Pantry Makeover

Happy Sunday folks! The hubby and I are finally going to celebrate our Anniversary tonight, only 2 1/2 weeks late.

When it comes to storage, I say the more the better!  So, we have this brand new kitchen, right?  While I love all the cabinets and the layout, I wanted more storage space.  When we toured the house for the first time we noticed a closet just off the kitchen, near the basement stairs and next to the side door.  The closet is a really good size.  I’m not sure what is was used for previously, but I knew that I would not be using it to hang coats!  I decided I wanted to turn it into a small pantry for extra groceries as well as a place to store our cat food and some other items, like an extra crock pot.

Pardon the really crappy photo.  

Before - Yuck

During - after stripping

The floor in the closet had not been redone like the rest of the house.  The entire pantry smelled so bad and the floor felt like it was covered in grease and grim. The first thing I needed to do was strip the floors.  For this I used, Crown Tuff Strip.  Be sure to follow the instructions on the container and make sure to have plenty of ventilation!  Since the space is not very big, it didn't take long.  And it looked a whole lot better.  

After

After stripping the floor I cleaned it all with mineral spirits and sanded it smooth.  I made sure to clean it up really good before applying the polyurethane. There was a small part of me that thought I would re-stain the floors but after seeing the floors stripped and sanded, I just couldn't cover that beauty up!  I decided to go with a matte poly for this floor and it looks so great!  

Once the floor was finished we focused on added shelving. I ended up getting some moulding for super cheap and we just primed and painted them white. My dad come over and added the moulding and shelves.

This area of the house is very dark as it does not have a light except for in the pantry. We wanted to paint it something bright and light. I chose Neon Mint and it's exactly what this little space needed.

We now have that extra storage that we really wanted. Because of the heights of the ceiling, we could still build more shelving down the road if we needed to. My dream is to find an old screen door to swap out with the current door.

So there you have my new pantry. It was a great little project to experiment with. Tell me what you think!

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