With that adjustment, I lost some depth. And I don’t know how it happened because I can’t get the math to math correctly. Losing that inch should have left me with cabinets that are 17″ deep, but somehow, I ended up with cabinets with an inside depth of 16.5″. And then I placed my closet rods 10″ from the back.

So, to be clear, my original plan had been to have my clothes hanging so that they were completely inside the cabinets with nothing sticking out, or barely sticking out. I didn’t have enough room to go any deeper than 18 inches. I prepared myself to be disappointed with how much my shirts would stick out from the cabinets. But once everything was in the closet and hanging on the rods, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. In fact, I actually like how they stick out a little bit because I think that makes it easier to find what I’m looking for at a glance than it would have been had they been completely inside the cabinet.

That might not be true. Perhaps it would have been just as easy to see things at a glace even if they were completely inside the cabinet. But I still don’t mind the look of those shirts sticking out like that. In fact, I kind of like it. They’re colorful and pretty and I love seeing that glimpse of them as I walk past the door of the walk-in closet. So while it wasn’t my original plan, and it was the result of a mistake on my part, I’m actually very pleased with the 16.5″ depth of the cabinets.

The other side of the room has worked out perfectly so far. I can’t think of anything I would change on this side given the parameters I had to work with. Now in a perfect world, I would have at least 9-foot ceilings, preferably 10-foot ceilings, and I would have had plenty of room for a sliding library ladder so that I could easily reach those top shelves without having to access my step ladder.

But since I only have 8-foot ceilings, and there’s not really enough room for a library ladder in here anyway, the system I works perfectly fine. I keep that little 3-step ladder in here, tucked away in the cabinet opposite my shoes, and it’s very quick and easy to grab it to reach those high shelves. And it helps that I put shoes on that very top shelf that I don’t wear regularly, so I don’t have to access them often.

Probably the biggest question in my mind was how this arrangement of the washer and dryer were going to work out. There were many factors that went into my decision to place the washer and dryer opposite each other instead of side-by-side (including my obsessive need for symmetry, but that wasn’t the only factor).

I’m sure that several people were questioning my decision to separate them like this, but I can tell you that this arrangement hasn’t been a problem for me at all. They’re still close to each other, and I don’t even give it a thought when doing laundry. I’ve found that with this arrangement, it’s just as easy for me to transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer as it was when I had them side-by-side.

I do think the key is that I slid each appliance forward so that neither of them is sitting against the wall. I placed them close enough so that when the doors on both are opened, they’re fairly close to each other. So closing in that gap between the two appliances helps make the laundry transfer very easy.

I probably could have slid each of them forward another couple of inches, but I didn’t want to encroach on the window too much. And they don’t really need to be closer together. This arrangement has worked out perfectly just like it is.

But just to recap, I went from this bedroom…

…to this walk-in closet with a laundry area.

This was a pretty extensive project because it started with all of the old flooring and subfloor being removed and new subfloor and flooring being installed. That added quite a bit to the cost of the overall project. And then I stained and sealed the floor…twice. But at the beginning of the year, once the old flooring and subfloor was out, and the new subfloor was in, the room looked like this…

That contractor also did the plumbing and some of the electrical rough-in for me before I fired him. (You can read about that here.) But I did pay him some for the work he did in this room.

Contractor fees: $500.00

Then I hired out the installation of the new hardwood flooring, and then finished the floor myself. I’m so glad that I redid those floors! Can you imagine my closet with these dark floors?

I honestly think those dark floors would have made the whole room so dark and drab. I had them covered while I was building the closet cabinets, but once I decided to redo them, I uncovered them and sanded around the edges. I can’t find any pictures with the solid dark floors with the cabinets, but you can get an idea of what the dark floors would have looked like here…

It was a lot of work, but I’m so glad I went back and sanded down those floors and redid them with the Bona NaturalSeal and Bona Traffic HD. So the flooring cost for this room includes the actual hardwood flooring, the installation, and the finishing and refinishing (including the rental fee for the sanders and the sandpaper for the sanders).

Flooring Cost: $2581.83

The cost for the plywood and trim that I used for the island was included in this, so this cost covers all of the plywood, trim, molding, etc., for all of the perimeter cabinets plus the island.

Lumber cost: $3141.80

And, of course, there were a lot of little costs that added up along the way — nails, screws, sandpaper, wood filler, etc.

