Laundry Room Shelves

Our laundry room is one project that I've only been working on little by little. It's not really a priority room to finish for us because, let's face it, Jordan and I are really the only ones who see the room. It's located on the second floor of our house, so it doesn't second as a mud-room and it isn't the type of laundry room that guests regularly see or walk through when they enter our house.

The door in the far corner (between the guest bath and nursery) is the laundry room.

Over the past few weeks I've begun to slowly make minor changes in an attempt to spruce up the room a bit. It still needs quite a bit more work, but there is certainly progress.

Here are a few before shots.

As you can see, our laundry room is very small. Barely enough room to fit a rug, washer and dryer. The cut out above is around the corner to your right when you walk in the door. The previous owners added those custom shelves for storage. We removed the bottom shelf and put a laundry sorter in it's place. This makes doing laundry a ton easier when the clothes are already sorted for you. I don't exactly remember when I took these pictures but it must have been after I had cleaned the house. Those laundry bins are never that empty!

One of the first changes I wanted to make was to add shelving above the washer and dryer. We had so many cleaning supplies that they were scattered about the house between all the bathrooms, the laundry room, the kitchen and even the hall closet (which is now Jordan's closet). I wanted to keep all of our cleaning supplies in two places. Upstairs in the laundry room, and downstairs under the kitchen sink. In order to do this, we needed to add more storage.

During my IKEA trip a while back I picked up the EKBY Hemnes shelf with coordinating EKBY Bjarnum metal brackets. Jordan hung that shelf above the washer and dryer and we used it to house all our laundry supplies. It still needs a little work, but it's much better. For one thing, I'd like to find a more attractive way to store the dryer sheets rather than stacking the boxes. Maybe my leftover parsley herb crate?

I love the grey-brown color of the shelf. IKEA came out with that shade a while back and I've been itching to buy a piece of furniture in that color. What attracted me most to the shelf was the of metal brackets used to mount it on the wall. I figure the laundry room is a great place for the more "industrial" that these brackets give the space. 

I also wanted to do something with the already existing shelves above the laundry bin. Since we need the storage, it was important to keep the shelving, especially since we already removed one of them. Covering the shelves in contact paper seemed a cheap and easy makeover that would do just the trick. I've never really been a fan of the faux wood or marble contact paper. And most of the patterns seem tacky and not at all the style I was looking for. Then I came across this beauty at Home Depot:

Contact paper that gives your shelving a stainless steel look. Since I love the metal on the brackets so much, I thought this would be the perfect solution to cover the shelves in the laundry room, too. So less than $10.00 later and about 20 minutes of my time, the shelves went from this:

to this:

I love them! 

Because the shelves were custom made and painted in a few coats of white paint, the minor imperfections you see are due to the shape and finish of the wood. But they are hardly noticeable unless you are studying the shelves up close. 

Keeping up with the metal trend I unintentionally started, I purchased this ironing board storage unit about a year ago. 

We finally decided to hang it up a few weeks ago and even though it promises to work with both 'Y' and 'T' shaped ironing boards, our little 'Y' shaped board won't fit. 

Ugh. Since I've long tossed the receipt and packaging, we will most likely be on the hunt for an inexpensive replacement ironing board. I still like the storage unit and it would be great to get the ironing board off the floor.

There are a number of other little changes I'd still like to do with the laundry room. The black outlets and switches need to be switched to white. I'd also like to find a better way to organize the laundry accessories on the Hemnes shelf. The walls could use a little bit of decor, too. I do have a decent amount of stainless steel contact paper left to play around with somewhere else. I've thought about covering the wooden clothes hanger mounted on the wall, although I'm not sure yet how I'd tackle the hooks. 

Ok, I'm rambled on enough. Time to put that laundry room to use and wash our sheets.