Laundry closet redo

After years and years of living with a 
mostly functional, but not very beautiful 
place to do laundry,
I'm thrilled to have finally finished 
our Laundry Closet Makeover! 


Laundry Closet Makeover, how to make a small laundry closet more functional and more beautiful by adding shelves, storage and charm



We have lived in our house for 10 years.  
I have wanted to redo our laundry closet for almost that entire time.  
About 5 years ago, I started seriously thinking about it.  
Finally, a few weeks ago, I decided to do something about it!



Here is what it looked like before.  
This little closet is right inside our back door.  
It was fairly functional, but that's about it.  
The closet also had awful bi-fold doors that kept getting 
knocked off track by our garage door.
So annoying.  



The first thing I did was take everything out of the closet.  
I took down the wire shelves and patched all of the holes in the walls.  
Then I gave the walls a fresh coat of paint.  
I mixed together a bunch of latex paints leftover 
from previous projects. 




I had furniture grade plywood cut down to size. 
 I also purchased shelf brackets and 1x4's for the shelf fronts.




I sanded and sanded all of the surfaces of the plywood.  




I stained the wood with sunbleached by Rust-oleum. (amazon link) 
 It is the perfect weathered wood color.  
I used a cheap paint brush and painted the stain on.  
Then I went back with a rag, rubbed the stain in and wiped it off.  




I measured where I wanted the shelves 
and hung the brackets using heavy duty dry-wall anchors.  

I don't have any photos of this, 
but just picture me trying to get everything level, 
trying to drill pilot holes, 
only to find out the battery was dead in my drill 
and having to wait for it to charge.  
Then dropping screws behind the washer, 
finally getting the brackets hung, 
wrestling the awkward plywood shelves onto the brackets, 
and figuring out that the shelves bowed. 




 To solve that  problem I attached 
small scraps of 1x2's into the wall at the end of the shelves to brace them. 
Bowing problem solved!  




I stained the 1x4's and attached them 
to the front of the shelves with wood glue and nails.  




I filled up the shelves with various baskets 
collected from Home Goods.  




I found these cute bottles at Walmart 
for laundry soap and fabric softener. 
 I put oxy clean in a mason jar.  




I hung some curtains (temporarily) on a tension rod.  
I'm still looking for a more permanent curtain rod.    




Most of the time I leave the curtains open 
because I love the way the shelves turned out.  




Before and After!!  


linking up to:  The Shabby Nest, Tatertots and Jello