Some days you wake up on a mission and never stop to question if what you're doing makes sense. This is how the Pantry Project started. In hind sight, I should have waited for the kids to start school but no, I started this project with a schedule already full of errands and other kid related stuff. I couldn't take the unfinished wood and oil stained shelves one day longer. Let's do this!
Just one section of the chaos.
I started with two coats of primer on the shelves.
While those dried I thought about paint colors for the walls. I jumped from plain white to dark colors and every scenario in between but ended up choosing the main color that's already all over our house. We had paint leftover, so I didn't need to buy any thus more money for the lighting budget, and it flows with the rest of the house.
I don't have pictures of every step and even forgot to take a picture before loading all the food back in. Here was my process though after priming the shelves.
-Cutting in the wall color (Holy cow there was a lot of that.)
-Rolling the wall color
-Filling in nail holes on shelf edging and random gouges in the wall
-Cutting in second coat
-Rolling second coat
-Cutting in shelves with Sherwin Williams enamel paint (sticky and thick! a little hard to work with!)
-Rolling the rest of shelves
-Cutting in second coat
-Rolling second coat
All those steps, plus drying time, plus stopping to make the kids meals, running them to where they needed to be, errands, etc., is exactly why such a small room took 5 days to finish.
Quick story about the shelf color: I wanted a white and needed to pick before leaving the house to run an errand, so I quickly looked through a couple of color decks. I picked Cloud White by Benjamin Moore and, like I always do, Googled it quickly to see images of it on a bigger scale. Who knew so much drama could be created over a paint color! I guess Cloud White has long been noted by designers as the perfect white but there's many out there that clearly don't agree. Funny that I picked the color out of two giant paint fan decks.
Anyways, here's a little shot of the almost finished product. I got rid of a ton of stuff and it feels great. I still need to buy a few more baskets and such, but that I will do without the kids in tow. Definitely worth the 5 days of chaos.
This post has gone on long enough - kudos to you if you're still reading. What's left to do besides baskets? I promised the kids a dry erase wall that I'm now reconsidering and the light fixture. I want something fun and had a chandelier in mind but now think it may be too big for the space. I may save this for the laundry room and opt for something different for the pantry.
There you go! A peek inside our pantry!