Hello friends! Get ready for a very fun, very long post! Today we are going to give our pantry/laundry area a purge, and a makeover with some affordable DIY projects!
One main goal for this makeover is to create a Butler’s pantry in the process. First, let’s travel back in time and take a look at where this pantry and utility space started.
Sometime in the 1960s, after this house was built, the garage was converted to a “bonus” room with this hallway for laundry and storage running long the back wall. The conversion (strangely) wasn’t attached to the HVAC system which meant that in summer this space was too hot. In very cold winter weather the water lines to the washer machine would freeze. This meant doing laundry at my neighbor’s house a time or two!
In 2022 we gave this space it’s first makeover. We painted the tall built in pantry along the left wall and the little rather rickety appliance cabinet between the dryer and the freezer. I found a free-standing oak cabinet on Marketplace for $50 to add more storage. Matt found the floating shelves in the dumpster, to which we added pegs and painted green.
Lastly, we decorated the space as if it were a part of the house. We’ve really enjoyed this space for the last three years, but we decided to finish out the garage conversion and add heating and cooling. This meant removing a double bank of cabinets, repairing sheet rock, texturing, and painting. So… since we had to do all that it gave us the opportunity to reevaluate this space
Here are a couple of images as inspiration for the look and feel I want to move towards in the makeover. I also wanted to try a new color on the cabinets. This color is a half-way color between the rich saturated green we used in the kitchen, and the velvety neutral color we’ve used in several placed in the house. This color is called Koi Pond by Sherwin Williams. It is a soft celery green with just enough color not to be neutral, but subtle enough to be a background color.
The color is up! I love how this soft, muted green brings a fresh organic feeling to the laundry/pantry in a gentle way.
This one bank of cabinets hung a big lower over the washer and seemed to be calling for a bit of a custom cabinet look so we added the same corbels as we used in the kitchen remodel. We only needed two so this was still a budget friendly addition to the makeover.
For a cohesive flow into the main house we decided to paint the back door and both doors to the water heater and the furnace in Universal Khaki as this is the color on the trim leading into the dining room.
Matt said that in his opinion the pantry really seemed to move to “room” status once the new brass hardware from Amazon went one. He’s right, this simple change elevated the room immediately!
At the back of the pantry we added a mini-split unit to cool and heat the space. Since we lost the storage from a double bank of cabinets, and were left with a strange looking cabinet arrangement, we decided to compensate by adding a shelf to hold the microwave and possible a space for a coffee station.
Also, for space saving efficiency we added a built-in ironing board cabinet that folds out of the wall. We painted it in Koi Pond as well to blend with the other cabinets.
This turned out so well that it looks like it has always been there! You can see the completed shelf and coffee station in this picture, too.
For better organization I carefully measured the shelved in the tall cupboard and ordered a set of four sea grass baskets from Amazon. These worked great for organizing things that commonly go together, like snacks!
Then there was the four cabinets theat were housing the extra dishes used for hosting special events… I did an initial deep purge, then another sweep through – I was determined the dishes would fit into just the one large cabinet! In order to do this I also invested in some mug/tea cup holders that would hold the cups suspended from the shelf above. This storage solution not only kept the tea cups from falling over and getting broken, but it was a more efficeint use of space. Plus, I could store the saucers directly underneath them.
Here is the fun “after” pictures of the cabinets that have become the butler’s pantry. Now this space is a joy to use and to look at!
Friends, I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and video and have gathered some helpful inspiration for your home. Until next time,
Take Care,
Rachel
