This room was A MESS.

There was black mold behind where the laundry units go that we had to remove. The old, janky cupboards were falling apart and HAD. TO. GO.

And that water heater... it was 27 years old and well past its prime. We'll dive into that in the next step.

When you see the before and after photos, your first question is probably, "Um, where'd that water heater go?"

Well, it was from 1993 and beyond the point of needing replacement. We figured if we're replacing it, we might as well get a tankless unit outside and give that room a ton of extra space.

We also tore out all the cabinets and racks on the wall to clear the room out.

We got these lower cabinets from Home Depot and the paint is Cavalry by PPG. These took a day to install, and we primed and painted them a little later in the process.

Another question you might have when looking at the before and after is, "Where did that brick wall come from?"

No, we didn't lay a single brick. We’ve seen plywood brick panels a few times in other people’s projects, and at roughly $35 for a 4’x8’ sheet, you really can’t go wrong.

We painted them white then nailed them into the wall.

With the room being exactly 8 feet wide, the open shelves were very easy install with two 2x12s at 8 feet.

The sconces were simply screwed into the wall and we used battery powered bulbs to avoid dealing with wiring.

Instead of paying hundreds for a butcherblock countertop, we made a faux one ourselves with some plywood.

We glued and clamped together two pieces of plywood and sanded the top before staining. Then we nailed the piece (which got to be VERY heavy) on top of the cabinets.

These two storage shelves were made out of scrap wood and leftover stain/paint.

The washer and dryer stick out from the wall because of the vents so we built this storage shelf to hide the gap and also provide more storage.

We then added a dowel below the upper shelf to hang clothes coming out of the laundry.

We painted over with a light grey and used this stencil for the white pattern.

To cover over the holes from the water heater, we cut down quarter inch plywood to 6 inch strips to cover the ceiling.

The last step was to move our fridge into the pantry (we debated this before making the decision) one foot over from where it was in the kitchen.

By moving the fridge we saved a lot of space in our kitchen, which we're going to use to build an island.

This was our most advanced project yet and took six weeks, but it was well worth it!

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