Pantry Love!

Our new house has a pantry! And it is a walk in pantry to boot. It was love at first sight. You see, I am so excited to have an actual pantry. In our old house, the pantry was a bookcase secured to the wall on the landing of the stairs to the unfinished basement. Well, there was a lazy susan in the only under-the-counter cabinet but it was hard to access and didn't hold much.

However, there was a big problem with my new pantry which was threatening my budding love affair. Someone, in what I can only imagine was a caffeine induced frenzy while being snowed in, had covered the walls from floor to ceiling and wrapped most of the shelves in the ugliest contact paper I had ever seen. All I can ask is why on earth you would use a contact paper that has gray and dark green in a tiny closet with a small light? It makes it dark and depressing and you would never know if things are clean.

Here is a close up of the contact paper. Ug and ly are the only things I can come up with.

My solution, strip all the contact paper off. I don't have any actual before pics since I was in a frenzy to get that stuff peeled off. This is the best I can do.

I removed all the contact paper, filling a large garbage bag, and wiped down the walls and the shelves with an adhesive remover, Goo Gone. I love this stuff. It seems to disolve that sticky residue with ease. Once that was done, here is what I was left with. Pretty scary stuff. But I especially love the blue-ish paneling that was used for the walls instead of drywall.

I then used two coats of Kilz primer and two coats of stark white semigloss paint. I resecured several pieces of loose hardware and reinstalled the shelves. Once the interior was complete, I painted the inside of the door with chalkboard paint. What better place for a shopping list than the pantry itself? The only thing I still need is the chalk tray Hubs said he would make me.

Here is pantry filled with all the things that had to live in tubs while waiting for me to get done with the panty.

I am in love all over again. And what a transformation. I am hoping that this is a sign of what great changes we can make to our new home.

Make sure to stop by our home renovation blog Claiming Our Space to check out other changes we are making to our home.

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