One Room Challenge / the laundry room week 4

I can't believe we are already at week 4 of One Room Challenge- the past four weeks have flown by and we only have 2 weeks until the reveal which means we only have 1 more week until the space needs to be photographed eek! If you are just catching up- this post has the introduction to our laundry room and before photos, this post has the design plan and this post has sheetrock and paint up. We have done so much in 4 weeks in this space!

This past week has been super exciting because we got the DIY shelves for our pantry up and butcher block countertop over the washer/dryer up. They look so good! 

This coming weeks project is the DIY cover for the electrical panel. Also if you follow me on instagram (acreativedayblog) you saw where I had a little panicked moment that the overhead light was too dim so we ordered these $29 plug in sconces to flank the walls above the washer and dryer and I love them. They do seem to sag a little but we have been working on tightening the screws and its definitely helping- and for $29 each I'm not complaining ha. 

But for now back to the shelves, I'm going to walk through how we built them. It was such an easy DIY and the finished result looks great. If you remember from our design plan in week 2- we were planning on building a shelf above the washer and dryer and then pantry shelves on the opposite wall. I wanted the shelves to be wood and to tie in the butcher block. It proved to be kinda tricky because the Ikea butcher block is oak and 12" oak shelving board is super expensive. 12" pine shelving board is very reasonable so we went with that and decided to try to match the oak butcherblock with stain. Pine is notoriously hard to stain because it blotches so I went the expert, Ana White and followed her tutorial. We dug through the boards at home depot and picked the ones with the least knots. Don't skip the pre stain conditioner- I think it it was gave us the perfect finish! The stain she used in the tutorial was exactly the color i was looking for and it matches the butcher block PERFECTLY (Its minwax golden oak- we did one coat of stain and 2 coats of wipe on poly). Like you can't even tell the difference! 

For the brackets I knew I wanted something industrial to mix with the warm wood tone so we got standard L brackets in 5" for the pantry shelves and I think 8" for the upper shelf above the washer and I primed and spray painted them hammered black. Sidenote: I LOVE the rustoleum hammered black spray paint- Its my favorite paint for metal. 

We hung them on the two sides into the wall and also ran a 1x2 across the back for extra support. We painted the 1x2 the wall color so it almost disappears. The brackets add such a fun little detail! I got the idea from this blog post.  

We are getting so close! We are tackling the dutch door and the electrical cover next so hopefully I'll have a fun DIY for you next week with those. Then we get to move onto the fun part of staging and hanging art!