mud & laundry room shelf - critique

[vavet]

My family (me wife, 1 son - just turned 4 y/o) moved into a new house we had built about 18 months ago. The laundry room/mud room is the pass-through from the garage to the living room. It's small (9x6), but we've done a lot to make it functional and it works pretty well as a place to keep coats, gloves, shoes, etc.

But....I want to make it better. We bought a cheap, pressed wood bench, overhead shelf, and a "free-standing tower shelf" to get it functional quickly after we moved in. The tower shelf actually has a 2x4 spacer behind it screwed into the wall studs and the shelf itself it screw into that spacer. Your natural tendency when trying to put on shoes while standing (because the bench is full of stuff) is to grab the shelf to keep your balance. We had one too many close calls with that and I knew we had to anchor it to the wall.
Anyway...that freestanding shelf is my target. That space is about 12" wide by 36" deep (the depth of the stacking washer & dryer).

I want to optimize the space we have there. Open shelves on the sides of the shelf would be blocked by the bench at the bottom. If the shelves were open to the front, that would make them 10.5" wide and nearly 3' deep. We would lose things in there. So I designed a shelf with two 12" deep drawers at the bottom that pull out to the front. The remaining vertical space on the front is consumed by 10" to 14" tall open shelves, but only 12" deep. Above the two drawer bays and behind the open front shelving are open shelves accessed from the side, so they are about 10.5" deep - shallow enough not to lose things. The side of the shelf above the drawer bays and in front of the open shelves is solid, which provides a place to install hooks so we can hang our hats there.
With the current design, I will lose some accessibility of the side-facing top shelf because of the other hanging shelf. I think I'm OK with this.

I drew all this up in SketchUp (my first Sketchup project), thinking I would build it out of MDF, but I think I might like to make something a little nicer. I am not an experienced woodworker or carpenter. What would be a decent wood for me to use? I'm thinking about poplar. It seems to be readily available and not terribly expensive. I could also use higher end pine. Any other ideas?
I think it would get painted. Not sure if it would all be white or perhaps a combination of white and some other color.

I'm open to any ideas - be it functional or aesthetic design elements, colors, wood selection, jointery ideas (will probably use kreg joints unless I get better suggestions).

Note that I have not yet drawn the lower two bays with drawers, but that's the plan and I'm open to ideas and tips on how to build those as well.

Thanks

One last thing - the pics of the current shelf are showing up sideways when I preview my post. I can't figure out how to get them to load right-side up. f you have tips on that to make it easier on everyone else viewing this post, please share.

 

[tarbellb]

A few tips:

Build a DIY straight edge guide for a circular saw

Buy a Kreg or pocket hole jig

Build it out of ACX 3/4" ply or veneered ply not MDF, OSB, Particle board, etc...

Float the wood off the floor to keep it from getting moisture damage, ie use some metal feet.
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And instead of working around all the things you have currently, maybe sell it on CL and build one big bench+shelving unit?

Good luck.

ps you can export SketchUp files by pulling down the "file" tab > export > 2D file.

 

[airrj]

I 2nd the Kreg pocket jig. I don't work with wood much either, but my wife has one of the Kreg tools and the strength of the joints are great and they look good as well.

 

[rlitman]

A few tips:

Build a DIY straight edge guide for a circular saw

Buy a Kreg or pocket hole jig
...

I use an old bed frame rail (not the typical angle steel type, but one bent into a stronger profile) as a circular saw guide. I also have some old wooden 6' straight edges.

I see a lot of people are fans of pocket holes. Myself, I prefer biscuits.

Here's a tip for stuff around front loading washers. Remember that they move, so you need a gap around them for when they're spinning. To prevent stuff from falling into that gap, I use a piece of garage door trim with the rubber seal. I wall hung a shelf on top of my washing machine, and the seal in my case faces down, so nothing can roll under the shelf and fall behind the machine.