WEEK 3 CABINET INSTALL – Laundry Room Makeover | ORC

Welcome back to week 3 of the One Room Challenge™! This week is the wall cabinet install.

WEEK 1 | WEEK 2 | WEEK 3 | WEEK 4 | WEEK 5 | WEEK 6 | WEEK 7 | WEEK 8

If you are new here, I am in the middle of an 8 week laundry room makeover. You can see the design plan in Week 1‘s post, and demo started in Week 2.

This week we are moving along swiftly, and several things are happening at once. Hubs wanted to get the tile on the wall as soon as possible, so we needed to install the wall cabinet before that happened.

 

Wall Cabinet

We choose our cabinet color of Midnight Blue from BEHR, tinted using the dark base of their Cabinet and Trim Enamel. This color is gorgeous, it is a grayish blue, to match the blue in the tile we are using. It is the same type of paint we used on my office board and batten wall, and on my son’s kitchen cabinets. It has a re-coat time of 2 hours, which makes it much more time efficient.

We purchased an unfinished cabinet in 24″ x 30″, we will add crown molding as a finishing touch.

Steps:

• • Sand – first sanding to clean and smooth any loose chips or nicks from the warehouse, using an orbital sander, and wipe down with tack cloth.
  • Prime – using Kilz stain blocker. This creates a sealed layer, and prevents the paint from being absorbed into the wood. Which can cause peeling down the road.
  • Sand – once primer is dry to knock down any imperfections and raised wood grain.Can be a fine sanding sponge, then wipe with tack cloth.
  • First Coat – Used a 2 inch angled nylon brush for corners inside, and a foam roller for the main body and frame facings.
  • Lightly sand again for any imperfections. Wipe with tack cloth.
  • Second Coat – repeat same steps.
  • Possible 3rd coat – I did add a 3rd coat to the cabinet face frames and the side that will be exposed, and any areas I felt were thin.

    

    Sand, Prime, Sand

    

    First Coat

    

    Final Coat and Dry

    
    

 

Install

Due to the attic access in our ceiling, we could only do one cabinet. Placing it to the left over the dryer. When hanging wall cabinets, it is a standard to go 18″ above the countertop, or 54″ from the floor. We debated going higher because the height of the washer and dryer is about 38/39″ and our counter is setting at 42″ We were going to go up a few more inches. Because I am not the tallest girl on the planet, there is no way shape or form would I ever be able to reach the top shelf.  We decided to keep it at 54″, and it works and looks great! The crown molding will add some height as well.

It was pretty easy to install. We added a ledger board (a simple scrap piece of 1×2 works great), level at 54″ to rest the cabinet on while we attached it to the wall. This step is very important, trying to hold a cabinet level while lining up screws into studs…it’s not going to work. The right tools for the job!!

We used some 2″ cabinet screws and placed them into studs. Two at the top and two in the lower corners, removed the ledger board. Solid as a rock!

What’s Next

The door and surprise hardware will be installed after the tile and grout are complete.

We also have the lower cabinet/open cubby that will sit next to the dryer. I am working on painting that this week, but will not install until the countertop is ready and complete.

That’s a wrap for Week 3!  Next week we are adding the tile wall and are framing out the floating shelves.

Make sure to check out all the other amazing bloggers on the One Room Challenge™ blog.  You can also follow me on Instagram to catch some behind the scenes as we navigate this project!

Amy – Pinterest Strategist by day, DIY’er by Night!

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