I also have my "For the Home" board where I put my more realistic ideas. Usually these are smaller projects, organizational items, or paint color ideas, etc. I decided I would start with organization and fixing some of the eye sores in our house that have been here from the start. We may not be able to renovate our master bathroom right now, for example, but that doesn't mean I cannot take steps to make it look nicer in the meantime, despite the pink tile! This works out well for me, too, because it allows me to do spring cleaning while also decorating and rearranging.
One of those recent projects was our pantry (I'll get back to the master bath later). Now, before you go looking at the pictures, expecting to see a Pinterest-worthy pantry with all kinds of cool glass containers. Stop. You will not find that! :) I am not sure I am up for that just yet with my kids being so small. I am imagining a lot of broken glass in the next few years. Once they are a little bit older and capable of being careful with what they are doing, I will start doing cool stuff like that. But for now, we'll stick with plastics and boxes.
My beef with the pantry was the walls. When we moved in, we painted our house from top to bottom. Ceilings. Walls. Baseboards. Doors. Everything. We did all the closets except the main closet in the foyer and the pantry. By the time we got to those two, we were tired and just wanted to get everything moved in. So, we threw all the food in the pantry and moved on. Four years later, the pantry still looked like a train wreck.
I started off by cleaning the pantry out. I threw out old foods, tried to come up with a new way to organize the food on shelves so that it made more sense, etc. This was a good start, but those walls were an eye sore. They were so beat up. Scratches and marks were everywhere. I decided it was time to paint. What a pain in the butt that was! I uninstalled all the shelving and emptied the pantry. I decided to use color in the pantry this time. Clearly, when the walls are white, they show every ding and scratch made by all the food containers and cans. I wanted to disguise all that with some darker paint. Since we have some red accent walls in our kitchen, I decided I'd go with that.
It only took two coats of paint, surprisingly, but the pantry looks incredible now. Once we do get all the cool storage containers, I'll be very happy. But in the meantime, this makes me happy. That little pop of color when the door opens looks really nice! It was a lot of work to paint such a small area (and Ryan had to reinstall all the shelving). But, I think it was totally worth it. (See below for pictures.)
When it comes to fixing things around the house, it's the little things... Here is one of those "little things" projects of mine. The master bathroom changes are still to come. I have a few things left to finish.
BEFORE: The pantry had cream walls that were extremely beat-up. It looked like this when we moved in, but we never got around to fixing it (until now).
AFTER: Using the same red color as our kitchen accent walls, I painted the pantry walls (and ceiling) in the deep red color. Since the pantry is not on one of the kitchen walls that is red, it really pops against the cream walls outside the pantry.
looks awesome!! i wish i had that much room in my pantry!!! i have been doing the same thing with plastic bins, but mine is much smaller, about half the size, but slightly deeper!
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