Determining Shelf Placement in the Laundry Room

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For the last week or two, I briefly mentioned that I was working on a couple of updates in the laundry room. I’m not even close to finished with the room yet, but thought today would be a good time for some progress pics. Let’s start with the new stuff: a new light fixture, adding crown molding, and pondering shelf placement.

New light fixture: I bought a new light for the laundry room ages ago from West Elm, and it was supposed to come in “satin nickel”… but I left it in the box for much too long to have ever returned it, and discovered later that it’s got a lot more of a chrome look to it than anything resembling satin… or nickel. While I would have preferred it to still be more of a matte finish (and would have even looked into spraying it with a matte sealer to fix the issue), it kind of matches the doors on my new washer and dryer, so I’m leaving it alone for now.

And in case you were wondering, this is what the original light fixture looked like before:

White on white on white:  I scraped off the paint from the octagonal window only to realize it needs another coat on some of the windowpane dividers (aka “grilles” or “muntin”—terminology is always interesting to me!). I’ve also begun the process of adding some molding around the leftover tile from the kitchen that I installed a while back. I think it really dresses things up, not to mention hides the flaws of imperfect cuts (a sacrifice of using pieces that probably would have been trash otherwise).

Crown: I’ve never actually installed crown before, so the laundry room has been my guinea pig for figuring it out before attempting the same treatment to the rest of the house. I plan to use beefier molding elsewhere, but the smaller version seemed well-suited for this room. At first, I wasn’t sure if I would be doing the whole room or just the back wall (again, to hide the tile edges), so I simply cut a piece for that wall only and installed it… upside down! I had to take it down anyway to cut the corners for installing the rest of the room (the one piece just looked dinky by itself), so it all ended up okay, but it also ripped down a little bit of the ceiling texture. I’ll have to do some spackling on the molding anyway, so it will all get fixed around the same time.

To be honest, so far, I really suck at this whole crown molding thing. The walls are uneven, too, which makes it more of a challenge. But that is kind of the whole point of me starting in this room… so I can eventually get all of my mistakes and incorrect assumptions out of the way in a room where no one is really going to be looking that hard at my work!

Shelves: At first glance, the blue tape everywhere might be confusing, but it’s meant to help me decide shelf placement. This room has an incredibly awkward shape, so I’m trying to solve a number of room challenges:

• Along the back wall, there is a small ledge that juts out below the window (where the blue tape is in the photo at the bottom of this post). This provides a natural place to put a long shelf above the washer and dryer, but since there is a rigid dryer hose back there, both the washer and dryer stick out about 8 inches from the wall. That means that it needs to be covered up in some way to avoid things falling behind it and out of reach. However, any shelf in that spot needs to be deep enough for my tiny arms to reach.
• The room is kind of one fat L-shape, with a narrower opening toward the door and then a larger area where the washer and dryer is. This creates a space to the right for additional shelving (the other blue tape in the photo above).

• Storage is desperately needed, and there’s no room for a cabinet. The washer and dryer take up the majority of floor space, leaving only a small corner for a trash can. This means that all storage is going to have to be vertical, but deep shelving is kind of out of the question, since it will make the entire room seem even more cramped.

Solutions:

• Ideally, a cleating system to support a stained counter over the washer and dryer would solve the issue of the gap behind the W&D. Then, I can install a narrower shelf on the ledge below the window, and since the depth of the W&D would make it somewhat hard to reach, a narrow shelf that is mostly used for decorative purposes is probably best.
• The shelves to the right can also use a cleating type of system since they are surrounded on 3 sides thanks to the L-shape of the room. This will add storage space, but floating shelves will keep the cramped feeling to a minimum (the tape along the tile is just to eyeball the possible width of each shelf).

Tip: When you’re not sure about placement, use painter’s tape. It let’s you visualize just about anything (rug sizes, shelf placement, etc.).

As you can see from the tape’s placement in these photos, there were a number of ideas I tried out. Ultimately, here’s where I imagine things will be placed (with some slight lowering of the tape of each shelf on the right):

You can also see some additional molding installed, including the decorative strip to hide the tile edges on the left. There’s more to do over the weekend, so I’ll probably have more to show next week. But that requires another trip to the hardware store, so I’m off to make that happen. Have a great weekend!