Finishing up the last of our custom laundry room cabinetry posts with instructions for how I did the shelf above the washer and dryer for the fully built in look that Melissa wanted.

I’ve already shared how to build your own custom laundry cabinet cart, HERE, and this project is probably even easier than that one, so it’s a great way to make a big change in a small space.

A shelf above the washer and dryer was an important part of the overall design to make the top loading washer /dryer combo look a lot more built in and modern. Melissa was also inspired by this laundry room from Chris Loves Julia, so we decided to do a wood “backsplash” above the shelf and then to carry it down behind the top of the washer and dryer as well.

So, there are three parts to this shelf build.

For building the shelf, we needed a few measurements.

1. How wide was the room? This one is always a little tricky. The measurement along the wall, corner to corner (1), is almost always going to be narrower than the measurement a foot away from the wall. This is because of how you have to build up the corner with sheetrock mud when you are finishing a wall. So make sure and take your measurements where the front of the shelf will be as well (2).
2. How far from the wall does the washer/dryer sit? For us, this one worked out to be the same distance from the wall as the upper cabinets (3).
3. How tall was the washer and dryer? Just measure up from the floor to find out the height. We’ll tinker with this number a little later.

Once we knew those things, we were ready to start the plan. All we needed was a nice piece plywood and a pine 1″ x 2″.  The plywood was for the shelf (A), back splash (more on this later), and apron (C). The pine 1″ x 2″ was for the trim on the front of the shelf (B).

I attached the shelf (A) to the trim (B) with pocket hole screws and glue. You could just glue them together, it should be strong enough. The pocket hole screws are mostly to make it so we do not have to clamp the pieces together until the glue dried.

Tip: When you are gluing solid wood (pin board) to plywood, if you can’t get the two pieces exactly level (I never can), make sure that the solid wood is “higher” than the plywood. If not and the plywood is higher, you will start to sand into the layers of the plywood to get the joint smooth, and that doesn’t look that nice (speaking from experience).

I used pocket hole screws to attach the apron (C) to the shelf (A) also. No glue here, but you could do it with dowels and glue if you wanted. The apron is just for looks to “close off” the space behind the washer and dryer.

When you are cutting the width of the shelf, you want to spend a little extra time to make sure it fits snug into the space. I usually end up cutting it square at the widest part, then sand/file/plane/trim down to get the perfect fit. This doesn’t apply to the back wall because we are using more of this 3/4″ thick plywood as the backsplash. So you can have up to a 3/4″ gap to the back wall and it will still be covered by the backsplash board on top of it.

To mount it to the wall, we attached some of the scrap 1″ x 2″ to the wall as a ledge to sit on.

Once the shelf was mounted, we were ready for the backsplash board. It was cut to the width of the room at the corner, and the height between the shelf and the upper cabinets. I put in a couple of brad nails into the studs to hold it in place, but it wasn’t really going anywhere.

We stained it using a wipe-on walnut stain from Home Depot that came in a squeeze tube and includes the finish coat, which is pretty matte. They actually don’t carry that product anymore, but any stain and finish you like would work. Just remember that because the shelf is pretty dark back in there, you might want one less coat on that “backsplash” board so it doesn’t appear to be a lot darker than the shelf itself and the board behind the washer and dryer.

You can see that up close, it isn’t PERFECTLY built in, but because we have to be able to access behind the appliances, this is as good as we can get it. Keep in mind, the cabinet/cart between the washer and dryer (and tucked under the backsplash/shelf) is removable, which allows us to pull out the washer and dryer to access the hookups.

It turned out even better than we thought it might when we started this project.

And now, almost 18 months after completing this room, (yes, it took us that long to get this tutorial written), Melissa still tells me that it’s one of her favorite rooms in the house.

Could your laundry room use some love? Would a shelf help? We’d love to know if you try this so leave a comment or connect with Melissa on Instagram. 

Check out our other laundry room projects, like building the custom laundry cart, (or find some you can just buy, here) as well as the reveal with all the other details.