DIY Laundry Room Countertop

I recently painted our laundry room door a pretty shade of aqua Behr Bali Blue to be exact, and mentioned we were in the process of making our little laundry room more efficient. Our laundry room is just off our dining room and kitchen, our laundry room isn't original to our house it used to be located in the garage. Oh how I loathed doing our laundry in the garage, it felt like a dark cave. I haven't really talked much about our laundry room / mudroom on the blog so here our some more deets on this hardworking space. During the rebuilding phase of our house we decided to add an indoor laundry / mudroom addition to our home, best decision ever. I'm beyond thrilled to have a dedicated area inside our home to for laundry that's bright airy and a nice size for our petite home. 

The back wall in our small space is dedicated to our laundry area, we opted on front loading washing machine and dyer to maximize space. I really wanted to carry hardwood floors into this space, but I needed to be practical since our washing and dryer and mudroom are in the this space we went with faux wood look tile. Another good decision! The tiles are long planks and laid the same direction as our wood floors to help create a cohesive look with our flooring. We opted to go with dark drown grout. I love how easy the tile is to keep clean and how nice it looks! Here's a reminder of our home laundry room space looked like prior to moving back into our home.

We bought our washing machine and dryer from Sears during the Memorial Day holiday sale, at first we planned on buying and entry level set, but thanks to the savings we were able to buy an upgraded Kenmore with a few more bells and whistles plus we saved some extra cash thanks to local rebates offered though SMUD and PG&E. We've had our washer and dyer for about 7 months and love them! 

Ever since our appliances were delivered, we've been wanting to add a counter top above them, for folding clothes etc. We decided to DIY a wood counter top for laundry room. I love how much warmth wood brings into space and it seemed like the perfect easy affordable solution for a counter top. We went to Home Depot and purchased Red Oak Plywood. The plywood was perfectly smooth and had pretty grains that we thought would look pretty once stained. 

We had Home Depot cut the Red Oak plywood based on the measurements for the counter top. Using 1x2 boards we made a ledge along the back wall and sides to hold the counter up, so the counter top doesn't rest on top of the washer & dryer. In the picture blow you can see the wood ledge. 

The sides of the Red Oak plywood are unfinished, we used a 1/2 piece of trim to make the the counter appear thicker. We countersunk a the nails and covered the nail holes with wood filler. I fell in love with our new counter before the stain even went on, I love how much space it provided. 

I wanted to cut down on all the staining steps, so I decided to try Minwax Polyshades in the color Mission Oak with a satin finish. I applied three coats of staining to achieve the dark rich stain I was wanting. The stain goes on really runny, so I just took mine time applying each coat. I love the the rich color counter top turned out. 

It's exciting to see the laundry room / mudroom start to take shape. So far adding a little storage bench (that I plan on recovering) and painting the inside of the door a fun color along with our DIY wood counter top have really given our space so much more purpose. 

Next on our list for this space is to add cabinet storage, shelving and possibly a back splash. I'm still tossing around ideas: subway tile, colorful wall paper or stencil? Once the bench has been recovered in more 'me fabric' and I add more storage for 'mudroom essentials.' So happy with decided to tackle our laundry room counter on a whim.

*Update: We chose not to nail our new counter top in place, so its floating above the washer and dryer, we figured if we ever needed to make any repairs it would make it easier by being able to remove the counter top * 

What do you think of our DIY Wood Counter top? Have you started any laundry room updates to your home recently?