Supplies cost: $290.38

And then there was the cost of the primer, paint, and paint supplies. I probably could have reduced this cost by about $150 had I not purchased 100 paint samples. But I had such a hard time deciding on a paint color for the cabinets. Remember all of the colors I tested out?

I don’t think I’ve ever tested out this many samples for any other room. But I really struggled with this one.

I am so glad I went with a blue. I can’t even imagine the room being coral. And the color I went with — Sherwin Williams Billowy Breeze — ended up being perfect. I love it so much! But Sherwin Williams paint isn’t cheap. And neither is the primer I used — Zinsser B-I-N shellac-based primer. I was a bit shocked at the total cost of the paint and paint supplies (brushes, rollers, roller trays, etc.). Those pricey primers and paints, plus all of the supplies, added up really quick.

Paint and paint supplies: $1145.91

I put all of the hardware for the room into one category. This includes the brushed gold closet rods…

Plus all of the drawer and door pulls, drawer slides for the island, etc.

This was another category that adds up really fast. Drawer pulls and soft close ball bearing drawer slides aren’t cheap!

Hardware costs: $641.48

And then there’s the main lighting for the room. I went from having one dimly lit ceiling fan in the center of the room to having loads of flush ceiling lights on dimmers.

Good lighting makes all the different in a room, and I especially wanted my closet to be very light and bright. But I also put all of the lights on dimmers. So this cost includes the new lighting (not including the decorative light fixtures), all of the new wiring that the new lights required, dimmer switches, cover plates, etc.

Lighting Costs: $633.46

The next category is all of the pretty stuff. And my closet wouldn’t be my closet with the pretty stuff.

This category includes the wallpaper, sconces, mirror, glass for the jewelry drawer, clothes hamper, step ladder, etc.

The pretty stuff: $1375.48

And finally, I put my chandelier in its own separate category.

Once I added the numbers, I realized that it cost more than I thought it did. But it’s still a fraction of what the inspiration chandelier cost!

Chandelier cost: $388.54

And that’s it! So that brings us to the grand total for turning a bedroom into a walk-in closet and laundry room…

• Contractor fees: $500.00
• Flooring: $2581.83
• Lumber: $3141.80
• Supplies: $290.38
• Paint and paint supplies: $1145.91
• Hardware: $641.48
• Main room lighting: $633.46
• The pretty stuff: $1375.48
• Chandelier: $388.54

GRAND TOTAL: $10,698.88

I have to admit that I didn’t realize it cost that much. Was it worth it? Well, I guess only I can answer that question. And for me, the answer is a resounding YES!

Oh, and one more surprise — I repainted the top. Now the whole thing is solid blue. Here’s how it turned out…

I didn’t find a cursive letter “K” that I liked, but I did find an “L” that I really liked. I actually made the purchase on Amazon, and then I realized I already had an “L” that I could use. It’s been in our pantry since I finished it.

So I grabbed that one from the pantry, gold leafed it, and hung it on the end of the island. I love it!

And I also think it’s a little humorous. It reminds me of the television show “Laverne & Shirley” because Laverne always wore shirts monogrammed with the letter “L”. So while my clothes aren’t monogrammed with an “L”, my whole closet is now monogrammed with a very similar “L”.

After repainting and clear coating the drawers and doors, I had to go back and redo the gold leaf pen detail on the one section that I had already done, and then add the gold detail on the other three sections. I used a Krylon 18kt. Gold Leaf pen for that, and each section took about five minutes.

The side facing the hanging clothes side of the room has two sections of drawers.

I haven’t had time to vacuum out the dust from drilling the holes for the drawer pulls yet, but the top drawer is a little bit shallower than the other two. The top drawers on this side are about six inches deep.

And the other four are about nine inches deep.

The other side has a cabinet, and I literally just remembered that I still need to add a shelf inside, so I guess it’s not completely finished. Ugh.

And then the other section on this side has four drawers.

The first three drawers are about five inches deep, and the bottom drawer is nine inches deep.

In hindsight, I wish I would have painted all parts of the drawer boxes white. I thought that pink color would be a fun surprise, but I think white would have looked much better. Oh well. I’m not redoing it now. At least I’m the only one who will see it.

I’m so relieved to finally have this big project done!! That leaves me with two more big projects in the room — framing out the doorway and making the chandelier. Once the doorway is framed out and the chandelier is done, I’ll have a few small projects to finish up, and then the room will finally be FINISHED!

