Reshelving Our Laundry Closet

Our laundry room shelving is a mess. Hours after unpacking our last moving box, Ryan sat a detergent bottle on the shelves and suddenly, half the shelves came tumbling down.

laundry closet shelving before

We made the (lack of) laundry room shelving one of the first priorities in our new house. We decided to mount two long wooden shelves to store laundry and cleaning products.

I ripped out the existing shelving (which was pretty easy since many anchors never expanded) and patched the walls with joint compound. It took about three layers (with sanding between each layer) to get the wall smooth.

laundry closet patching a wall

For posterity, I put a layer of primer on the wall before the paint.

laundry closet priming

Then I coated the wall twice with Flagstone by Olympic. I used Olympic’s VOC-free formula in satin. Me no likely fumes.

Laundry closet olympic flagstone

We decided to go with two solid wood shelves with wood corbels beneath each. I purchased two 1″ x 12″ x 6′ boards and six corbels. The corbels were $9 (more than I wanted to spend), but I really liked the shape and size. I primed them then painted them with Benjamin Moore Advance in Distant Gray.

laundry closet home depot corbels

I measured and leveled everything, then drilled and hung the corbels with heavy duty anchors. Unfortunately, nothing lined up with a stud. Booo.

I laid the shelves on top. To smooth it out the look, I dabbed some white caulk in the gap between the shelf and corbels. I know, it’s a silly detail, but it made a big difference to me!

laundry closet shelf caulk

 

We found a few bamboo grass baskets at Home Goods and filled them with various goodies – dog treats, cleaning rags, etc. And voila. That was it.

laundry closet shelving

I’m kind of unsure about the spacing…I might take out the center corbel. We spent more than we wanted thanks to the corbels, but simple metal brackets would have made the project (including the paint) cost about $40. Here’s a different view.

laundry closet shelving

So much more functional! How do you organize your hidden storage spaces to make them work better for you? Any laundry room shelving projects in your future?

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