The start of my new pantry

One of the main reasons for all of this remodeling / renovation is so we I can have a bigger pantry.  We turned our old laundry room into a pantry.  I couldn't wait to start this project.  Our current pantry was SOOOOO small so when I tried to buy things on sale they were overflowing and the walk in closet in the office quickly became a second pantry.

The old laundry room

Jason decided to build the pantry himself instead of just buying wire racks and doing it - I DISLIKE wire racks!!

My first job was to paint the pantry.  You would think this would be pretty easy, well it wasn't.  You see 12 years ago when we built the house I decided to paint the laundry room with a sandpaper paint.  I loved it, however, my dad told me that he would NOT help me repaint that when it came time to do so. Well the time came to repaint so it was all me.

The walls had to be sanded so talk about a mess.  Don't you like the towel around my neck - that was my mask.  I looked like an old person with my grey hair from all of the dust.

That dust was everywhere!!  Pictures don't really show it, but I was one dirty girl.

Once sanded, I started painting the trim.  Since we have gone with a grey scheme in the house, I chose a light grey for the pantry and it's very neutral.

It's hard to see in this picture, but I ended up repainting all of the "white" trim in the pantry ie baseboards, door trim etc.  After 12 years, the florescent light turned it all a shade of yellow, so it was in desperate need of a crisp white coat of paint, but not before the white trim was sanded because oil based paint was originally used.  Yuck more sanding.

We I read so many blogs and looked at so many pantry pictures before we finally came up with how we wanted our final product to look.  I was so excited to go get all of the wood - which meant A LOT of painting for me one day.

3 sides of 16 pieces of 2x2's had to be painted.  I put one coat on them and realized that I should have sanded for a better look.  I gave in and sanded away and put on another coat of the Silver Lake paint.  

 The pantry all painted and cleaned out ready for my shelves.  My sweet husband measuring for the shelves.  I only had one plan change in the middle - but it wasn't a big deal - thank goodness.

While he measured, I started putting my baskets together.  This was a purchase from my last girls' trip to Orlando with a stop by IKEA.  I bought 2 of these and they are going to be perfect for snacks, bread, miscellaneous stuff, etc.

Remember all of those 2x2's I painted, here's the first one up.  They will be used as the brace for the shelves.

All of the braces up by the end of the Saturday.

After much research and debate, we decided to use melamine for the shelves.  I didn't want to have to prime and paint plywood - even though it may be sturdier.  The melamine would withstand cans and such going on them without scratching.  At the end of Saturday, my hubby wanted to at least put one shelf in to see what it was going to look like.

I was so excited to see the progress of the pantry.  All in a day's work.