Clean clothes tower!!

This was the previously scheduled post, 

BC (before crash), 

so don't think I'm supper woman fixing my broken wall, broken car and still working on my laundry room!!  Although I must say Les has done most of the fixing of my catastrophe!!

Now back to my post about my laundry room!!

Do you remember the space we were stealing from Em's room?  

Well the photo below shows the two rooms back to back, as they appear in real life.  

Once we had that wall opened up we prepped for the built-ins. Wait, let me back up and explain what I wanted this space for.  I needed some place to put the kids clean clothes after I folded them; a holding area until they came to put them away.  

(I may fold their clothes but I don't deliver!) 

We started by building a simple MDF box to house the baskets I wanted to use. 

We wanted the floor of the box to be flush with the baseboards, so we nailed down some 2x4 supports first to raise the box to their level..

We made our opening in the wall go all the way to the ceiling. 

 (Not sure why!)

But it was done so I mapped out the rest of the space and we continued making boxes to fill it up.  You may be asking why we didn't just build one huge unit to slide in the space?  

Well,

 1. That would be very heavy and hard to get in place. 

2. Making individual boxes allowed us to use up a lot of MDF scraps.   

3.  Making individual boxes allowed us to make them differing depths.

Box #2 is deeper because it will be used for sweater drying racks.

 (I'll show them next time.)

Box #3 and #4 are for open storage and decoration.

Box #1 is a true box with a top, bottom, 2 sides and a back.  Boxes 2,3,and 4 are bottomless.  We did this so it wouldn't be super thick between boxes when we trimmed the hole thing out.

Now back to my baskets. 

"Where did I get them?"

Did you really have to ask?

Of coarse I got them at the second hand DI store for a whopping $2 each.  I had to follow a guy around the store for quite awhile hopping he would change his mind and put some of the baskets back.  He did and I scored all 6 baskets!!  

One for each of my kids!!!

The drawer glides hadn't arrive when we built the box, so we guessed at how much space we would need for the hardware.  We guessed wrong.  There was about a half an inch extra space.  Easy fix!  I just went down to the hardware isle at Lowe's and bought some 1/4 inch spacers.

Once the boxes were all primed and painted I installed the hardware for the baskets.  

I got the drawer glides from D Lawless Hardware. They were very good to work with; you should go check them out.  I also got my awesome knobs for the cabinets from them, but that's another post.  These drawer glides make it easy for the baskets to be taken all the way out so the kids can take them to their rooms and put their clothes away.  I used the same drawer glides, only longer, in the sweater drying area, but I'll show you those next time.

I trimmed out the front of the built-in mostly with MDF I had ripped down and sanded.  I really needed something just below my arch and I found this left over wooden medallion from the office.  I just cut it into quarters and It worked perfectly!!

It's really looking good.

I will be back soon to show you the sweater dryer racks as promised.

Thanks for stopping by!!!