Total Pantry Makeover

Things have been nutty, crazy here with the Rusk family. Back to school, endless projects, lots of changes and new opportunities. Last week I had reached my workload limit. I had just finished a few major projects and was beyond exhausted when I decided to take on this bad boy...

Yikes!!!!!!!! Why not????

 

Welcome, to my mother's pantry. Now, I can't say anything TOO bad about this dreadful room because when that Almighty Zombie Apocalypse happens...and it WILL happen, THIS is where I'll be. (Side note to family: I get dibs on the Nutella)

 

 

So, first and foremost, I needed a blank canvas...

 

Pretty floor eh????

 

 

My mom lives in a pretty dark house. It has great, grand windows but the outside is all forest so lighting was key...lots and lots of lighting. The dingy, dark cabinets weren't helping me out in the "lighting" department so they had to take a hike. Nothing a few coats of a durable, stain fighting paint can't fix. Also, it's an older home, so there's this...

POPCORN CEILING!!!!! (barf)



Is there anything worse than popcorn ceiling???? I really don't think so. If you care to take me up on that, I'm all ears. But popcorn ceiling is downright AWFUL! As you can see (in the picture above), I started to prep the ceiling with some heavy duty mud. I wanted the ceiling to have flare but in order to get the desired outcome there was ALOT of prep work that had to be done. So, mud, then smoothing, then primer...then more smoothing. Which gave me the perfect layout to apply something a little more fun...

WALLPAPER!!!!

 

 

 

Some people are TERRIFIED of wallpaper and trust me, I GET IT! I have taken down some pretty nasty looking wallpaper. However, three things are great about wallpaper TODAY. One:

it's not ugly. You know what I'm talking about. We remember wallpaper looking like this...











I hope you like flowers...ALOT!

 

 

Two: it comes in PAINTABLES!!!! Yay!!!! So when you're tired of it, you can paint it another color. Which I did in the pantry (nothing too drastic, just brighter white). Lastly: it's WAYYYY easier to remove for two reasons. It's made with a less adhesive paste (strong enough to last a long time, without the "pulling teeth" method of removal) and the removal tools are much, MUCH handier.

 

Back to the pantry! As I said before, I painted the wallpaper a brighter white..

 and, of course, I switched out the light with something not too far from the original, as it does put out a great amount of lighting, but with a little contrast at the base.

(if this project has taught me anything, it's that I need to learn how to take photographs of lights lol)

 

 

I also added a little extra detail to the top of the shelving. It's the small things folks...

 

 AND THEN CAME THE FLOORING!!!!!! BUM BUM BUMMMMMMMMMMM. Which means I needed to bring in this guy...

 

To be more clear, I'm referring to this one...

 

 

He's pretty amazing at what he does. He helped me out BIG time with the pantry because he got me some pretty sweet flooring for $0. Gotta love that price!! With his help we went from this, to this.

 





 

 

 

Not going to lie, after the flooring was put in, I sat on it and admired it for a good hour. AND IT'S NOT EVEN MY PANTRY! It is gorgeous.

 

After flooring, I had one last update before heading into the food department. I added a quick coat of grey stain to the shelving in the back just to add a bit of a "rugged" look to match the overall look of the house (which is a NW Lodge meets Italian Country style). You can see it better here...

 

 

And then came the food. What a nightmare! But at least I can eat a gourmet, home-cooked meal while World War Z is taking over the streets. First we had to purge....and purge.....and purge. The problem with not properly labeling a fully-loaded pantry is you forget half the crap you own AND how much of it you own. So there were quite a few oldies that I tossed, and a few newer duplicates that I donated. A quick trip to Ikea to load up on some containers, and printed labels handy, and it was GO TIME. I found these cute free printable labels..

 

You can find them here www.liagriffith.com

 

And I labeled away....

 

 

and labeled some more.

 

Until the pantry was complete. And so, the almighty pantry lives on. Only way HOTTER.

 

and lastly, the stereotypical "side-by-side" photo

 

If you have any questions about this project or products involved in this project, feel free to email me at rusk_designs@yahoo.com