Adding Shaker Pegs and A Counter to Our Laundry Room

Adding a counter to our laundry room was one of the first projects I wanted to tackle in our new house. I also knew I wanted to add some Shaker pegs as well. Making a space both function better and be more visually appealing is one of my favorite type of projects to undertake. Like most families with kids, (especially ones that play sports) our laundry room is one of the hardest working spaces in our home. I know every family is different, but we discovered years ago the system that worked best for us was having a counter over our washer and dryer and then a basket for each family member on that. We pull things right out of the dryer and fold them on the counter and then put the item in the basket of who it belongs to and things like towels we just stack and then go put away. (In these photos there are three baskets because that looked a little bit prettier for the photos, but we have four that go there normally).

Eventually I would like to redo the floors in here and add some cabinet space to the top of the cabinets so they go all the way to the ceiling but for now I was just trying to do a quick makeover to make this space more functional for us by adding a counter to the laundry room and some Shaker pegs and then painting it to go with the mudroom. You can see the step-by-step process of this makeover in here in our Instagram highlights.

As I mentioned in yesterdays’ mudroom post, my only regret in this space is the color. I had my heart set on doing a green in here and the mudroom for a few different reasons but partially because I wanted the laundry room to look different from our last few laundry rooms which have been a dark blue color (you can see them here, here and here). I had painted several sample swatches on the wall and was torn between two of them and asked my girls their opinion and neither of them liked any of the green options and they both said their favorite was the one blue option. So rather spur of the moment I switched gears and bought the blue color and as soon as I started painting I regretted it (and regretted asking them – haha! I don’t know what I was thinking – they both have a very specific reason for disliking green, so I should have known they wouldn’t like the green options!) By the time I started painting that evening I immediately knew I didn’t want this color (even though I do LOVE blue and think this particular shade is beautiful, it just wasn’t what I had in mind for this space), but at that point the paint store was closed so I just kept on painting. I do think somewhere down the road I will repaint it but for now at least I like the space much more than when we moved in!

Here is the before: