Laundry Room Makeover - The Craft Crib

I guess I should be thankful to have it. The builders seem to have forgotten to add closets in this house. Sure, the bedrooms have them, but that’s it. There’s a tiny coat closet at the front entrance and ZERO linen closets. No food pantry. Nothing.

So, there’s a lot riding on this laundry closet. It needs to serve many purposes and it just was not doing that very well before now.

Standard cabinets with junk piled high on top of them (that I could never reach and was always falling down). Hardly any room in them for larger items and definitely not pretty.

When my washer broke a few months ago, I finally threw in the towel (pun intended). I trashed the washer, sold the dryer on FB marketplace, and bought two pretty new machines. I made sure they were front loaders so I could take full advantage of the space in the closet.

Then, I ripped the ugly cabinet off the wall.

I pulled everything out of the space and patched up the wall holes with some spackle.

I used some leftover paint from another room to paint the walls.

I did some measurements and decided on installing 4 new shelves. I started with 1x2s for my supports. I cut 4 pieces the length of my back wall. Then, I cut additional supports to use on the side walls. I used my miter saw but you could also have them cut at the store.

I stained them all with a Minwax semi-transparent special walnut stain.

Then I installed them in the closet. I used a stud finder to identify where to put the drywall screws, and I used a level to make sure the shelves were straight.

I wanted the bottom shelf to stretch the length and width of the washer and dryer so I had a nice, big space to throw all our dirty laundry (and other crap when guests were expected). The other 3 shelves stretched the length of the space and came out about 16″, giving me TONS of storage space.

I cut plywood for the shelves. The top 3 shelves were about 16″ deep and the bottom one was approximately 32″. I had these cut at the store because a sheet of plywood doesn’t fit in my car.

I stained them all and actually added a 1×2 trim to the front of them for visual purposes. I tacked them on with my brad nailer.

When everything was dry, I installed the shelves. I used the brad nailer to secure them to the supports.

A better blogger might have taken this opportunity to stage some pretty photos. Adding cute little plants, glass jars, and hand-made signs.

Not me.

My main purpose for this makeover was to have a functional space. That basically means stuffing as much of my crap as I could possibly fit onto those shelves and freeing up room in the rest of my house.

Mission accomplished!

Check out all that storage! Crock pot, waffle maker, salad strainer, pots, cake decorating materials, cooler bags, detergent, sun tan lotion, food, reusable grocery bags. You name it, I made it fit.

Who needs adorable fake plants when you can hide all your crap instead???

Thanks for stopping by!