving in the bargain bin because the ends were broken (but we didn't need the whole length anyway!) for $1.69. We also reused whatever we could.

The grant total was only $36 excluding paint we already had. Now that is a big bang for our buck! See the bottom of this post for a picture of what we were (shamefully) working with before.

Here is my Restore cabinet. It was already cream so it only took a couple coats of white applied evenly with a small foam roller to fix it up.

My broken bargain board that saved us at least $15!

 We simply set the cabinet on the existing shelf after I slapped a fresh coat of white on it (it was highlighter orange before!). The bracket makes the whole operation sturdy.

Next, T.J. added the upper shelves. He made two "braces" out of primed 1x2s for each one and attached them to the wall (into the studs) and the side of the cabinet.

Finally, I reattached the cabinet doors, touched up the ends of the brackets with white paint, and T.J. added extra 1x2 to the fronts of each upper shelf to make a finished edge.

My inspiration photo that has been pinned up for a year in the laundry room!

I wouldn't call this room completely finished... I'm still thinking about replacing the awful florescent light with something prettier, and maybe even stenciling the wall behind the shelves like my inspiration photo. But heck, it is much better than it was before! Our new view when coming in from the garage: