Pantry Renovation/Creation — Always Never Done

Hello Friends! Ok so it’s been a little bit since I showed you something in my house. The store has been rockin’ good ole Lancaster PA so needless to say I have been a busy little lady. So this week I heading back to my house to reveal to you our matching pantry closets in the kitchen. My husband and I sort of fly by seat of our pants when it comes house renovations. If there is a wall in the way of our vision we just knock it out. If the tile in the bathroom isn’t the right color we rip it out and start from scratch. If we want a bigger island we rip it apart and make a new one. There is no thought process in the beginning stages. We just start demolishing the area. This is just how we work. So when we wanted an open concept on our first floor late 70’s home we just “x’d” off walls and went to town. Here is what it looked like before. One really oddly placed large cabinet.

My vision was to take that out and put in 2 matching cabinets on either side of the window that blended seamlessly in with our other kitchen cabinets to look like they have always been there. The problem was that we didn’t want to pay a lot for it because we are cheap skates! Then my husband had a brilliant idea. Yes I just said he had a great idea for everyone to read for eternity including him He said “why don’t we take the ridiculously large cabinet and just cut in half lengthwise”. GENIUS!! I couldn’t have thought of it better myself. So that’s what we did.

We cut it in half with a circular saw and put a new back on the one that didn’t already have one.

They were the perfect width and depth. We just had to add shelves.

For the cabinet doors we bought interior doors (the kind you use all over your house) and cut the bottoms off to fit the length we needed.

To attach the doors we used 5 sets of hinges.

And used really large modern pulls to accentuate the large doors.

We painted the both pantry’s the same color as our kitchen cabinets and stocked them full of pantry items. We debated about what to do with the top of the pantry. Put doors on it and close it up. Put some crossed wine racks in there or even shelves. Ultimately we couldn’t decide so we just left it open and painted the inside the same color as our walls.

Now I have endless staging options which I LOVE!!!!

I put my favorite yard sale salvaged desk in between the cabinets.

…and hung my DIY canvas drop cloth curtains all the way to the edges to give it more of a cohesive look.

What do you think? I am loving the openness of the area and the expanded pantry space. (and by the way, we keep regularly used items like cereal, canned goods and grains in the pantry cabinet closest to the kitchen.)

And not so regular items such as baking items and crock pots in the farther pantry.

It works out wonderfully and we both love how it looks! AND we only had to buy the cabinet doors and hardware for this project! Score!