A Pantry Makeover

Hello again, friends!  Some of you may have noticed that it has been quiet around here.  Well, I have a reason for that.  I’ve been busy with my husband working on our pantry!  Full disclosure, we are pretty far along in the makeover.  I hesitated to share it for the One Room Challenge, which I’m joining in today, but since we still have some design decisions to make and execute, I figured I would since I have really enjoyed participating in the past.

Find out more about this challenge by clicking the photo below.

Check out our previous makeovers here!

Our pantry was pretty nice to begin with, and was one of the reasons that we decided to build this particular house plan when we were choosing one.  It’s a walk-in pantry, and our builder finished it out with painted wood shelves that filled the space nicely.  You’re probably wondering why in the world I would want to put any time or money into a perfectly fine space then, right?  Well, if you know me, you know that once I get an idea in my head, it’s hard for me to get it out.  I’ve seen some pretty wonderful pantries over the years, many of them providing function and style, which in my opinion is the key to the perfect space.  Over the years I’ve found that the current pantry layout just didn’t cut it for me.  We always had things overflowing off the shelves, and I found that we were placing things on the excess floor space, which cut down on the effectiveness of the “walk-in” feature of the pantry.  Not to mention that we’ve been keeping our cleaning supplies, tools and random junk in here as well.  It was just too overwhelming each time we opened the door, and I was personally tired of it.  I knew it needed to change, and I’ve been daydreaming about that change for a couple of years now.

I finally decided enough was enough recently, and sat down to come up with my own plan to make this the pantry of my dreams.  Well…of my dreams in my house with the size limitations and budget I set for myself that is. Once I was done I discussed it with my husband and he agreed to it all.  Yay!  It didn’t take long for us to get started on it.  We emptied out the pantry, moving its contents onto our kitchen and dining floor.  Let me tell y’all, there’s nothing like being surrounded by all of your stuff to make you realize that you have way too much stuff.  I think it truly is the only way to edit out the things that you simply don’t need anymore.  I mean, I’ve deep cleaned our pantry on a yearly basis since we moved in, but I still found items in there that were expired.  I even found something that expired in 2014!  I’ll share more about that process in an upcoming post, but now let me share a couple of inspiration photos that’ll help you visualize some of the key features of the design.

Though I’d love to transplant this entire design by Hayburn & Co. into my home, it just doesn’t fit the budget, so I drew inspiration from it instead.  Especially the vertical paneling behind the shelving!

And this beautiful island in this kitchen by Plain English is calling my name, so I pulled inspiration from the open end, and designed a similar base for my countertop.

 

Here are a couple of “fancy” drawings, haha, that I came up with in Paint to give y’all a visual of my plans for the pantry.  These aren’t perfectly to scale, but hopefully you’ll be able to visualize it after seeing my inspiration photos.

The first rendering is of the wall that you first see as you walk into the pantry.

This next rendering is of the the adjacent wall which will carry over the open shelving, countertops and lower shelving.  It’s going to be so perfect y’all!  I can’t wait for it to be finished!

Since this post is getting a bit wordy, (I know I’m a bit long winded sometimes.  Especially when I’m excited about something!).  I’ll go into more detail for y’all in next weeks post.  I hope you’ll check back in with us then!  I’ll also be sharing our progress.  I made sure to take pictures as we went along so that I could share them here with y’all.  Oh, and then I’ll need your help!  There are a few things that I just can’t make up my mind about and I’d love your input.

Until then, friends!

-Iris