Laundry Room Remodel - Wall Cabinets

jlhelms92
Mar 8, 2017
4 min read

Wall cabinets <3 ...what I wanted, but never thought I would get so quickly. It had to have been no more than a week or two after we put together the floor cabinet and painted the walls that we then had wall cabinets bought and installed! Clearly we weren't the ones to install them (remember we have no home improvement skills) but lucky for me, my neighbor is the handiest man I've ever met and very willing to help. He volunteered his time and energy to help me find the perfect cabinets, haul them to my house, and install them following the design in my head.

I measured the distance from the floor cabinet to where the gas lines stick off the wall. It worked best to get one 30" x 12" x 12" cabinet, two 24" x 12" x 30" cabinets, and a long 8' MDF board for a shelf and smooth cabinet top. We purchased the cabinets from Menards, mainly because their cabinet faces matched the large cabinet I got at Home Depot and it was during their 11% rebate.

I don't have images for every step in the process nor can give a step by step guide on the cabinet installation process. Some help, I know, but lot of it went over my head...

Removing Wire Shelving

We started out by taking down the old wire shelving, which left behind lots of beautiful big holes..meh. We filled in the holes with DAP DryDex Spackling, let it dry, then sanded it down. Those random pieces of paper taped to the wall was my initial attempt at marking the studs.

After the wall was all patched up, I had little to do with the following steps. I was mainly there for support (emotional and as a cabinet holder). Because of the stud locations and where I wanted my cabinets, my neighbor had to use some heavy duty anchors to hold up the cabinets where they couldn't go directly into a stud. That was a whole complex process of its own and I'm pretty sure my friend was regretting offering to put these up for us around that time. Luckily I bribed him with some Arni's pizza and that made things better!

These are pretty similar to the cabinet screws we used for the studs:

MDF Board/Shelf

Like I said, there are A LOT of undocumented steps at this point. Once the wall cabinets were up my friend cut down the 8' MDF board to build a shelf in between the cabinets and made sure to add plenty of support since he knew I was planning on putting glass jars of detergent and fabric softener on it. The remainder of the board was used across the top of the cabinets so that it would have a smooth and finished look.

Floor Cabinet

My awesome friend, T, then made our large makeshift cabinet even better. He added some large L brackets and screws so that the one shelf could actually hold some weight without warping. He cut out a section of the shelf so that the cabinet could sit back as far as it possibly could (the water valve was previously preventing this), but the water softener unit made it so it still stuck out by about 2 inches from the wall... Oh well! He cut out some of the baseboard to make the floor cabinet sit flush against the wall with the red door. He took a scrap block of wood (from my fence lumber), used it to fill the gap between the cabinet and the back wall, and screwed through it to make sure that the cabinet could not tip forward. Lastly he screwed the floor cabinet into the side wall on the right and also into the wall cabinet on the left. That floor cabinet will not budge ever again! We no longer have to worry about opening the doors gently so that the cabinet won't fall on top of us! Whew!

Extra Unnecessary Step

When we took down the wire shelf I figured the wall cabinets would cover all of the unpainted sections...I was wrong... so I clearly made the mistake of not taking the time to go ahead finish painting the wall. I'm good at making things more difficult than they need to be.

Once again I can't thank T enough for all of his help; a lot of this wouldn't have been possible without him and it would've cost us a lot more $$$. Once I've officially declared this remodel finished, I'll share a breakdown of the cost for this remodel.

This is best full shot of the laundry room I have been able to take so far. I have to take a panoramic shot in order to get the majority of the room in one picture. Yay awkward rooms! In another upcoming post, I'll share in detail the decor and items I bought to help keep the space organized and clean!