Today I’m going to be talking about my favorite room in our house, the pantry.
When we were designing our house in the fall of 2013, there was one thing that I was completely set on, and it was this room.
But not just any pantry…. The delux, walk in, floor to ceiling shelving-and-storage-hide-my-mess-while-I-entertain and be-able-to-sit-on-the-floor-and-eat-chocolate-by-myself pantry. AKA a butler’s pantry.
While I Pinned away and had a concept in mind of what I wanted, our budget didn’t add up to my original thoughts, so we improvised and made much of it on our own (who I am I kidding, my husband made it all. I just told him what to do. Ha!).
Here were the things that I wanted in my pantry:
Lower open shelving for small appliances, kid’s snacks and paper products
Upper open shelving so that I could walk in and immediately see what I had on hand
A small butler’s sink
Sufficient counter space for food preparation
Multiple electrical outlets
Space to store my vacuum
To have enough storage for 6 months worth of canned goods and non perishable food items
So then we devised a plan and this was what we came up with!
The pantry is just off the kitchen in our house and is closed in by an old farmhouse door that we purchased at a farm sale last spring. I originally saw this idea over at Aunt Ruthie’s Sugar Pie Farmhouse and knew the moment I saw it that I had to add it into my house, too. Apron and all 🙂
There is nothing special in particular about this apron. It just made me smile the moment I saw it and I just knew it had to hang in my pantry door. The coffee sign I purchased at an antique store in Kansas City right after we got married.
After going over my pins with Eric, we both decided to get our lower cabinets and countertops professionally made. The lower open shelves were made by the same family owned company who made our kitchen and bathroom cabinets. The countertops are Formica laminate, and I love them! The open upper shelving we decided to build on our own.
So we headed out to a barn on his parent’s property and searched for long boards that would work as sturdy shelves.
The boards that we found are 1×12 inch lumber. Back when this lumber was manufactured (60’s or 70’s) those were standard dimensions by most companies and we found they were exactly what we needed.
I love that the upper shelves have so many imperfections in them. We ended up not sealing them with polyurethane and left them raw. No reason in particular, we just liked the way it looked. Eric cut 2×4’s in half (what we had laying around) and used those for the bracing under the shelves. We painted them the same Linen color we used on our kitchen cabinets and trim.
Due to a last minute kitchen change, we ended up needing a space for our microwave and decided to insert it into the pantry. While this might seem odd to some, I am in my pantry all the time, so it really isn’t that much of an inconvenience for me to walk into the pantry to use it.
So step into my pantry.
With twinkly lights, of course.
Because twinkly lights makes everything happier 🙂
And of course a place for (a few) of mine and the girl’s aprons and sack for plastic bags
As I leave the pantry, I wanted to have something that would remind me of the kind of heart I want to have as I serve my family. Whether I’m preparing food, cleaning the house, scrubbing the floors or cleaning up spills, I so desire for my heart to be in the right spot. I found this framed poem at an antique store here in Nebraska years ago and decided to place it right by the door in the pantry to remind me of where my heart needs to be when I’m serving. It reminds me to have Martha’s hands of work and service, but at the same time to have Mary’s heart that yearns for more of what God has for her. What a beautiful reminder of how we should love and serve in our homes, yes?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into my pantry. Would you all like to have a detailed list of what I keep on hand and how I stock my shelves? Let me know what you think.
I hope you all have a wonderful day!
Kim says
Gorgeous! I love your sign "It's a wonderful life after coffee!!" So awesome! I'm curious…do you end up preparing/mixing/baking in your pantry? Or do you carry ingredients out to the kitchen to cook?
lmeberspacher@gmail.com says
Thanks Kim 🙂 it depends on what I'm doing that determines what I do in there. If I'm an hit or two from having guests in the house, then yes I do a lot of prep work in there. But most of my everyday is done in the kitchen. I also do all of my small appliance cleaning in there; I'm a bit meticulous about maintaining and keeping my stuff clean, so I do all of that in there, too 🙂
Jessie says
Oh Lauren this is just Beautiful!!! Twinkly lights and all- love everything about it! Yay for a space to hide and eat chocolate (sometimes to be in the right frame of mine to serve your family…. One must eat a little chocolate first- with coffee of course❤️)