Wash the boring away

I hate, hate, HATE doing laundry. Mainly because of all the folding, hanging,, ironing and putting away once it is done. But I also get that laundry is a necessary evil, blah, blah, blah! So if I have to spend time in the laundry room, and because our laundry room is a pass through space from the house to the garage I want a pretty room. Despite the size I knew I could make it pretty and pleasant.

Our new washer /dryer was on the way so we had to rush and get the riser built and painted, as well as the shelf (this could have waited but it was much easier to do without the big monsters in the way). So while hubby and his buddy were cutting wood and framing the riser in the garage I got busy painting. I know its not ideal but we literally had one day (the washer/dryer purchase was kind of a spur of the moment "our set is about dead and this is a fantastic can miss it price" kind of deal).

The starting room was creme walls, creme vinyl flooring and a single wire shelf above where the washer and dryer sit. 

Pre-paint, building the riser. 

Painted room with anchor boards for shelf in place. 

Riser in place...and a big paint spill (the cost of doing rushed work in a small room with 3 people),
and check out that oh-so pretty creme vinyl flooring...ick! I opted for a fairly short riser (it is only about 6 inches tall). We wanted height but still wanted to be able to reach the items on the shelf and use the top of the w/d to fold, etc.

The riser is a simple design of a frame (around the walls) and 4 brace boards (1 every 2 ft or so) covered with thick plywood. We put more braces than we might use in other projects simply because of the weight of the w/d. Before I painted to riser I primed it with a water resistant sealer. This was also the second paint, I was not a huge fan of the first color I chose once it was on the wall, it made the room feel even smaller than it is. So had to make a flying trip to Lowe's to get another color. This one is much better and I even painted the ceiling.

As you can see we didn't manage to get the shelf up before they were delivered but we managed to work around them :)

Shelf in place. Basic shelf with box frame with several braces (to accommodate the weight of laundry soap, etc). We used a piece of the baseboard that we purchased for this room for the shelf face (just turned it upside down). Thought this looked better, more finished than no frilly face.

We thought about installing the shelf lower in the beginning but wanted to keep it up a bit since it was built in and we need to be able to hook up (and possibly unhook) the machines.

I had the black baskets that are each end of the shelf. I keep smaller items in these baskets, such as extra boxes of dryer sheets, woolite bottles, stain remover, small sewing kit, etc.