Pantry Makeover
Project: Pantry Makeover
Purpose: Add additional shelving, replace all wire shelving with sturdy wood shelves to fix strength issues
Here’s the story: My wife and I experienced a “White Christmas” last year. Not in the sense that you think of though. For those of you that do not know her, my wife likes to entertain. She’s always planning events and usually cooks up a bunch of yummy food to serve to everyone that comes over. Last year we hosted an open-house Christmas and extended the invitation to family and friends. While preparing a dish, she had to use flour (can’t remember what she was making, some pastry or baked good I believe) so she grabbed it out of the pantry (top shelf), used it, then put it back. Shortly after, the top shelf decided to rip out of the wall, slinging the glass flour container onto the pantry floor, where it shattered and scattered shards of glass and flour across the pantry and kitchen floor, thus this project was born.
Fun fact/bonus addition to this story:
This happened right around the time I started acquiring tools for my workshop. One of the first tools I got was a shop vac. When the shelves decided to destroy our flour container, I had the bright idea of bringing up the shop vac to suck up all the flour, thinking that it would surely save us a bunch of cleanup time. So I did. After vacuuming up all the flour, I unplugged it from the wall, reeled up the power chord, and started bringing it back downstairs to the workshop. It was then that I realized every single grain of flour that I vacuumed up was blown out of the exhaust into the entire main floor of our house.
Lesson learned:
Take my advice here, ALWAYS check that your dust filter is secured BEFORE using your shop vac. When you replace the dust filter in your shop vac, make sure you secure the new filter. During transport from the workshop to the kitchen, the loose dust filter had fallen down into the bucket, so everything that was sucked in was immediately exhausted into the air. That added an emergency cleaning session of the entire main floor of the house, as our guests were due to arrive in 2 hours. That sucked. Don’t be like me, practice safe dust filter installation.
Alright. now back to the project!
I did not take many pictures throughout this process. This was completed a week or two after Christmas (2020), and I had not decided to do workshop or renovation logs at that time. So this post will be more of a show case than a commentary.
Progress Update 1: Pantry empty, old shelves ripped out.
Progress Update 2: Main shelf supports are installed.
Progress Update 3: All shelves have been cut and undersides painted white. Supports and wall also painted white. Shelves are made of 1/2” Red Oak plywood. All painting was done by my wife. She’s really talented when it comes to painting things.
Progress Update 4: All shelves are in, additional supports added. There is no way these babies will rip off. So long wire shelves!
Progress Update 5: Hooks for these basket things are in. Now time to fill up the pantry.
Progress Update 6: Pantry has been stocked and organized.
That concludes the pantry makeover. The next posts will be similar; other projects that I did not take nearly as many pictures of. I just want to upload what I DO have to serve as catch-up posts. More to come soon!
