J Hegland Home: Laundry Room Refresh-Reveal

I am slowly making my way around the house with a can of paint, taking aim at the dark builder-grade cabinets with my paint brush. So far, I tackled the half bath and the entryway bead board wall. The idea of painting the kitchen cabinets is so tempting but for me, still feels so daunting. I guess I figure if I can get all the other cabinets in the house painted then Ill be a pro by the time I reach the kitchen and it wont be as big a deal? Here's to hoping. But, this post isn't about the kitchen at all, its actually about the laundry room. The room I avoid as much as possible because I really hate laundry, but I thought, well, might as well finish up the small projects down here before I head upstairs.

When I thought of how I wanted to makeover this space all I kept thinking of was my last laundry room. I really loved how that room turned out with the grey cabinets and rustic floating shelves so I really planned from the beginning to kind of mimic it in this house.

Here's what we started with back in February...

Then I added 2 very large faux floating shelves [and a new washer and dryer]....

Then, I did a mini makeover on the counter tops...

It stayed looking that way until last week when I finally decided to start painting the cabinets. This time, compared to the half bath, I decided to be lazy and use a sanding block to rough up the cabinets instead of my electric sander. All was well until I finished the second coat of paint on the doors and realized that the paint had very uneven, very noticeable, spots and was not covering as well as it did in the half bath. I rehung the doors and realized I could not live with it that way so I used my electric sander and sanded off all the messed up spots until they were completely smooth.

After that, I covered the spots in 2 coats of primer again and then 2 coats of paint again. You honestly cant tell now but it would have been so much easier had I just done it right the first time!

Luckily, I had only done the upper cabinets and hadn't started on the base cabinets yet so when I did get to them I really made sure to sand them properly the first time. It makes a difference! The paint coverage was so much better and more even on the base cabinets. Please, if you listen to nothing else that I have ever said listen to this, "sand the freaking cabinets properly!" For real. You wont regret it.

After everything was painted we added some knobs and pulls [the same ones that we used in the half bath and plan to use throughout the house, found at Lowes]. Now, here's how it turned out.