The Last Home Improvement Project, at Least for Now

The Last Home Improvement Project, at least for now

Now that we were leaving Las Vegas soon, it was time to get all of the home improvement projects completed. And the last big project left was the laundry room. This room was getting some new paint and a new color for the existing cheap cabinets. I started just like you would with any other project, clearing out the room to see what I was working with. After clearing out all of the shelves and other crap that was kept in the laundry room, it was time to take down the cabinets from the wall over the washer and dryer. This is where the mistakes were made. I took one of them down and it was installed properly and everything was good. But the left side cabinet ended up just being screwed into the wall at the four corners of it. Meaning there was no mounting bracket on the back and it was just those four screws holding it in place. Except two of those screws weren’t screwed straight into the wall, they were angled into the wall so they were in the stud. But, they didn’t come out, so I had to reassemble part of the cabinet while it was still attached to the wall.

After finally getting the cabinet off the wall that’s when I noticed someone shaved down the left side of it to get it to fit into the wall. While I understand why they did this it wasn’t the first thing that person tried to do to get the cabinet to fit. Whoever this person was, they also were going to cut out the corner of the drywall to make the cabinet fit. Luckily they didn’t do this, but they did cut a bunch of lines into the drywall so I was going to have to fix that. 

This repair was going to be necessary because I decided to throw the cabinets away and put up some shelves instead. I came to this decision because one, cabinets are extremely overpriced, and two after some google searching I think a giant shelf over the washer and dryer looks really nice. So, first things first, I needed to get the room cleaned up and the wall patched up. We already had the paint colors picked out and bought, now it was just time to get the project started.

After patching up the wall and lots of sanding, it was time for paint. The walls were going to be a subtle grey color with the trim being a bit darker. I also painted the ceiling a nice white to match the rest of the house, added a new LED light replacing the ceiling fan the previous owners had and put in a new a/c vent. 

It was time for the hardest part of the process, measuring, cutting, and staining the new counter and shelf. The counter and shelves were both cut from the same plywood and they were both stained what I thought was a nice light blue color, to help offset the white and grey colors. To help figure out how to properly mount the new counter to the wall I watched this Crafted Workshop Youtube video, as well as this Cozy and Polished YouTube video.

The end result was I think a bigger-looking room, with a lot more personality than some cheap white cabinets.