Wednesday, March 26, 2014

A Pantry Face-Lift.

When we bought our house, over three years ago, we were super excited to have a full sized pantry. It is part of the addition the previous owners added, so it isn't exactly in the kitchen, but close enough. It also was never totally finished.
As embarrassing as it is to share these photos, this is basically how it has looked for the past 3.5 years.



Words that come to mind, anyone? I have a few: dirty, dingy, disorganized, gross, yuck, grab-my-cereal-and-get-outta-there!

This is one of those rooms where we have talked about painting, at least the trim, about a million times but have never done it, because, well, its a pantry. A couple of days ago I surprised, even myself, and just dove right in.

Because I started this project with a zero dollar budget, I looked to our garage and rustled up two old paint cans and decided to mix my own color and pray that I had enough.

I ended up with this dark and moody green. I emptied out both of those paint colors, so this was as much as I was going to get, and I knew it wouldn't cover all the walls, and honestly I didn't want the entire wall to be a solid cover. I wanted to get weird. Here is where it ended up....




My father-in-law took this photo and I think it is gorgeous in here


Words that come to mind now are...."I love my pantry, and I think I will just plop myself down right in this handy chair and eat my huge bowl of cereal here."

Steve doesn't really understand why I totally styled and decorated a, ahem, pantry. But my feelings on it are: why not? Why does a pantry have to be boring just because nobody but us sees it? Our home is for us, and I see this room all day long. And plus, I am way more likely to keep a room clean and organized if I don't want to hide said room's beauty under clutter and grime.

This project took about a day to complete, and a grand total of $2.29. The only thing I bought was some acrylic black paint to darken up the green. Like I said, I reused old paint, and actually already had the curtain that I originally bought for our bedroom from Urban Outfitters, but it didn't work quite right. It works perfectly right in this space.

We are a little low on food storage right now, so as we fill in that supply the yellow picture at the top of the shelf may have to find a new home, but for now it makes me happy when I see it up there.

Full disclosure: If you love Emily Henderson as much as I do, you are probably thinking my pantry looks strangely familiar to a room she did, and you are totally right. I was heavily inspired by this room of hers. Can you tell?
IMG_1915

So there you have, the story of how our pantry became pretty much my favorite room in our house. Who knew?

3 comments:

  1. You and your impulse paint jobs!! You are nuts. It looks great though. I so bad wanted to paint our laundry room a fun color (for the same reasons you named for making a cute pantry), but I got burnt out by the kitchen and family room and will probably never paint again :P So I am jealous :)

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  2. I love it. I used to get free paint from the dump and mix my own colors as well. I painted my entire kitchen and living room that that…for FREE! And you do see your pantry all day, every day. It helps to make it looks nice. Great job!

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  3. I love seeing all of your projects! I am totally an impulse painter too.

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