The Unexpected Pantry

This past June I visited a friend at her new home in Utah. She gave me a tour of her house and I was amazed at the layout and design as it was nestled into a mountainside.

She saved her favorite room for the end of the tour: the walk-in pantry. She had asked the builder to give her about 8 feet of the garage space (the back section) and to put up another wall. These updates made the pantry big enough to fit a twin-sized bed!

The kitchen pantry was approximately 15 feet long by 8 feet wide and it had 10 foot ceilings. This additional space was a great surprise as the house already had about 3,200 liveable square feet!

Now when my friend makes trips to Costco and BJ’s, she never runs into an issue since there is plenty of space for bulk items. The location is also ideal as the main door is right off the kitchen and it is also accessible from the garage.

After visiting my friend and seeing her new space, I felt inspired. I returned home reflecting on how I could optimize my own kitchen pantry and storage space.

Our At-Home Pantry

Our colonial, 1960’s style home in Pennsylvania is 55 years old. We have a reach-in pantry that is 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep with a height of 8 feet. We also have a wall of built-in shelves in the laundry room that span across a 10 foot wall and are 10 inches deep.

While raising a family of six kids, this pantry space was difficult to work with since it was too small to store bulk items effectively.

We often ended up keeping these extra items in the basement on large shelving units or in random cabinets in the garage. This was an inefficient system and it made it hard to determine what we owned and what we needed to buy at the grocery store.

Our house also happened to be “the get-together house”, so we often hosted big parties with friends and family during the holidays. During these times, we would often struggle with where to put platters and extra food since there wasn’t adequate space.

Before visiting my friend in Utah, I never really thought there was a way to remodel our pantry that could better suit our needs. After seeing how she had hers set up, I realized I could take space away from the top of our garage and open up the room more. I had the perfect setup for this and all it involved was cutting out a section of the “shelf wall” and opening it up to the garage.

Being married to Bryan, the owner and designer for My Custom Closet, is a bonus because he was able to design a beautiful, functional pantry to meet our needs. This is one of those “we should have done this a long time ago” projects! We have lived in our home for almost 20 years and it took us this long to see that we could do this home improvement without spending an extraordinary amount of money.

This project made a huge difference in terms of available storage and prep space. All it took was a few steps from our amazing 82 year old contractor:

1. First, he did the wall demolition and opened up the space
2. Second, he constructed the new wall
3. Third, he constructed the new floor

After opening up the pantry, we needed some electrical work and an HVAC duct added to the space. Bryan worked with Tim, our installer, to put in the custom pantry. They trimmed it out with crown molding and we stayed with a classic, clean white ¾ inch melamine board. The Chrome baskets are a personal favorite along with the drawers and the butcher block counter space. I did the final work of caulking, spackling, and painting. Talk about teamwork!

Facing the holidays and a long winter ahead of us, I am very grateful to have this new space. I am hoping it helps us save time and money because we will now be able to see our stock of pantry items all in one room and have a quick way of determining what we need.

Interested in remodeling your pantry in a similar fashion? Contact My Custom Closet to get a free consultation today!