Pages

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Laundry Closet Finale and Reveal

It's been a while.  I would love to say I had a good reason for this project to take so long, but really, it was just life.  Either way, it's finished! And I'm extremely happy with the results.  To take you back to where I left off: Parts 1 and Part 2.1


I've come a long way since then and I apologize for the pictures in advance. I've gotten a new phone recently, so the pictures should be a bit better, but the lighting in the area is still horrible.  This area of the house gets no direct sunlight and only gets a wish of sunshine during the day.  

Since all the walls are prepped, the first order of business was to find a pick out my cabinet for the corner.  This definitely took 2 people: one to hold it up, one to screw it into the stud.  This also prompted to me to purchase a stud finder.  I'm usually very adept at finding studs in the wall, but this closet seems to defy all logic. 


Since I have a ton of pictures and the explanation is fairly simple, I'm going to post a ton of pictures.  If you want more detailed steps or questions, let me know!

Cutting (measuring twice, cutting once), sanding and painting the shelves




Installing the shelves after the cabinet was placed









The final details!  Trim, cabinet pulls and touchup paint
 
 







 










 Final Product!













Since there isn't a lot of explanation, here are some neat things I learned while on this project:
My Misadventures
-Make sure you consider the size of screw you'll need when working on a project like this.  If your shelf is 3/4" thick and you are securing it to the wall, you need to go through 3/4" of shelving and at least 1/2" of sheetrock to get to the stud.  That means you need longer than a 1 1/4" screw.  On the flip side, when you're screwing your 3/4" shelf support into the side of a cabinet that's only 3/4", you don't want a 2" screw because it will stick out the other side.  This is why I had to make 3 different trips to buy 3 different lengths of screws and thus had to buy a tackle box to keep all of my screws in.
-Tackle boxes made good screw/nail/small tool organizers.
-Only use a small amount of glue.  Or it gets everywhere.
-The small brackets on the back of the wooden shelf supports may not be screwed in with the best screws.  You may have to replace them with your own screws.  Especially when you practically pull the shelf off the wall on accident.
-Cheap cabinets don't always have doors that line up.  Keep that in mind and don't be surprised.  If you're a perfectionist, spend more money.  I'm a lazy perfectionist that's frugal, so a cheap cabinet worked for me and I adjusted them to get as close to even as possible.

I also found the handy LED bar you see on the middle shelf while shopping in the lighting section.  I figured it's the perfect place to use a puck light since there's no easily available electric.

Overall, this project went fairly smoothly, at least as far as my projects are concerned.  I had some stumbling blocks, but nothing a trip to Lowes couldn't fix... or a 2 month break.




The whole goal of this project was to make the space more usable and I think I succeeded.  I'm happy with it and I have even done laundry without grimacing since then.  Have questions?  Want more info?  Think it looks AWESOME?  Let me know!

3 comments:

  1. I think you did a great job! It looks awesome and totally a better use of the space than the one, lonely, sad wire shelf.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Super job! I am going to use some of these ideas in my closet redo! Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  3. I will have a laundry closet in my next house, and I love the idea of putting cabinets in it to hide all the clutter! Thanks for a great idea :)

    ReplyDelete