A Cabinet Tragedy & Painting the Wall After Much Procrastination

A few weeks ago... okay, like a month and a half ago, I was hanging out in the kitchen, minding my own business, making lunch or something.  Husband was in the laundry room putting his white coat into the dryer from the washing machine (for some reason he always washes his own white coat, I think he thinks I'll mess it up somehow).  When all of a sudden there was a loud crashing sound followed by somewhat panicked yelling from hubby.  So I go running in there to find him holding up the cabinets above his head, which are only partially attached to the wall & hanging down.  These cabinets:

Yes, notice the stuff on top of them... what's up there?  Oh you know, some HAMMERS, my DRILL my SANDER & a hand vacuum, along with some other things, like a box that we use as our "junk drawer" since we don't have an actual one in the kitchen.  Inside the cabinets were laundry stuffs, towels that we use to wipe off Mojo when our back yard becomes a mud pit, the iron, more tools, and some other random things that have no other space in the house.  So yea, walking in to see that all over my husband's poor head was not very fun.

I frantically emptied all of the stuff out of them as he held it up, then we had to figure out what to do.  It was falling in such a way that there was a back board attached to the wall, then the cupboards were attached to that board.  The board was curving away from the wall on the ends, but still securely attached in the middle.  But the cupboards were still straight, so there was a gap between the middle of the board which was still secured to the wall, and the cabinets, which were being pulled out from the ends.

So we couldn't just screw the sides in more securely, and we couldn't just rip the thing down either.  So I got the screwdriver in there & started unscrewing them from the wall, keeping my leg under them to catch them when they fell, as my husband was there holding it too, but I wasn't sure he realized how heavy they were.  Once they were off the wall & squished my leg, we got them down & moved them into the garage.  The wall looked like this:

I cried.  Because I knew what was about to happen...

It stayed like this for over a month.  All of our things that were in them before were scattered around the laundry room and/or around the "guest" room/storage room.  *Sigh*  I hate clutter.

Finally this past weekend I got to painting it.  I really wanted to paint our laundry room a lighter brighter color & paint the ceiling white because this color is really pretty gross & the sloped ceiling being in the same color makes it feel really cave-like.  But, painting behind those washer & drier does not sound like a fun time AT ALL.  Especially when I'm angry about the cabinets in the first place.  So I found the ugly paint color in our garage & slapped it up there this weekend.

Now the goal is to buy some open shelving to stick up there to make it functional again & get all the stuff up off the floor from all over the house.

Sometimes with a rental, you want to make it look really nice.  Sometimes though, you need to settle for good enough.  If this was my own place, I'd have no problem buying paint & getting dirty with this whole thing & finding shelves or cabinets I really liked to put up there & make it look really good.  But, we're renting.  We aren't going to stay here forever or even for a long time really anymore.  Sometimes, I really want things to look good.  But sometimes, it's just a laundry room, and it's just a rental, and some kind of storage on the wall is better than none... as long as it's good enough, I'll be happy.