A Functional & Pretty Pantry-One of My Favorite Things

Thanks to Lydia at The Perfect Pantry for highlighting various pantries. My pantry will appear on her blog site March 15th. http://www.theperfectpantry.com/

A year before we built our home, I worked with simple architectural design computer software to figure out the floor plan I wanted. In the initial stages of development, I started with the pantry. In my previous home, I had one closet pantry which was adequate for just storing food stuff. I ended up turning a bar area that went unused into an additional pantry to handle everything from extra sets of dishes and serving pieces, to appliances used only occasionally, to cookbooks. I also needed such a place in the new home. I had torn pictures from magazines and saved ideas in a book that I could show the builder. When it came down to the final design, I talked with a gifted trim carpenter and his son who took my ideas and turned them into reality. The result is something I am proud to show to visitors and that functions like a dream. Here is the result.

This is the door that leads from my kitchen into the pantry.

Inside the pantry, are lots of counter surfaces for preparing food and storing various items. All the shelving is open so items can be easily seen and readily available. The bottom shelves are on pull out slides to make access easier.

There is a magnetic chalkboard mounted on the wall beside the door. I bought the board at a discount store and showed it to the trim carpenter before he began building the pantry cabinets. The way it is incorporated was his idea. Along the back wall of the pantry, the top cabinets are used for storing cookbooks, various serving pieces, and a few old kitchen gadgets from my parents and grandparents.

The spice cabinet below is actually in the kitchen. It was one of those fortuitous events during the design of the house. The air conditioning people needed a place to position an air return. The most logical place ended up being at the end of the kitchen. Since that would bump out this cabinet from the original depth, it was decided the space might best be made into shallow shelving. You can see the change in the wall depth at the top of the spice cabinet. The builder asked if I would ever be able to fill it up. As you can see, that wasn't a problem.