It’s time for the week 5 update for the One Room Challenge (ORC). With all of the tile installed I was able to focus on the storage projects for my laundry room. Week 5 of the ORC was all about woodworking for me. I ended up designing two pieces for the room. The first is a cabinet for the drop in utility sink that I purchased. The second is a rolling storage cart for in between the washer and dryer.On Saturday I headed to Home Depot to get my supplies and got to woodworking. It was a long two days over the weekend but I had to cram it in since I left on Monday for another work trip. Not having weeknights to work on the room makes it difficult to get a lot done in a one week stretch. Today I’m sharing my designs and progress for the storage cart and sink cabinet. My late night progress is also the reason that most of the pictures in this project post aren’t the best. I didn’t have much lighting to work with. 😉

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Utility Sink Cabinet

Design

My laundry room is turning out perfect and I want a pretty utility sink to go with the gorgeous tile that I installed. The only problem is that it’s nearly impossible to find a nice looking utility sink. After searching site after site, I decided to design and build one on my own. I purchased a drop in utility sink from Amazon to start with. Sketchup is my go to for design and below is a picture of what I came up with. It’s very similar to the original vanity that I included in my week 1 design plan. I’ll be sharing free build plans for this in the future.

Progress

On Saturday morning I headed to Home Depot to get the lumber. Is anyone else always amazed that you can turn a pile of lumber like the one below into a functional piece of furniture?

The cabinet is very custom since I wanted it to match the sink dimensions perfectly. There were a few parts on the sink that got in the way of the 2×2 boards that I bought so I ended up having to plane down some of the boards to exactly 1″ in thickness and also notch out some of the corners to avoid the integrated soap dish.

I made sure to test fit the sink several times.

Now that the frame was perfect I could move onto the side panels for the cabinet. I know, my garage is a wreck, don’t judge, I’ve been a little busy lately 😉

For the doors on the cabinet I used a 1/4″ straight router bit to notch out the frame for the door panels to sit in.

After I test fit the doors, I realized that I didn’t have enough lumber to finish the bottom shelf. So I stopped here for the night and headed back to the store the next morning.

This is what the cabinet looks like today. It’s all ready for paint! I’ll be putting a few coats of gray on it this weekend so that I can install it before the final reveal on Thursday!

Rolling Storage Cart

I have 11″ in between my washer and dryer and since my laundry room is super small I need all the storage I can get. My original plan was to build a custom rolling cart but um…. time. So I did what I always do when I want a project to go faster and settled on an IKEA hack. Seriously, who doesn’t love a good IKEA hack? I started with this small IKEA HYLLIS shelf that only costs $9.99!

After it was built, I put it in the space between my washer and dryer. Luckily, the width and depth were perfect but it needs extra height for sure.

Design

I went back to Sketchup and played around with the shelf a bit until it had the height I wanted. The casters on the bottom add 3 inches and the wooden shelf/box on the top adds a few inches too. After I have the laundry room finished and have more time I’ll share a full tutorial for this hack on my blog.

Progress

In the right of the picture below you can see the shelf with the casters installed. The box that will go on top is to the left of the cabinet in the picture below. I had time to stain the box but it still needs polyurethane.

PLAN FOR WEEK 6

I’m in the home stretch now. The final reveal for my laundry room will happen on Thursday so it’s going to be another crazy week to get this project over the finish line. Here is the list of tasks that I need to complete.

Touch up paint on walls
Paint and install utility sink
Polyurethane and finish building rolling cart
Build and hang wall shelves
Build and hang ironing board holder
Decorate

If you would like to look back at my original design plan or previous progress posts click the links below.

You can also visit the One Room Challenge blog to see room transformations from several bloggers. They have featured and guest participants. I’ve had a blast following all of the other designers progress and I can’t wait to see the finished rooms.