Pantry Updates & Storage Organization

Look at this pantry space!! This space is SO open now. I was super excited to wake up to this on Saturday morning. The Builder spent his evenings this past week taping, mudding, sanding, and texturing the walls of our new pantry and the wall behind it where the closet door once was. Our kitchen feels so much bigger now that this is opened up. I'm sure we'll lose some of that open feel when we build in the lower cabinet, but this really lets you see the space that we're going to have to work with.

Speaking of space, we're going to have open shelving above the cabinet. I have to say, I've never really been a fan of open shelving. I don't like things to look cluttered and I can't imagine my boys family stacking things neatly. So I've been looking at ways to help the pantry stay better organized and I came across this from Amazon:

I'm not sure if one is enough or I'll need to get two, but I really like the way all the cans are easy to pull out. Our previous pantry, we stacked the cans on top of one another because there wasn't enough space, but many times, the cans fall over. Apparently, I was the only one capable of stacking them back neatly and I'd start finding cans on shelves where they didn't belong or knocked down on the floor. 

The other thing I've started stocking up on at Target are these baskets:

And then also at Amazon, I'm going to pick up these baskets for our onions and potatoes:

These will probably be on the lowest shelf so they'll be easy to grab. We used to keep the bags of onions and potatoes on the floor in the pantry. I can't tell you how many times we'd 'loose' them under packages of chips for school or behind the cookie sheets that were also stored there, then we'd smell find an unpleasant mess. I hate wasting food like that. 

I also like the look of these:

I'm not thrilled about the color, but I like the functionality of these. Again, I want my open shelving to be VERY organized. Things that fall off the shelf easily will frustrate me. I like the idea of these holding all my bottles of vinegar (yes, I probably have close to a half a dozen different kinds of vinegar that I cook with...maybe more). And maybe a second one to hold all my Asian seasonings. 

Target has some baskets I've been picking up for a while now:

These come in a variety of sizes.  This small one I use to hold my seasoning packets. It's been great for keeping them in one easy to find spot on the shelf. I just bought a few medium sized baskets this weekend to hold things like boxes of things like cereal, pancake mix, cornstarch, and those odds and ends that no one can ever seem to find in the pantry. 

I also may pick up one more of these from Walmart:

These are fabulous for dropping a bag of sugar or flour in to store. The spout makes it easy to use while the plastic container keeps out bugs. I have several types of flour (self-rising, bread flour, cake flour, and all-purpose) so these really come in handy. They also do a fairly good job of keeping out moisture in our humid summers as well. 

And we have paint! We still need to touch up with another coat (this is still wet) but I am so excited! We headed out to Home Depot Saturday morning to get the materials for the cabinet and The Builder has been busy. Stay tuned!

Pantry Demolition Day

This spring has been very cold and wet. The cold is unusual. We typically break out shorts at the end of February and stay in them until Thanksgiving. But not this year! Of course, this is the spring we decided to get some outside stuff done before the summer heat kicks in. We managed to get the new fence installed, the ceiling up on our sunroom, and some patio chairs around our fire pit, but the rain has prevented much else from getting done. We didn't want to waste time though, so we started a new project.  

This was our coat closet. It was filled with jackets that are too small (literally, my 18 yr old son's jacket from when he was 10 was still in the closet!!), some odds and ends that we had stashed when we moved in that we didn't know what to do with, and the dog and cat food. So except for the pet food, it was completely wasted space. On the other side of the wall to the right is the pantry. I have yet to understand why home builders who build family-sized homes (we have a 4 bedroom, 2000 sq ft home) make kitchens that impractical! Our overall size is actually good in this kitchen, but the pantry was stupid small. We took the door off two years ago because things would spill out at us because it was over packed. In my defense, of my four kids, three are teenage boys.  They eat A LOT!!! And I love to cook. I like having a well stocked pantry. So I asked The Builder how he felt about closing off the wall to the coat closet and opening up the wall into the pantry to expand it out. He was completely on board!

You can see here that the drywall is going in where the closet door used to be. The two spaces are now open side by side, although the studs still need to come out. The left is the original pantry. I think if it hadn't been framed for a door, it might have felt more usable, even though there really wasn't any more space. But trying to get into the pantry through the narrow door was never good. The coat closet added about 36 inches to the overall width. The total width when we're done will be 84". The top will have open shelving but the bottom we're building a custom cabinet. It will have a butcher block top and three divided sections. 

