Last week I shared with you how our girl room closet was under construction, this week I’m sharing the process of building a kitchen pantry! Recently I shared our kitchen gallery wall, part of why I shared it was because I was forced to take pictures of it and blog about it before I began deconstructing it! Yes… it’s true. In order to make use of this space next to the fridge I had to remove half of the gallery wall.
Here was our pantry. It’s a nice tall cabinet, but it’s deep and narrow, which meant I was constantly losing things in the back and pulling EVERYTHING out of the cabinets to find things.
At first we planned on having a cabinet maker build a pantry cabinet to match our existing kitchen, but when we had one come out he quoted us $3,000 for a pantry in this space! We knew that wasn’t going to happen so when we ordered the closet door for the girl room we also ordered one for a pantry.
Before Easter I demoed the trim, rearranged the gallery wall, and took down the crown molding. Then I waited and waited for Matt to have a day to build the new pantry, which just wasn’t happening. Finally on a Saturday while he worked I decided to tackle it myself!
First I built a rectangular frame for the side and anchored it to the floor, wall, ceiling, and adjoining cabinet. Then I built a frame for the front wall with a door cutout. It was actually really fulfilling cutting everything perfectly and nailing each piece in place!
The hardest part of the project was hauling the frame inside alone! Then I anchored it to the ceiling, wall, cabinet, and floor. Next I hung the five panel door. The door for the girl closet was identical and for our first time hanging a door it took us a LONG time together. For this door I hung it by shimming it open and driving screws through the hinges to the frame and I had it hung alone in about 45 minutes!
Then I began hanging drywall. I decided not to mud or tape the inside because the seams are not visible at all when you open the cabinet. I actually had to get a piece of drywall from Menards half way through the job with the minivan and both boys… we looked like a circus but we got it home!
Then I made shelf brackets by cutting the end pieces off of the shelves and anchoring them to the side walls. I also reinforced each shelf with a center bracket.
Around midnight Matt got home from work and was completely shocked by what I had accomplished. At this point I was just starting to paint the door! The next morning I installed the knob and was ready to move everything over.
I wish I could say I had a beautiful pantry with everything in glass jars and pretty labels, but that is not a reality around here. Thankfully it has a door to cover up the chaos! We’ve got about 5 different small drywall jobs throughout the house so we are not going to have a drywaller come and finish them all until he can hit them all at once. For now I’ll happily live with the unfinished drywall and the HUGE addition to our pantry space!
Now our old pantry is set up for spacious small appliance storage and with a pull-out garbage can that I installed. It is SO nice to have gained SO much space!
In the end here was our cost breakdown:
-$14 wood
-$16 drywall
-$130 door
-$20 door knob
-$54 shelving
-$10 brackets
Grand Total= $245
We’ll still have the drywall finishing and trim to add to the bill, but compared the the $3,000 that the cabinet guy quoted us I am VERY pleased with the outcome!
*Edit 4/6/15*- Here’s how it the pantry turned out once we finished the entire kitchen! Doesn’t it look like it was always meant to be there?
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This looks great. I am thinking about doing this in my kitchen reno also, to go next to my refrigerator instead of cabinetry. What are the dimensions of the closet? Thanks.