Pantry Update

The pantry renovation is coming along, although somewhat slowly in some of our friends' opinions. It's just how we function on projects I guess. But I like that we take our time as plans for the pantry have changed considerably. 

First, let's take a look at where the pantry renovation sits today. Cameron has completed all the demo, which involved a lot of drywall removal. And before he headed off to go deer hunting, he completed all the framing. 

This is the view from the family room. The barn door will be here. 

We've even had an electrician come out to get the info he needed to provide us with a quote for the electrical work that is needed in the pantry and around the house. We've received that quote and now have the electrician scheduled to complete the work on Monday, October 26. 

That door leads into the master bedroom and shows how small the master closet will now be. But it will still be larger than the closet in the hall that I am currently occupying. 

Cameron has even gotten some of the new drywall up on the outside of the pantry. But I don't have picture of that yet.  

This shows nicely how much we extended the wall in the dining room. And those that have seen this in person agree that we really just extended out into an area of wasted space so the lost space isn't really noticeable. 

Minus some nail and screw removal that still needs to be done from the original drywall removal, we're pretty much at a standstill on the pantry until the electrician portion is complete. Cameron does plan to get the taping and mudding of the new drywall done before then. 

Now for how plans have changed...

Originally, we were just going to have a giant walk-in pantry using Ikea's ALGOT system to create shelves everywhere. The only design element was going to be the barn door to hide the chaos. Now, the only thing that is the same with that design is the barn door. We even have the barn door hardware and have a door picked out - we just need to order it, and then stain it!

We have now decided to build more of a butler's pantry with closed cabinets on the lower portion of two of the walls and have nicer, open shelving on the upper half of those two walls. And the walls won't be drywall. They'll be horizontal wood planks. 

Some of these design changes developed after watching our latest favorite HGTV show, Fixer Upper. That's definitely where the horizontal wood planks idea came from - we have fallen in love with shiplap. Shiplap is basically horizontal wood boards that overlap to provide a protective seal. Chip & Joanna Gaines, the hosts of Fixer Upper, often find it behind drywall when they renovate old homes built in the late 1800s around Waco, Texas. If it is in good shape, they usually keep it too, like they did in their own Farmhouse. You can see it in this gallery on HGTV.com. We do plan to paint our boards white. 

We're still going the Ikea route for the cabinets too - we're just going to use their SEKTION kitchen base cabinets instead. The main part of the cabinet will be the wood effect brown and the fronts will be the Laxarby brown-black. I love the Ikea Kitchen planner tool, too, as I was able to use the dimensions of the pantry and create a 3D view of the cabinet layout. And with the power of Paint, I can show you that plan: 

This is what it would look like as you walk in. To the right of the cabinet in the center will be our wine fridge. And ignore the oven image, we have some large, bulky things to store in here and it just happens the cheaper option from Ikea is to use a tall cabinet built for an oven and microwave combo, then just their high cabinets with full doors. I'm also showing you in a lighter cabinet color as the color we like doesn't show nicely. 

This is a better view of the the left wall. 

The right wall really won't have anything on it for now, except wine bottle storage. 

The cabinets will be covered by Ikea's butchblock, KARLBY, in Oak. The upper open shelving will be based off of this design that I saw in a Houzz.com article and is apparently a kitchen used on the set of The Intern starring Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro. It's also a movie on my "Want to See" list, but I'll likely wait til its on Netflix like most of my list. 

I think I have found the same shelving brackets at Homedepot.com and then we'll get 2-inch thick pine boards for the shelf part. I'll stain them, and the barn door, to match the counter-tops as best I can. 

So while this project is taking some time, I know it will be all worth it in the end. I'll admit though, I can hardly wait, especially as the pile waiting to go into the new pantry grows!