Wednesday, August 6, 2014

A new pantry: how we doubled our cabinet space in one afternoon!

It's been three years since we moved into our first home. Before then, we had moved around a lot as Jesse attended seminary and we lived in a variety of apartments and housing situations. I love our "house-y" as I affectionately call it and I'm so grateful to be settled in a little town with lovely neighbors.

Our home was built in the mid-70s and hadn't been updated very much at all when we closed on it in July of 2011. We spent the next two months updating the upstairs level (which my husband is amazing and did most of the work himself) before we moved in October 1st of 2011.

Our kitchen got a big facelift during this time. Here are the before shots with the 70's cabinetry and green accents:

Note the 70's green tile and sink!

It's hard to tell, but the wall color was a very strange light green.

Here are the after shots with my hubby's amazing work: 
After shot!
 

We were able to keep costs to a minimum and within our budget by:

  1. doing the work ourselves 
  2. using Home Depot stock cabinetry
  3. buying our appliances used off of Craigslist
  4. installing a free dishwasher (see the amazing story of God's provision here
  5. putting in laminate cherry wood flooring
  6. plus, a coat of fresh paint really helped

Well, after 3 years of enjoying our beautiful kitchen, we came to realize that we could use a pantry, as we didn't have much space for cereal boxes, larger appliances, and other pantry items. A lot of items ended up looking cluttered on top of our refrigerator or on the counters. 

After some deliberation, we came up with a plan to add some more Home Depot wall cabinets, stacked up on top of each other, to the dead space behind our back door (we're thankful that Home Depot still carried our hickory cabinets). It took my husband one afternoon to install these, and I'm so pleased with our decision and with the final outcome. 

This addition has truly almost doubled our cabinet space and I love having a pantry area. Plus, it adds a pretty focal point along our back wall and ties the kitchen space in better.

Here's our new pantry:
The finished pantry!
The inside! It fits so much!
Did you find what doesn't belong? Courtesy of my 4 year old...
Mr. Penguin ended up in the shot. :)
  




3 comments:

  1. Wow, that looks great! Yea for pantries! Good job, Jesse!

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  2. What size cabinets did you buy and how did you attached them to the wall

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great job on the pantry! I really liked your kitchen before the makeover too! The plain fronts…so easy to clean!!

    ReplyDelete