Pantry Update

It's been pretty crazy around here with a flurry of showing on the current house, and finally, after 211 days, AN OFFER! It took less than a day to work out the details, and hopefully we'll get through the inspection and have our closing date on December 12. 

So now, in addition to packing up our house in 3.5 weeks, we are also trying to find a place to live, and make the last slew of decisions for the new house, including what to do with my lovely 9'10" x 9' pantry, which currently looks like this: 

Niels demonstrates the width of the pantry.  We want the first floor to be wheelchair accessible, so the door is 36" and there is room for a chair to maneuver around inside. 

From the kitchen looking in toward the right. The appliance shelf will go along the long wall, and 12" bookcases will go along the back wall for my bulk foods.

From the kitchen looking in toward the left. We'll have a full size upright freezer, a 5' tall shelf with open drawers, and hopefully another 7' bookcase.

From the back wall of the pantry, looking across the kitchen into the dining room.

From the back wall, looking into the great room.

We've been coming to appreciate the wisdom of prioritizing structural upgrades over cosmetic, but months of looking at model homes, design magazines and home decor websites can sure test your resolve. Our trim carpenter's estimate for tricking out my pantry was more than half the cost of our custom Amish made kitchen cabinets, so we went to plan B: looking for an appliance counter to go with the solid wood bookcases we want to  re-purpose.

6 and 7 foot unfinished wood bookshelves, currently used to sort  paperwork.

These shelves are 12" deep, which is perfect for the green storage containers I use for my bulk foods. I'm so excited to finally be able to expand my selection! 

Here's a look at my current pantry.

Love my label maker!

Last week I was at Value City furniture checking out the clearance section when I found this bookcase:

HomeCourt bookcase

What caught my eye was the baskets on the bottom. It wouldn't work for the appliance shelf, but I thought it would be good for storing potatoes and onions with the open ventilation. And the tall cubbies on top would be great for storing trays. I could put baskets in the other cubbies. The espresso wood is the same stain as our kitchen cabinets.

Around this time, my toddler son got restless and started walking away. As I caught up with him, I saw these two pieces that were part of the same collection:

HomeCourt Chesser

HomeCourt Dresser and Mirror (the mirror will go in our son's room)

I thought I could push those two pieces together to get the 8' counter I wanted. As a bonus, there's a nice mix of shelves and drawers. That's when I learned that these pieces were actually part of the LeBron James HomeCourt youth bedroom furniture collection. The funny part is that we're in Ohio, which is not keen on King James these days. No wonder it was all on clearance! Good for us, we got it for a steal (about 1/3 of the list price). I put a hold on it until I could show Niels, and he agreed that we wouldn't get anything nearly as nice for the price. 

I started playing around with the layout, and came up with this:

From the bottom, moving clockwise: 36" door, HomeCourt bookcase,  full size freezer,  7' bookcase, 6'  bookcase, 7' bookcase, 6' bookcase, chesser, dresser.

I've been eyeing the butcher block topped Varde collection at Ikea, and was thinking that would be our solution, but since our nearest Ikea is 2 hours away and delivery charges are highway robbery, the HomeCourt collection will be cheaper. However, I'm still wanting a butcher block top to make the two dressers look like one unit, something like this:

I think the lighter top will make the two sets look better together. I don't think I want to stain the bookshelves because it might make the pantry too dark. 

We have 9' ceilings on the first floor, including the pantry. But I'm only 5'4", so upper cabinets are wasted on me. However, I may get a couple of these light shelves to give a little more storage space and keep things light.

Our kitchen colors are green, purple and gray, with white counters and espresso cabinets, so now I need to decide what color to paint the pantry. I'm leaning toward this green: Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay (6206):

Sherwin Williams Oyster Bay (6206) with the room visualizer.

The best part of this downgrade is that I'll still have a full solid wood pantry with oodles of shelves, my appliance counter and even a few drawers for less than $1,000. Can't beat that!

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