New Pantry!

Once Ella's room was finished being remodeled we started on our next project....the pantry! 

This is what my pantry used to look like. It was an under the stairs closet in my kitchen. The reason we needed to move it out of this closet was because that closet will become actual stairs down to our finished basement....eventually! 

This is the area in my kitchen where the pantry was being moved to. That cabinet was built by Michael's Dad years ago for his Mom. I have always love it! It was in Ella's nursery when we was a baby and years later we moved it down into the kitchen to use it as a hutch. It's been great and we've loved it. For now it's new home is in the shed and it will eventually be used again once the basement is complete. 

On February 19th, Michael and I made a trip to Lowe's to buy everything we needed for the project. It was delivered the next Wednesday, but Michael didn't start working on it until April since we needed to finish up Ella's room first. 

Michael designed and built the whole thing himself. The only pieces we purchase were the pull-out units for the pantry from Wayfair. 

Michael had to buy a bunch of new cabinet making tools for this project. It's quite intricate work trying to get all the measurements right so the pieces will fit together perfectly in the end. 

He had me and Owen come out and help him dry fit the pieces. He was planning on building the boxes in the garage and then moving them inside. That's when I reminded him of the fiasco of my laundry room basket cabinet and how difficult that was to move inside fully built. 

He brought two of the side pieces inside to see if they could be brought in at an angle and then set up. No go....they are only 2.5 inches from the ceiling so that just wasn't going to be enough space. 

Michael's plan was to build two identical boxes which would create 4 cabinet spaces on the bottom and 4 on the top. He built them amazingly, but getting them to fit together was quite difficult. You really need 6 pairs of hands. That's why Michael bought as many of these large clamps that he could at Lowe's. 

It still wasn't enough though so we had to do one cabinet at a time and wait for the glue to dry before clamping the next one. 

I thought they looked like giant lockers here so...what do you put in lockers at school. 

Why students of course! 

Ahhhh!!!!! 

The next step was to stain the outside portion of the boxes. 

He built the front trim portion of the boxes in the garage, stained them and then attached them to the cabinets. You see the clamps sticking out. He had to put IKEA plastic colorful cups on the ends so the kids wouldn't run into them as they were walking through the kitchen. 

The pantry basically became a storage unit for all of Michael's tools. That metal rack up in the left corner of the top cabinet was a can holder that I had purchased from Amazon. I wanted to make sure it was going to fit nicely.

We had ordered the pull-out units from Wayfair months before because we weren't sure if they would be backordered or not. Thankfully they were not. Also thankfully there wasn't anything wrong with them since they sat in our garage in boxes for months before we opened them. It would have been awful to discover missing hardware or damaged material and then have to wait for new units to be sent. 

These units are heavy duty! Michael had considered building something himself, but that just concerned me. These need to be able to take a bunch of weight! I'm glad we spent the money! 

Three pull-out units installed! I put together the 4 can holders I bought and realized I could fit one more...yay! 

By this point it was onto door construction. Again Michael only had so many clamps so we had to go in waves. Sure we could have bought more by this point, but at the same time we weren't in a huge hurry. 

Our existing kitchen cabinets are a shaker design so we went with that. They won't match exact since our kitchen cabinets have this square inlaid accent pieces, but that's okay. Michael might build all new kitchen cabinet doors sometime in the future so then they'll all match. 

On of our big purchases for this project was the big compound miter saw with the table. Michael had a miter saw, but it was the smallest one this one can cut bigger pieces of wood. It would have come in so handy when I was building the columns out front. I was having to cut the siding on one side, flip it over and cut it again to have the cut go all the way through. Annoying! 

My fifth can holder is in and Michael is ready to mount the doors. 

Don't they look pretty! That's 2 coats of stain and 2 coats of poly! 

Top cabinets doors mounted! 

Being silly for the camera! 

Almost done with the doors. The far right cabinet we did not buy a pull-out unit for because I wanted that to be a broom closet. It stores garbage/grocery bags, the broom & dust pan and my step stool. I do want to mount some baskets on the inside in order to put my bags of potatoes in there as well. Still on the look out for the right type of basket though. 

All the Doors mounted and top cabinets have knobs. 

We were unable to find the exact same knobs that are on the other kitchen cabinets, but these matched close enough. When and if Michael builds new cabinet doors for the old cabinets then we'll change out the other knobs. These new cabinets have the soft close hinges on them so we also will splurge and get the soft close hinges for the old cabinets as well at that same time.

Handles are on the pull-out doors. 

This was something we really went back and forth with. Finally we just viewed as many pictures as we could online since we couldn't find anything in the instructions on where to mount the handles for the pull-outs. We decided to make them look as if the doors open like normal cabinet doors. We did think about putting them right in the middle of the cabinet, but since the door on the far right is an actual door I didn't want that handle in the middle. So it would have looked very strange if they weren't the same. 

So far it doesn't seem to matter....you just pull and the cabinet pulls out! With all my 5 can holders up there Michael was able to put a shelf in on top of those. It's super skinny, but it's just perfect to hold the electric griddle and my Pampered Chef baking stones. 

