Pantry Make-Over
Saturday, Hubby had to work. He only has to work a Saturday once every year or two. After work, he went to a race with a friend so he was gone for about 17 hours total!
While the cat is away, the mice will play.
As I was cleaning up breakfast, I decided to clean out my pantry.
This house is really, really old and it needs lots of love. We are fixing it up, little by little. We have decided that the kitchen will be the last room we remodel. Not only will it be the most expensive room we fix but, our driveway pulls up to the back door, which comes into the kitchen. No one EVER uses our front door. Ever. We don’t want to spend a ton of money fixing up the kitchen only to have contractors tromping through it, fixing other parts of the house.
But, I figured fixing up the pantry would be an easy and inexpensive way to make my kitchen feel better – to me, anyway!
My pantry is ridiculously small (but, after 5+ years without one, I’m so glad to have it) and dark. Oh, and not all of the shelves are level.
It has become quite the disorganized mess!
Messy shelves.
Junk piled up in the floor.
I started by having Smarty move everything out of the pantry.
Smarty said we have too much stuff.
Then, I took out the shelves, washed down the walls, and vacuumed the floor.
Yes, my kitchen has carpet. Trust me, it wasn't my doing. It makes me crazy!
I was content to just clean it but I remembered the Valspar paint sample I had gotten in the mail months ago. I originally requested it for the kitchen but, when it came, I decided it was too “bright” and I didn’t even attempt it. It’s been sitting in the basement ever since. I decided that it might be a good way to brighten the look of the pantry.
Hubby really likes neutral colors. If he had been here, I would never have attempted to paint the inside of my pantry. He likely would’ve forbidden me to. But, he was at work ;o)
I didn’t want to just paint it, though. I have been seeing all these awesome stencil paint jobs all over the web. After seeing Shelley’s pantry at House of Smith’s, I was inspired to stencil it.
Source
I settled on this stencil from Jones Design Company.
Now, I may or may not be an impatient girl who does things on a whim and just makes them work instead of planning ahead so I may or may not have grabbed the back off of a notebook, traced my stencil, taped over it with packing tape to protect the cardboard, and gone to town. That may or may not have been the longest sentence ever.
So I set to work stenciling the pantry.
At this point, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep going but Smarty encouraged me not to stop.
I painted and painted and painted. Blech!
Every now and again, I would take a short break and work on the shelves. Oh, they were so nasty! They were like that when we moved in and I kept meaning to fix them. I’m embarrassed to show you just how nasty they were. But that’s not going to stop me!
Shelves Before
I tried scrubbing them but they honestly wouldn’t come clean. So I decided to paint them.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any white paint in the basement and I didn’t want to spend any money on this little project so I opted for Hubby’s can of white spray primer. Shhh! Don’t tell.
Shelves After
I finally got the stencil over the entire back wall. I decided to paint the other walls solid green.
Pay no attention to the crummy construction of my pantry, please.
Then I put the freshly painted…er primered…shelves in. Some of my shelves were actually two slats pushed together….go figure! So, I had the option to make one shelf more shallow by using one slat and then making another shelf deeper by adding the extra slat.
I went through all the stuff from the pantry as I put things back in. I wanted it to be better organized. I put all of my spices and seasonings on the shallow shelf. Canned foods are grouped on the shelf below it. Baking supplies are on the shelf above the spices.
I “shopped the house” for storage ideas.
I used some of my mason jars for things that were in bags or other containers.
I put my flour in this huge jar. I plan to buy more for my other kinds of flour and oats.
I used this little planter for my drink mixes.
I put my foil, plastic wrap, and the like on the top shelf. The kids kept stepping on them when they were in the floor and they smooshed the boxes.
I really cleaned out the junk from the bottom of the pantry. The file box had to stay because that’s where we organize our bills and other important papers. It works for us where it is. Unfortunately, I had started piling anything remotely important on top of the file box and it had gotten out of hand. Hopefully I’ll be able to control myself now 
File box cleaned off and plastic utensils organized in a basket.
All-in-all, I’m happy with it. Now that everything is back on the shelves, you can’t really see the stencil work on the wall though. I was nervous about Hubby seeing it when he got home but, he liked it! He said he likes that I did the stencil because “it’s things like that that give it a special touch.” I think he was just kissing my butt because he went to the race on our anniversary weekend but, whatever.
My pantry does not look anywhere near as gorgeous as Shelley’s but, it works for me right now. One day, when we finally get around to remodeling the kitchen, I hope to make the pantry just a smidge bigger with level shelves (what, you didn’t notice how uneven they are?) and I’ll paint the walls a different color and maybe even do another stencil.
Until then, my free pantry make-over makes me happy
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I totally need to get on this project myself… In fact, I was just over at The Container Store this past weekend staring at all of their great storage jars and dreaming of someday working on my pantry. Now, if I can just get Emme’s room finished…. Can’t wait to see you guys!