Let’s talk laundry rooms for a minute. MINE. WAS. TERRIBLE. It lacked character, not functional, & just not me at all! So what did I do about that? We took everything out and started with a blank slate. Don’t you just love starting with an empty room, or is that just me?! The possibilities are endless! I knew I wanted it to function for my family, be budget-friendly, & look great! It wasn’t the easiest transformation, but my goodness it was worth it! I really debated on writing this post, but someone out there may run into a similar situation. If you are wanting to hang cabinets but your studs aren’t where you need them to be, this post is for you! If your studs are in the correct places you can still follow along. You would just omit all the steps of building your own studs across the wall. I know the price of lumber is out of this world, but that’s just more of a reason to learn to DIY…cut out those labor costs! Now, let’s get to it!
Things you need!
- Paint for walls in satin
- Paint for baseboards if you want to freshen those up in semi-gloss
- Paint for cabinets in semi-gloss
- Kilz primer for cabinets & shiplap
- Rollers, pan, & paint tray inserts
- Level
- Stud finder
- Cabinets (we bought premade ones from Lowes)
- 2×4 in length that will reach under cabinet to cabinet
- Long screws to secure cabinets to the wall
- Cabinet hardware
- If you plan to shiplap your wall you’ll need satin paint, brad nailer, brad nails, table saw or skill saw with Kreg Rip-Cut jig, 1/4″ underlayment plywood ripped in 6″ strips. The size of your space will determine how many sheets you will need
Gutting the Room
First, we had to start by removing everything from the room. We really didn’t have much to remove. I never took the time to decorate because I always knew I wanted to renovate it. There was a shelf that ran along the length of the wall that was too tall for me to reach. I always had to use a stool to reach my detergent (not functional)! So that was the first thing that had to go. I knew from having that shelf…I wanted cabinets to hide everything. There is nothing cute about washing detergent to display on an open shelf. I know some like to place it in glass jars and so on and so forth, but that’s just more for me to do & again not functional (for my family anyway).
Prepping the Walls for Cabinets & Painting
I started by prepping the wall for paint by filling all the little holes with spackling! Once that dried I painted the walls with Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray in satin. The BEST “greige” in my opinion. I freshened up the baseboards with a fresh coat of paint as well. I use Sherwin Williams Pure White in semi-gloss for all of my trims/moldings. Once the paint had dried I pulled out my handy-dandy stud finder (if you don’t have one of these I highly suggest investing in one) even if you aren’t a DIYer it comes in handy when you need to hang something heavy and it needs to be secured to a stud! I went along the middle of the wall and marked each stud and repeated this again towards the top of the wall. I then connected each mark with a line going vertical along the wall. It will make it much easier seeing a line to know where the studs are!
Hanging the Cabinets
Okay, now that we have our studs marked it is time to hang the cabinets! We hung our cabinets 34 1/2″ from the floor. We measured from the floor up 34 1/2″ and made a mark. You may want yours hung at a different height so just adjust accordingly. Take a 2×4 board the length of the wall and secure it into the studs making sure it is level. You want the top of the 2×4 to be at the 34 1/2″ mark. This is going to be what you rest your cabinet on while you secure it to your wall! It makes it SO MUCH easier rather than someone having to hold up that weight the entire time. This will be removed once you have your cabinets hung. You will have a few holes in the wall to fill and spot paint, but trust me it is worth the minor setbacks!
So…here is where the trouble started for us. We live in an older home that has been remodeled, so our studs aren’t spaced out evenly. That wasn’t going to stop me from remodeling my laundry room! I don’t mean to toot my own horn….but I figured this one out! So, TOOT TOOT! We took two 1×4 boards and secured them into each stud the length of the wall. We basically created our own studs to secure the cabinets! Genius right?! I thought so too! If your studs are in the correct spots then you can skip this step! I just wanted to show you an alternative way in case your walls happen to be like mine! If there’s a will there’s a way & I promise…I will always find a way! In the picture below you’ll see the boards running all the way behind the cabinets. We secured each cabinet to those boards using two screws on the top and two more on the bottom. You secure them by opening the cabinet door and screwing them into the stud from inside the cabinet. We also placed a level in the bottom of the cabinet to make sure we hung them level! Oh yea, and obviously you’ll want to prime/paint or stain your cabinets before you hang them if you are planning to do so!
Now, you may be thinking to yourself…”What about those boards running between the cabinets?!” Well, they have to stay there because that’s what the cabinets are secured to…but that’s where adding shiplap comes to play! If your studs were where you could hang your cabinets without adding the boards then you would be done! Unfortunately, we do so we have to make the best of it and try to hide them. So, on to adding the shiplap!
Adding Shiplap
Since we had to add the boards going across the wall it also added another step to installing shiplap. We have to build our wall up to meet those boards so we have something to attach the shiplap to. We added 1×2 boards to fill in the gaps and make more artificial studs. I had to paint these white to match the shiplap so you wouldn’t be able to see them once it was attached.
We ripped our shiplap into 6′ strips using our table saw. If you don’t have a table saw you can also use a skill saw with a Rip-Cut jig to make sure they are cut straight. Continue up the wall with your shiplap until you’ve reached the ceiling. Once we finished attaching everything I primed all the boards using Kilz primer & then painted them using Sherwin Williams Alabaster in Satin. I hung a wooden rod between the cabinets to hang clothes & we also made a shelf out of 1×6 boards below the cabinets to hide all of the hoses! Added some finishing decor touches, praised the Lord we finished this project, and admired all of our hard work!
I know this was a pretty lengthy blog post and I hope y’all can omit a lot of those steps. This was a project from a year ago…so I had to do everything from memory! If I left something out or you don’t understand something please do not hesitate to ask! Leave a comment below and I will do my best to answer your question! Like I said before if our studs would have been where they were supposed to be…this project would have gone a lot smoother. I just wanted to show that it can still be done though! You just have to think outside of the box a little to get it done.
