How to Increase Space in the Laundry Room

Allen Lyle from DannyLipford.com shows you how to increase storage space in a small laundry room.

Allen Lyle: This is called a walkthrough laundry for obvious reasons; you come in through the garage you walk through it to get to the kitchen. Well, that means it’s a very convenient easy access but there are some disadvantages too because this is a major traffic artery. You got the family walking in from this side, you get some small children here, the first thing they want to do is put stuff down that’s in their hands. So books, toys, clothes, all kinds of things get later right here just like Danny said, it becomes a magnet. The homeowner knew something had to change. So recently he came in here and actually took a lot of advantage of the wasted space. But I don’t want you to look at it just yet. Let me show you what it looked like before. The laundry wasn’t at huge mess but it certainly didn’t make full use of the space available. In fact the laundry basket cuddy was a great idea but it just didn’t handle the baskets for this family. The only other storage was a single wire shelf over the washer and drier which were pretty much maxed up. So for starters everything had to go just like Lisa’s closet. But in this case, the homeowner Scoot was taking all the work himself. He came up just how overloaded the wire shelf was when he took it out. So the new stuff would have to be sturdy. Scott shows medium densely fiberboard for his shelves and he began by ripping it down into 16 and 12-inch. Then he laid out the locations for the cleats that would support the shelves and mark the studs. Now to speed up the work, he coated all of the materials with primer and the first coat of paint before cutting the link and installing it in the laundry. One by four cleats connects all of the door casings so the upper shelves can run all the way around the room just above the door height. To replace the laundry basket cuddy here removed, Scott planned the unit to run all the way from the floor up to this overhead shelf. One by two cleats divided into six equal sections which were transferred to the wall once it’s in place. A brace on the other side of the window will add strength and support a small rod over the drier. The upper shelf is notched with a 45-degree cut on each end so that when the other pieces are readied their opposing cuts will overlap and support each other. Opposite the washer and drier, a narrow set of shelves uses what little spaces left between the two drawers when they’re opened. Once you got it all together and touch up the paint there was a plenty of spaces for baskets three times more overhead shelving and just the right amount of hanging space. Plus the new shelves between the doors turned out to be the perfect size for detergents, bleaches, and other laundry products. The cleats behind the doors even created some great opportunities to hang brooms and maps.