Inexpensive $10 Pantry Makeover

Our new house was driving me crazy because the builders did not make a useful enough pantry. Here’s how I made a much better pantry for just $10!

Inexpensive $10 Pantry Makeover

We moved into this house in May 2011. This was my pantry and for 6 months it’s been driving me crazy! I just had to organize my pantry!

As you can see it was a mess. We couldn’t find anything and everyone just kept digging through stuff trying to find what they needed and then made a bigger mess.

I had been going crazy trying to figure out how to organize my kitchen. This is a brand new house but it was designed by men who have never used a kitchen. After spending 6 months trying to figure out some way to organize my kitchen and get all my stuff in there instead of sitting in the garage, mom came up with the idea for me to put my pantry in the coat closet by the garage door instead of where it was “supposed” to be.

I have a hall tree and another closet by the front door that we use for coats instead. (We still can’t park in the garage… yet. 🙂 (Note from Mike: Oh, the horror, the horror!)

So I started to paint. Here is what it looked like before. There was one shelf about 2/3 of the way up that I had already taken down. Of course I had “help” painting. I used about $5 worth of paint. The original peach I chose was too dark, almost neon, so I mixed it half and half with white I already had and then it was perfect.

Then I got busy making shelves. Since we are in a new construction area, we’ve been doing a lot of dumpster diving for 2×4’s, plywood, sod, shelving, windows and all kinds of stuff. (Yes, I asked permission.) So I took some of the plywood and 1×2’s that we found and cut them up to make shelves. Then I painted them.

I painted the 1×2’s the same peach as the walls and painted the shelves white.

Then I started putting in the shelves. Since I’m sick, the whole process took me about a week to do. 🙂

Here is what it looked like after I got the shelves in and loaded.

This is also when Jack decided to make the old pantry his new “house’.

 

You might notice that the shelves with the canned goods are sagging so I had to take some of them out, get thicker pieces of board, cut and paint and re-install them so they wouldn’t collapse. If you are making shelves for canned goods MAKE SURE THEY ARE 3/4 INCH at least!

Then I decided to decorate. I had some readers ask, “Why would you decorate a pantry?” Well, I look at it many times a day every day so I thought, “Why not make it look good”!

So I went for it and I LOVE it!! Now I wish I could pull up a chair and just sit and admire my pantry. 🙂

First I put in all my crates. I have collected and hauled these crates around for 17 years and 14 moves but never have found a really good use them. Now I love what I did with them.

Then I added some metal seed packet signs on the side with an old trowel from my great grandmother.

Then I made a door hanging. Mom found the base at the thrift store for me and gave it to me for Christmas one year. I just love it but never could find a good place to hang it. Now I can see it every day and just love it!!

It took me about an hour to get it done and what a mess! Of course, Jack kept helping!

Now that it’s done, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!!!

Then I added eyelet lace. I have always loved the look of the shelves from the 20’s where they put the paper lace on the edges of the shelves. You can’t really find it anywhere now so I just used some eyelet. I had 2 yards already so I did have to buy 4 yards ($5). Then I just hot glued it to the edge to cover up the ugly plywood. Even painted, the plywood looked bad. Doesn’t the lace just make it look like a farmhouse pantry!

Then because I am a “lover of all gnomes”, I just had to put in some my almost 50 gnomes. I hot glued them to the shelves so they wouldn’t fall down.

I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my new pantry! After working 2 weeks total to get it done, I’m ready to sit back and admire it! Tawra