One of them will be used to store the pet food that was in the coat closet.  We will use these recycling bins from Ikea:

One of them will be used to store the pet food that was in the coat closet.  We will use these recycling bins from Ikea. We bought one so we could properly size the shelves to put them on. This is the shorter one, but we actually bought the taller ones that will hold more food.  The 'door' that opens on the front of the recycling bin is perfect to be able to scoop out pet food. 

We'll also use some of the cabinet space to store my ever-growing collection of small kitchen appliances. Because you see, apparently I have a problem. I recently got a panini press to add to my collection.  Earlier this year I bought an Instantpot (LOVE this) and an air fryer (love this even MORE). We have a tabletop movie popcorn maker that my son got for Christmas, in addition to normal appliances, like a toaster. I also have an assortment of mixing bowls and other kitchen gadgets that aren't currently stored very well. My kitchen cabinets are awkward with a weird half shelf in them that doesn't let me store larger items. So this extra tall pantry cabinet is going to be a great addition to our kitchen.

You can see here we're filling in the wall with drywall. My goal is to put hooks on the wall so that we can still hang things like backpacks and purses here. I'd like to put in a storage bench as well. The Builder comes home with muddy boots from job sites and it might be nice to have a place to store them out of site (he currently drops them at the door). If not a bench, then perhaps a small table where can put a mail sorter and a key ring hook. My reality is that after next year, I'll only have one remaining child at home. So I want to keep this space practical

On the bright side of this demo, this is the first project that we've had at this house where when we opened a wall, there was NO water damage. I mean, there shouldn't be in a pantry and a coat closet. But with this house, we never actually know. We suspect most of the water damage is from Hurricane Ike. We know they put on a new roof after that. But this time, no water damage!

This demo did end up being more complicated than we expected. At one point in time, there was a security system in this house. The panel was still hanging in the coat closet but has been disconnected for some time. There was a power supply to the box that we thought we'd move to the outside wall since there was already a junction box in the pantry. Well surprise, that is a dedicated power line that is COMPLETELY SEPARATE from the rest of the power in the entire house. After we finally got it turned off at the box, The Builder went up to the attic to move the power line. Only to discover we'd have to remove the carpet in the closet of the boys' room to access the junction box in the ceiling to get to it! That is not a project we want to take on at this point so we're going to cap it at the wall and leave that as a project for another year day. 

This has all been over the last couple of weeks, but we've made a lot of progress this past week.  More to come!

Backyard Progress

For the last month, we've been working on the backyard. We've made some good progress, but not as much as I would have liked!  We completed a trashcan corral (I will spare you the photo's, it's a fenced off area inside our fenced in backyard and it contains...trash cans...) which I am thrilled about because we no longer have to store it in the garage. 

We also completed the last of the new fence.  This was the longest section, which spans the entire length of our house. Huge Kudos to my sixteen-year-old because worked with The Builder over three weekends digging new fence holes, pouring concrete, laying out the fence line, and getting it put in. And he did all the hard manual work, like digging fence holes and mixing and pouring the concrete. Since The Builder is only six months out from his last shoulder surgery, these are not things I we felt he should be doing.                                                                                                                                                     

Here we are on a non-rainy day (we've had a lot of rain this spring, not what we really want after Harvey...).  The fence really looks nice. We've added some Adirondack chairs that we purchased at Lowes. I really like the bright pop of blue back here.  We had a bonfire a night or two before this photo was taken and we quickly realized seating was a priority. We're running out of time for building the chairs on my project list, and that's OK. My family really likes these so this is a win-win!

Of course, the rest of the yard still needs work:

The view from the other side of the yard.  We were going to do a chevron brick walkway, but it will take more bricks that what we have and would more time consuming than we can do right now. So when the rain eventually stops, we're going to pull them out, till the area from behind the chairs back to the fend, and put in grass and a simple brick pathway. 

The other project we've been working on is using the weathered boards from the old fence to put a ceiling in the sunroom.

We're almost out of salvageable boards from the weathered sections of the fence, so the last little bit that's left in the upper left corner (not in the photograph) is going to be done with replacement board we used to patch the fence. Not the end of the world, but I'm hoping a vinegar bath will help them gray up like the rest of the boards.

So we still need to put about a dozen or so boards on the ceiling, refresh the paint in the sunroom, till up the backyard for the grass, and finish the brick pathway back to the dog run (this area is a swampy mess when it rains and a brick pathway would be a huge improvement!). Oh. And our other project. The pantry that we gutted when it started raining a few weekends ago. Stay tuned for that post!