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 simplify our organization, to minimize the number of things we are storing, and to create a bit of 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 began in the 1960s.
Sometime in the 1960s, after this house was built, the garage was converted to a “bonus” room with this rather dark, narrow hallway for laundry and storage running along the back wall. The conversion (strangely) wasn’t attached to the HVAC system, which meant that in summer, this space was too hot. In winter weather, the water lines to the washing machine would freeze. This meant doing laundry at my neighbor’s house a time or two every winter!
In 2022, we gave this space its 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 he added pegs, and I painted them green.
Lastly, we decorated as if it were a part of the house. We’ve really enjoyed this space for the last three years, but then… we decided to finish out the garage conversion and add heating and cooling. This meant removing a double bank of cabinets, repairing sheetrock, texturing, and painting. So… since we had to do all that, we thought it was time to reevaluate and upgrade/update this area.
Here are a couple of images that inspired the look and feel for this makeover. I also wanted to try a new color on the cabinets. This color is a halfway color between the rich, saturated green we used in the kitchen and the velvety neutral color we’ve used in several places 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.
This one bank of cabinets hangs lower over the dryer/washing machine and seemed to call 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 on. 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 in this area, we decided to compensate by adding a shelf to hold the microwave and possibly 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 the Koi Pond 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 above.
For better organization, I carefully measured the shelving in the tall cupboard and ordered a set of four seagrass baskets from Amazon. These worked great for organizing things that commonly go together, like snacks!
Then there were the four cabinets housing the extra dishes 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! To do this, I also invested in mug/teacup holders that suspended the cups from the shelf above. This storage solution not only kept the teacups from falling over and breaking, but it also used space more efficiently. Plus, I could store the matching saucers directly underneath them.
Here are 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.
Warmly,
Rachel
