It was a long cold winter.
At our house, besides the cold we faced an auto accident, illness and
surgery. But after months of doing very
little beyond working at our paying jobs, eating, sleeping and repeat, last Sunday afternoon we, quite unexpectedly, started a
project.
Super Dave had shoulder surgery in January and after 6 weeks
in a sling and several weeks of PT, he was feeling the need to do something
productive. So after talking about it
for at least a year, last weekend he decided it was a good time to start the renovation of the
pantry. And although it wasn’t the best
timing because our schedule was pretty full for the next week, I wasn’t about
to turn down the opportunity to make the pantry more functional.
Our kitchen has a lot of lower cabinets, but our “pantry” is
actually a little closet with 4 shelves 24” deep and about 31” wide plus a half shelf. This means you have to empty the stuff on the
front of the shelves to get to the stuff in the back unless the stuff in front is small. Re-organizing it never remedies
the problem for long. We also keep
breakfast items, chips, crackers, paper goods, etc. in other cabinets in the
kitchen. We’ve got stuff spread all over
– just keep opening cabinets, you’ll find food eventually. The only good thing about the pantry is an
awesome spice rack on the inside of the door.
My plan is to (have my husband) cut out the middle of the shelves so they only run
along the back and two sides. This will leave a tiny bit of space in the middle
to step squeeze into the pantry to access items. This will be especially handy
for the stuff on high shelves that require a step stool. Also, we will add a battery powered motion
sensing LED light because the shelves go up higher than the door and it is dark
up there. And who doesn’t love good lighting? It’s
just so much easier to see stuff when a space is well lit. This is especially true when you are getting
older every day like the two of us.
If you are wondering if I am exaggerating about how bad the pantry is let me help convince you with a photo. Of course I didn't think to take a picture until we removed two shelves and a large amount of food.
You can see I've tried to improve it by using baskets that hang under shelves and risers to stack stuff. In the last 4 days I've emptied the pantry twice. After the second time, I told SuperDave that was it until the work is done and I can put it back in all it's organized splendor. I have a jewelry party on Sunday, but if the kitchen is a mess, it's just a mess. I can always hang a sign that says, "Pantry Project in Progress"
Here's a shot of the top half-shelf. It's way up there! And difficult to reach over the other shelves standing outside the pantry on a step stool. I'm not sure what that is on the ceiling but it will be gone when I'm finished. You can't see up there without a camera flash.
Well, that's it for today. You'll be impressed with the quality of the work my sweetie is doing on the shelving. He's going above and beyond what is required for basic functionality. I swear you would think someone was going to post pictures of his work on the Internet or something.
Much love and laughter,
Laura
1 comment:
Looks like I came back to my blogger dashboard at exactly the right time. I love to see before and afters of stuff like this. I don't know why, but it's one of my favorite things to stalk.
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