Here are the "after" pictures:
I put up this wood on the wall (it's not really paneling, so I don't know what to call it exactly), and painted it white. I also painted the rest of the room a pale yellow color - it is the same color as the half-bathroom downstairs that Lois and I painted a few months ago.
When we had the wood floors put in the kitchen, we purposely didn't do wood in the laundry room. This room gets a lot of foot traffic, and during the winter, this is where the kids dump their boots, so the floor can get pretty grungy. So, we found a vinyl floor that we could lay ourselves. It looks like a tile, but it comes in 3'x1' strips that stick to each other. It took a little thought, but it was simple enough for me to lay by myself one day while Brad was at work and the kids were at school. I already like that it is dark enough to hide all the dirt that gets tracked in. The floor in here before was white vinyl (dumb, I know), so this is much better.
I did two horizontal strips of wood so we could put up a double row of hooks. This is where the kids hang coats, backpacks, etc, and now we have enough room for all their stuff.
On the whole, I think it is much better. This was the only room in the house that had the original builders' flat paint, and it was looking pretty drab. Since this is the way we usually enter the house, it is nice to come in and not be assaulted by the ugliest room in the house.
Someday, when I have my dream house, I will insist that the laundry room be separate from the mud room. It doesn't take much for this little room to get really cluttered, especially on laundry days. And before, when we didn't have enough hooks for all the stuff, the floor would be covered by fallen coats, etc, which we would have to wade through when we came in from the garage. For now, though, I think this little project will make living in this house a bit nicer.
