Our last apartment was really nice, high walls/ceilings but short on space. Right before a New Years Eve get-together we decided to put up a pegboard wall for all of our pots and pans. It looked great. Then we moved to an apartment that is even shorter on space and up-cycled our original pegboards to fit our needs in the new apartment. Pegboards are a great way to save space and utilize blank wall space. They are great for organization.

Step 1: Tools and Supplies

pegboard sheets - lowes/home depot

drywall anchors

spacers

pegboard hooks - cheaper and a better deal at harbor freight

level, ruler, marking tools

extra set of hands

drill and screw drivers

Step 2: Pegboard

You can get the pegboard at Lowes. They have a full sheet that can be cut down to the sizes you want, or you can get the sturdier brown pegboard which is listed as a half-sheet but isn't actually half the size of the white pegboard and is more expensive. We got the full sheet and had them cut it into fours that we thought were even, but now realize are not.

After we moved my wife decided she wanted more color in the new apartment and painted the pegboards with craft paint before we put them back up.

Step 3: Planning

It helps to pre-plan where you are going to put your drywall anchors and screws and mark them off. Use a level and ruler to help you make even markings all the way around. Each pegboard sheet needs at least 4 anchors/screws.

Step 4: DIY Spacers

Spacers at the hardware store are expensive and the packs never have enough. So we cut up a bunch of
wine corks and put mounting squares on them to secure them to the wall. This made the spacer issue easier to deal with. Each cork was about 1/2" which should be more than enough to make sure the hooks don't come into contact with your wall.

Step 5: Install Pegboard

Following manufacturer instructions for your drywall anchors, insert them into the wall and start hanging your pegboard sheets one at a time. This is when extra hands help. We realized as we were putting the bottom sheet on that the pegboards were too long for our new apartment and ended up having to overlap them. It doesn't look great, but it's functional and that is the important thing.

Make sure you are placing the cork spacers in between the wall and the pegboard as you go. We used about 8 spacers per pegboard just to be safe.

Step 6: Hooks

Lowes and Home Depot have these pegboard hook kits for around $8-10. They don't come with enough of the hooks you need. More recently we've seen smaller kits with specific types of hooks in them for cheaper, but honestly the cheapest place to get pegboard hooks is at Harbor Freight. They have a 50 piece kit for $6.99 and their smaller 1 type hook kits are at least $.25 cheaper than Lowes/Home Depot.

Step 7: Install Hooks

Once the pegboard sheets were installed, I set about organizing the hooks and our pots and pans. Generally, I try to keep the heavier pans on the bottom, the larger stock pots or other pans we don't use often towards the top, and anything we use on a weekly basis in the middle. My wife is short so it makes it easier for her to reach things.

The hooks never stay in the same place, everything gets moved around pretty often, but so far we haven't had any major issues and nothing has come crashing down.

Extra hooks we put off to the side until we need them.

Step 8: Add Pots and Pans

Next time we will paint the shapes of our pots/pans on the pegboard so everything is even more organized and there's no trying to decide what goes where.