At the end of that post, I hadn’t gotten very far on the island. It looked like this…

It was kind of hard to tell that it was an island at that point. But at the end of the day yesterday, it looked a whole lot more like an island. This is what it looks like now…

So let me show you the steps it took to get from that very basic form that I left off with last time to what it looks like now.

First, I had to cut and attach a piece of plywood to separate one of the sections into a front and back section. Since one section will have drawers on the front and back, it doesn’t need a separator. But the other section will have drawers on one side and cabinet doors on the other side, so that cabinet side needs a back. To attach that separator piece of plywood, I measured and marked a vertical line in the middle of the center plywood piece…

And then I measured and marked that same line on the outside piece of plywood. And I used those lines to line up the separator piece of plywood and nail it into place. I just nailed right through the outside of the plywood and into the edge of the separator piece. I used small 18-gauge nails, so those holes will be very easy to hide with wood filler.

And here’s what that looked like with that piece in place.

Next, I needed to cover the edges of most of the plywood since these would show, and the edges of plywood aren’t very pretty.

I covered those edges using pre-glued iron-on wood veneer…

This edge banding goes on with an iron set to a high heat setting. The iron melts the glue, and when it cools, the banding is adhered to the edge of the plywood. The edge banding is always a little bit too wide, so I used a new, sharp blade in my utility knife to trim the excess, and then sanded the edges smooth using 120-grit sandpaper. And this is what the finished edges looked like…

I put the edge banding on all of the edges shown in pink below, and then repeated that process on the other side of the island.

If you’ll remember, the bottom edge of my island actually has a layer of plywood and then a frame of 1x3s. Here’s a reminder of what that looks like from the previous post. This is the view of the bottom of the island with it flipped over on its side. See that 1×3 frame attached to the bottom?

I’m showing you that to mention that I didn’t put edge banding on the edges of those 1x3s. I only put the edge banding on the edges of the plywood. Not only does solid lumber not need edge banding, but I was also going to cover the edges of that lumber with trim. So again, the edge banding only went on the edges of the plywood.

Before I could add trim, I needed to add some depth around the bottom, so I used my table saw and ripped some 1×3’s into strips that are 3/4″ x 3/4″, and then I attached that all the way around the bottom to the edge of that 1×3 frame.

Here’s a better view of what that looked like. You can see the plywood with the edge banding on top, and then the 3/4″ strip below attached to the edge of that 1×3 frame around the bottom of the island. …

With that in place, I started trimming out the end of the island. I started by attached 1×2’s on the left and the right, but I extended those 3/4″ past the edge of each side. And then I attached the bottom horizontal piece of 1×2.

Before I could attach the top horizontal 1×2 to complete that frame, I attached the edge trim to the countertop (which I forgot to take a photo of) to see how far down that top frame piece needed to come. Since the edge trim of the countertop overhangs the edge of the island just a bit, that means that had I put that top horizontal side frame piece on right at the top of the plywood, the frame would have looked off just a bit because the edge trim on the countertop would have cut off the view of that piece. So I ended up dropping that top horizontal frame piece down about 1/2″ from the top of the side plywood piece so that the whole thing would be visible.

Here’s a view of the side frame pieces showing how it extends past the edge of the plywood 3/4″. The purpose of this, as well as that bottom horizontal piece attached at the bottom, is to create an inset for the drawer fronts.

Here’s what that looks like straight on…

Then I attached the same trim that I had used around the edge of the countertop to that bottom strip going around the bottom of the island.

And inside the 1×2 frame, I used base cap molding to finish off the end design.

So this is what the end of the island, the view from the doorway, looks like.

And you can see that bottom trim continues all the way around, nailed to the front of that bottom piece that I nailed on, with both pieces being flush with each other on the top.

Here’s a view from the other side. So hopefully, you can imagine that the drawer fronts will sit inside the frame created with those pieces extending on the sides and the bottom.

And here’s a closer view of the trim that I attached around the edges of the countertop.

One problem that I noticed almost right away is that I miscalculated the placement of the feet. Now that I’ve added all of that trim around the bottom, the feet are inset too far so that they’re almost not even visible. So I’ll need to flip the island over and move the feet out. It’ll look much better and more balanced once I do that.

But that’s the progress! I’m pretty excited about how it’s shaping up. Hopefully I can make a lot of headway on the drawers, drawer fronts, and doors this weekend, and have an almost-finished closet island by Monday!