The days between Christmas and the New Year were filled with days working on the house. B and I did take plenty of time to relax and be with family but we were pretty focused on making a big leap forward on the renovations.
I expected B would spend most of his time in the dining room but we ended up getting the pantry area almost finished instead. Honestly I’m kind of glad because this small space has been my favorite part of the renovation so far and now it’s my favorite spot in the entire house!
For me, this space has had the biggest transformation of anything we’ve done to this house so far. Sure, we’ve tackled some huge projects and turning our former dining room into our new kitchen is pretty major but the pantry used to be this small, dark and dingy closet and is now bright and happy and feels twice as big.
If I’m being honest, we jumped into our kitchen renovation project really quickly a year ago. We knew we were going to do a kitchen project and had toyed around with swapping rooms with the dining room but one night we just kind of decided to do it, we measured, ordered cabinets and figured out the details later.
Once we started putting in the cabinetry in the kitchen, I knew that despite the major increase in cabinet space, we’d still need a pantry. We also realized we needed a place for a microwave. We don’t use our microwave a lot but we knew we needed somewhere to put it that wasn’t on the counter.
The pantry area came together pretty easily. B and I were on the same page from the start and we ended up having more space than we anticipated and were able to add in some additional cabinets which enabled up to also incorporate some open shelving.
Because we continued the tile from the mudroom / laundry room area into this pantry, I really wanted to add some warmth with natural wood somewhere to keep the space from feeling too cold and sterile.
We decided to use a piece of oak to create a shelf area for the microwave and added in a couple shelves above for some of my most used cookbooks. Because the space was small, I didn’t want to use the same tile for the backsplash that we used in the kitchen. I felt the pattern may be too overpowering but since these two spaces are open to each other, I wanted to keep the color palette the same.
After going back and forth, B and I settled on a small herringbone pattern tile and used black grout. A much smaller pattern for this small space.
We used oak stair treads for the shelving and kept their natural color only using sealer so they matched the wood flooring in the kitchen and throughout the rest of the first floor.
We bought a new microwave that looks like it was made for the space and I couldn’t wait to style the shelves above. You’ll notice hits of other elements in the room which I’ll be sharing with you soon.
This new home for our microwave is convenient to the kitchen but out of sight and off the counter. A huge improvement and big step now behind us on this large renovation project.
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