New Downstairs Apt Laundry Room

So the stacked laundry unit from 1989 died in the downstairs apartment late October and I finally found the time, energy, and money (well, 6 months interest free financing from Lowe's) to do something about it during Christmas, mostly because the tenants would not be there to be disturbed. 

Before                                             After

Much like my pantry upstairs, the shelving was circa 1950 and had been painted until it structurally became part of the wall; albeit a dirty, slanted, beat up part.  I sealed myself into the pantry with plastic sheeting so that no dust would get into the apartment as I worked. I am not sure what I was thinking, trying to work with w/d still in there.  As you can see in the photo, there's about 12 inches of clearance after I took out the shelves get around/behind the stacked unit. The entire room was covered in lint, due to a dryer vent leak, which meant I had to wash all the walls down with steel wool, which was the only thing that would get it off, while leaning over and around said appliance.  All the paint was flaking and had to be scraped as well. Ceiling included. What a dumb-dumb.  After about 4 days of this, I eventually called a guy from Craigslist to come and haul it away for scrap so I could actually finish the room and not kill myself before the new appliances got there. After that, I had to spackle all the holes from the old shelving, prime with Kilz2 (low VOC bad-ass primer), and throw on a coat of Behr Linen White exactly 2 hours before the appliances arrived.  After they were set-up, I installed new adjustable shelving that can be easily taken down to access the back of the room. A week of my time later and the downstairs has a spanking new laundry/pantry space that is way more functional (and cleaner!) than before.