12 Laundry Room Update: A "Toe"tally Fantastic Base Cabinet Upgrade

Whether you are organizing or updating a room, there are times when the smallest updates can make the biggest impacts. That is the case of the tiny detail we added to our laundry room this week...

We didn't make as much progress on our laundry room as I would have hoped this past few days as I am trying to finalize my 2017 planner and calendar pages and I also traveled for a three day work event. However, one itty bitty project really made me even more excited about what we have happening in a space where a lot of chores are done.

We purchased a fairly inexpensive base cabinet for our laundry room, and initially we were just going to pop on a standard flat white piece of trim to clean up the toe kick. Here is a quick reminder of the before:

Above you can see that the cabinet came with an unfinished toe kick (and a crooked cabinet door). We fixed both problems this week, and it really visually cleaned up this little corner.

Apparently you can purchase decorative toe kick accents, but everything I found seemed pretty pricey for a fairly simple update. But I couldn't get over the idea and thought it would ultimately take an off-the-shelf home improvement store cabinet up a notch... or ten.  So I drew up a quick sketch for Bryan of the design I wanted him to get jiggy with. #watchoutwillsmith

We began with a stock piece of 1" x 6" common board found at Home Depot (around a 4 ft board). Now, we could have jigged out the full design shown above from the wood board, but we were not certain we could get all of the corners and lines as clean as we would have liked, so we decided to cut three sections and piece them together to create a single decorative accent.

Above you can see the sizes we cut from the common board, and the method we used to cut each of the three pieces.

To measure and draw two identical curves, we used our drywall circle cutter, but you could also trace the bottom of a round object.

There are also a few methods that could be used to attach the three pieces together. For us it came down to utilizing braces on the back of the boards, or reaching for our Kreg Jig. We had the Kreg Jig on hand so opted to go that route, placing one pocket on the bottom and another on the back of the rectangular piece.

Once we had all three pieces together, I used wood filler on the seams and sanded everything nice and smooth.

And then painted the new decorative toe kick piece with two coats of white paint.

While the paint dried, we prepped the install by using a multi-tool (similar) to remove a small portion of the wall trim.

Then placed a piece of wood to act as a spacer between the solid white piece of toe kick and the decorative piece we had just built.

I painted the spacers white as well, and once they were dry, they were attached to the wall and the dryer panel with our nailer. The white standard trim was also nailed to the base of the cabinet.

The piece was wedged in tightly against the spacers and between the dryer panel and wall. I then used white painter's caulk to fill any final gaps between all of the trim and cabinets.

A quick project out of a single inexpensive piece of wood really elevated an inexpensive stock cabinet.

The hardware was purchased here and it's amazing. And I am a huge fan of mixing and matching metals, but at this stage they are trying to steal the show. I can't wait to receive the wallpaper (which I just ordered yesterday!), and begin installing the wall tile and wood shelving. That should really bridge all of the very white layers going on at the moment. #ridiculouslyexcited

Because we already had all of the tools, paint and caulk that we needed, the cost for the decorative toe kick came in around $5 for the wood. And for some reason I can't stop singing, "Gettin jiggy wit it! Na na na na na na na nana! Na na na na nana!"

Catch up on previous laundry room update posts below:

Installing Shiplap & Sorting Baskets

Lowering Hookups & Installing a Counter
Installing a Drop-in Sink