Here's the pull-out unit in all this glory! So much space!!! It can hold up to 400lbs! 

One thing Michael had to go back and do was add that middle stained piece of vertical wood on the upper cabinets. He had to wait until he got the shelves in first. He also bought that iron on wood so could make the ends of the shelves themselves look like full grain wood.

Before we mounted the cabinets in place we had to tackle something that I think Michael was just putting off until the last minute because he wasn't looking forward to it. 

The heating vent! 

The new pantry unit was so large it was going to partially cover up the heating vent. We had thought about turning it into one of those heating vents that comes out underneath the cabinet....my mom has one in her kitchen that comes out right until the kitchen sink cabinet. But that was really going to be a pain cutting into the new cabinet and trying to get everything to fit perfectly together being basically blind since you can't see under there. 

So Michael decided to just rotate the heating vent 1/4 of the way to the right. That made it where we didn't have to deal with moving the vent around any of the floor joists. The best part is the basement area is right below so he was able to easily access it. We did have to go to the hardware store and get sheet metal that Michael basically had to custom form into the shape he needed, but it worked! 

The kids thought it was fun that they could see through the floor to the basement so I told them to run down to the basement and look up! 

Hello!!!! 

Michael down there trying to figure something out! 

The piece of flooring he had to cut away for the new vent location end up fitting perfectly in the area where the vent used to be. No worries that the grain of the wood doesn't go in the correct direction...it will be under the cabinet. 

Now we could push the unit all the way back and mount it to the wall. You can see how nicely the floor vent looks right next to the cabinet. 

Next up for me was getting everything all organize. This is my jam...I love this stuff! It took a bunch of reworking and trying to decided what type of grouping did I want to do with the food and what type of containers did I want to use. I definitely moved shelves around a lot to get it just right. This middle pull-out cabinet is mainly all the extras you buy at Costco. The ketchup, tuna, mac 'n cheese, BBQ sauce, olive oil, lemon juice, tomato soup, syrup and so on. On the bottom shelf is all the baking stuff...like boxes cake mixes and frosting.

Back in December, when I knew we were going to tackle this project I saw that Costco had all those OXO containers on sale. I decided this was it. I was done having random containers that didn't match anymore. I ended up buying the limit...I got 5 boxes that each had 9 containers in them. I almost used every single one. I think there are 2 containers not being used right now. 

This is the left pull-out cabinet and it's got all the dry goods. Pasta, rice, couscous, farro, oats, nuts, sunflower seeds, coconut flakes, bread crumbs, salt, flour, sugar....all that stuff. 

This is the right pull-out cabinet. This is the cabinet that the kids open the most. It's got all the snack and cereal. The top shelf is where I store all our pills and supplements. 

My broom closet looking all clean since all the tools have been moved. 

This is the upper right cabinet. This stores all the paper products....paper plates, Ziploc bags, tin foil and other bulk Costco stuff....almond milk, Ritz crackers, microwave popcorn, Top Ramen. 

This is the upper left cabinet. All the normal sized canned goods! 

At first I wasn't sure if I really liked this since I could see how much more storage I could get without the racks, but at the same time not all those canned goods stack easily and it would be drive me crazy with them falling over everywhere. Plus you have to rotate them when you buy more. This just makes sense. I've also gone shopping since this picture so it's fully stocked now. 

You can see Michael installed the final piece....the crown molding! 

It felt like it took forever from start to finish, but it actually took less than 2 months. I think when your kitchen is partially a work zone it tends to feel like forever though.

It turned out so pretty and so functional. I'm so proud of my hubby and all the skills God has given him. He's pretty awesome!  

I also did a bit of organizing in the old cabinets. I wish I had taken a before picture. I had one of those Lazy Susan things for all my spices, but it was so annoying. You would have to move spices around to get to the ones in the middle and then the little spice jars would fall over everywhere. I was done with that. So I ordered new spice pull-out drawers and all new jars so they would match. 

Each of these 4 drawers pull out so you can easily see all the spices. I love the cute glass jars too. I can clearly see when I need to buy more. I get my spices from the bulk section at Winco....so cheap!!! 

The jars came with the labels and there were so many of them. Some spices I hadn't even heard of before. 

If you remember the before picture of the area where my pantry is now you'll remember there was a pot rack above that grey hutch. Since we moved that I needed a new place for all my pots and pans. 

This cabinet to the left of the stove was the only place it would work well. Since Michael was going to have his hands full I decided to buy the pull-out drawers for this from Lowe's. It fit perfectly in this cabinet. I also figured while I was at it I was going to buy myself new pots and pans too. 

Of course there was stuff that was being stored this this cabinet so that had to get moved as well. 

This cabinet is on the right side of our frig. It used to be what we called the snack cabinet. Now since the snacks were all in the pantry we were able to use it to store all the stuff that needed to move from the new pot and pan cabinet. 

The only food items that didn't move around are the peanut butter and Nutella and all the big bags of chips from Costco. They stayed in there original spot which is right in the corner next to the old snack cabinet. 

This was our last indoor project since the weather was getting nicer out. I don't like working on the inside of the house once summer comes. I like doing outdoor project then. Which we've already finished one so stayed tuned for that.