We have been in this house for a little over 15 years now. I have spent the entirety of those 15 years irritated as hell at myself that I didn’t demand a better design in the laundry room. It is plenty big, just a little poorly laid out so that there is a ton of wasted space.
Hubby and I discussed having someone come in and do some work, including building a pantry cabinet and adding a couple of other shelves. We even started looking at people to do the job. Then we realized that getting our back door and framing around said door replaced couldn’t be put off another year or we would potentially have it fall out of the house because all the wood around it is rotting out. Have I mentioned that our builder did a shit job (I’ve lost count of the major issues we’ve had in this house)?
I did some math (yes, it actually hurt to do the math part) and some planning and decided I could hold off on a bigger project for a while if I could just get the shelves in because attempting to keep everything on the tiny little counter or the floor just wasn’t working. Those issue get made worse every time laundry is done since both BG and I hang up a huge portion of our tops and other things rather than dry them in the drier.
So I really had two different issues to solve. The first was shelving to get some of the stuff off the counter and floor. The second was figuring out a way to expand the room for hanging clothes up.
Again, this space is decent, but it isn’t well used at all. I did some research and found an expandable drying rack that you could mount to the wall. Once I got it ordered, I discovered it has the same problem as most wall mount products. It does not take into account that the wall studs you need to mount it to aren’t in the location you need. To fix the issue, I got a large 10 inch wide board that I cut to length, painted and attached to said studs. I was then able to mount the rack to the board without any worry that this is going to get ripped off the wall the second a couple of shirts gets hung on it.
The fact that this is expandable means that I can keep it against the wall when I don’t need it or if I have something long that needs to be hung up.
Expanded, this gives me probably close to twice the space, if not more, than what I had before. It also means that there aren’t shirts hanging off of every available surface on laundry days, including laundry baskets and over the small step ladder I have in there. That leaves barely an inch of space to get to the washer.
Ignore the mess, that is part of the problem, as you can see. This is the second part of the project. I wanted a small, shallow shelf directly above the sink for all the smaller things I use most in that area. Detergents, stain removers, a couple of cleaners and a few other small bottle type things. I also wanted a much deeper shelf higher up that would span the entire space so that I could store some bigger things, often the back up items or bulk items I use to refill smaller bottles (like cleaners).
The smaller shelf is only about 8 inches deep and only goes across the space above the sink. It was fun attempting to get it to work with where the studs were, but I managed to pull it off. The higher shelf is a 12 inch deep shelf and needed additional support in the middle because it is much longer. I did use a support that can hold a bar if I decided I still need a bit more space for some shorter hanging things in the future (BG’s dance clothes would be perfect for that space).
Both of these were made with really inexpensive lumber that I just painted with my trim color so it would blend with what I already have in there. I probably need to caulk up a few places (where the screws are and a couple of bigger gaps in board seams), but for the most part this is completely done. I am going to add a no slip liner to the smaller shelf to help protect it. I was also able to get it all done in a day, painting, cutting and mounting all boards. I do still really want a cabinet in there, but this is already a hundred times better than the mess I had before.
As with pretty much every single project I work on, I now feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. It also means that I didn’t get to read because it did take all day. At least the temps dropped a bit so it wasn’t crazy miserable in the garage while I was working.
The next project is going to be that back door, but that is way outside my DIY ability and I have some great guys scheduled to work on that in August.
