Pantry Makeover – Downsizing Part 4

A pantry makeover can seem like an overwhelming job to anyone. Especially, since the pantry is the storage place for all your food and many small appliances. In my case, my pantry is located under the stairs, which makes for a lot of space, but a designing nightmare!

I searched a lot of ideas on Pinterest and Google but just couldn’t find anything that would fit or match our particular space. The previous owner didn’t even use this space as a pantry but as an underutilized storage closet. Good grief! I can not even imagine!

I Was a Little “Spoiled” at Our Last House

Our previous house had a pantry door off the kitchen, with a nice sized pantry. In the interest of providing multiple ideas for a pantry makeover, I am going to show you some pictures before I painted and organized my previous pantry. I’ll admit this is a little embarrassing!

 

 

 

Chaos!

What a mess! Of course, I did try to organize it and keep it neat, but a poorly designed pantry is bound to become a mess quickly! And, to top it off, it was suffering a little bit from an identity crisis. “Am I a pantry, a pan cabinet or a cookie sheet storage unit?”

We finally took everything out of the pantry.  Once it was emptied, I painted the walls and shelves a nice light color to brighten it up. Along with that, we changed the light bulb to an LED Daylight bulb – and wow, what a difference it made!

Click here to see the After Pictures of our Previous Pantry

 

Getting Back on Track

Although it was one of the last spaces we designed in the kitchen, the pantry makeover in our new home has been a major success! I think I have even more space than I had in my last pantry!

Just so you can have an idea of what I was working with, here is a before picture of the under stairs pantry.

 

Talk about dark, dingy and extremely underutilized space! I could not even begin to imagine what the finished product would look like. Although, I knew it would be way more useful and bright than this!

Get it Ready for the Painters

We hired painters to remove all of the popcorn ceilings, paint the walls, ceilings, and closets. So we needed to gut the pantry before they got to work. Thus, here is what it looked like gutted.

 

The most difficult part of the pantry makeover was that the ceiling sloped because it was located under the stairs. This meant that we could not just fill it with cabinets. We had to keep that in mind while trying to find a shelving solution that would work.

It’s Good to Keep Some Items When Moving

I kept a lot of items from my previous home, just in case they could be repurposed into this one. The two-tiered metal shelf I had was perfect for the back of the pantry to hold oversized pots and small appliances. Otherwise, that space would really be unusable.

How do We Maximize this Space?

Having shelves on both sides of the pantry was a necessity. While building custom shelves was an option, we really wanted something with a cleaner look. (In other words, not homemade!)

 

And, since we had used the picture ledges in our previous house for displaying pictures, we thought they might work for storing canned goods. Thus, this was an idea we wanted to pursue.

Be Strategic – Plan 1st!

One side of the pantry was deeper than the other, so we had to take that into consideration. The left side was 3 1/2 inches to the inner door jamb, and the right side was 5 inches wide.

However, the doorknob was on the right side, which meant that when you walked into the pantry you would need more clearance on the right side.

Sorry to Confuse You!

I am probably making this sound a lot more confusing than it is, but the long and the short of it is that the left side could hold wider shelves than the right side.

With that said, we are extremely lucky that we live about five minutes away from IKEA, so, we headed there to get some ideas.

IKEA Has Great Ideas!

We discovered these really nice shelves that had the option of having a ridged finished side or flat finished side exposed. The ridged side dressed up the shelves quite a bit, so we decided to go with the 7 7/8-inch wide shelf.

 

They also have a 12-inch wide shelf, however, the shelf was too wide to allow walking into the pantry comfortably. This helped us to solve the storage for the left side.

As far as the right side, we determined that the picture ledges would work perfectly for storing canned goods.

Start at the Bottom and Work Your Way Up

Starting about 16-inches above the floor, we hung each of the shelves using a stud finder, drywall anchors, a level, and additional brackets for extra support.

 

Typically, you want to mount shelving directly into a stud which will ensure a solid hold. However, with the way the brackets were designed and located, this was not always possible.

 

Thus, after we installed the shelves, we used our stud finder to locate the wood studs to attach some additional brackets to make sure the shelf was sturdy and secure.

Do not skip this part – you do not want these coming out of the wall and crashing on the floor, or worse, on you!

 

I had some leftover bins that fit perfectly under the left side of the shelves. This works nicely for storing paper towels, cleaning supplies, pitchers, and anything else that will fit.

 

IKEA had these great shoe bins that I bought to use on the right side. Luckily, they just fit – I mounted them so the bottom was resting on the top of the baseboard. Again, I used the drywall anchors and my level to mount these securely and ensure they were level.

 

 

I really love these shoe bins for storing accessories and supplies for my FoodSaver and InstaPot, extra boxes of tissues, and baggies. Also, I use one to store bags of chips, which works great! The under shelf baskets work great for storing bread, tortillas, and other items.

 

My favorite thing of all though is the door mounted spice cabinet. I wasn’t really sure I wanted it – I was worried the door would be heavy and that it would be awkward.

But, I absolutely love it! It makes it so easy to store all of my spices and the door isn’t really any heavier. We bought this painted one from Wayfair for about $250. Worth every penny!

 

Of course, there are some spices that I wasn’t able to put in the door. Thank goodness I saved my small lazy Susan; it’s perfect for storing them on the shelf.

But the Floor – That Grout is Disgusting!

My pantry makeover was looking complete until I looked at the floor. The grout was a dark color and made the floor look dirty!

So, I used this great product that not only painted the grout but seals it as well, so it can stay nice and pretty forever! Well, hopefully!