One Room Challenge Week 1: Pantry Design Plans & Moodboard

Well, folks, we’re at it once again! As if life wasn’t hectic enough, we’ve decided to participate in the One Room Challenge hosted by Linda of Calling It Home.

If you’re not familiar with the One Room Challenge, it happens twice a year in the spring and fall. Over 200 bloggers and/or designers get to participate by picking a room in their home to makeover in 6 weeks.

Even though there’s no actual competition in the One Room Challenge, there’s the motivation to complete a project using your creativity to transform a room that needs help within a short amount of time. Plus, there’s a chance that a few of the projects may catch the eye of Better Homes and Gardens for a feature in their Instagram feed. After the challenge is over, BHG will select two guest participants who will automatically get to participate as featured designers in the fall 2019 ORC! Being one of the 20 featured designers for the One Room Challenge is a pretty big deal. 

Two years ago, we turned a garden shed into a guest house/bedroom.

This time, we’ve decided we’d play along by choosing to makeover the one room that needed to be done right away… our pantry.

You may ask, “Why is a pantry such a priority?“.

Currently, our house doesn’t have a pantry and we store all of our food in a 3′ x 3′ kitchen cabinet. For a family of 6, that’s not nearly enough room.

Also, when we finally remodel our kitchen, which needs the most help in our home, we need a place to keep all of our kitchen essentials so we don’t have to order take-out every day during that long process. During the renovation, we can set up a mini kitchen with a portable stove top, microwave, and mini fridge in the new pantry.

THE BEFORE PICTURES

The space that we’re making into a walk-in pantry actually used to be a 5′ x 11′ bathroom. Our home was built in 1915. Back in the late 1940s, the bathroom was added to the back of the house. When we turned a spare bedroom into an en-suite master bathroom, walk-in closet, and powder room, we were left with the old bathroom that is right off the kitchen that we no longer needed.

It’s a good thing we decided to renovate this room because the floor beneath the bathtub and toilet was rotted. We also discovered that the insulation behind the bathtub surround had mildewed.

This is where we’re starting for day one of the One Room Challenge.

The rotted floor has been replaced with a new subfloor and we installed new insulation and drywall.

PANTRY FLOOR PLAN, DESIGN IDEAS & MOOD BOARD

Keeping in mind the period that our home was built, we want to add vintage details with modern accents. I’m drawn to a black and white color palette with a pop of color, with my favorite accent color being green. This time, I’ll be using a hint of blue-green on the largest built-in cabinet in the room.

From our front door, you can see straight down the hallway to the new pantry. So, having that pop of color on the tall cabinet will draw your eye to the back of the house. 

I had no idea what to call the tall cabinet, so for now, I’m naming it “the supply cabinet”. I’m not even sure what all I’ll store in it other than bulk items when I shop at Costco. My original plan was to use it as a cleaning closet, but Jason doesn’t like the idea of storing cleaning products, the broom, and mop in the pantry. Maybe I’ll be able to change his mind by the time we get close to building it. 😉

What are your thoughts about having a cleaning supply closet in the pantry?

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The layout of the pantry shelves and countertop will be very similar to the inspiration picture in the mood board. It’ll be so nice to come into the pantry after grocery shopping and have a countertop to place the grocery bags while I put everything away! 

The cabinets below the countertop will have doors so I can hide our Instapot (or Instant Pot?), George Foreman Grill, and (when I can afford it) KitchenAid mixer. I’ll also have a place to conceal some items that we only use when we have friends and family over for dinner. 

So, here’s what we have planned for the course of the next 6 weeks!

TO-DO LIST & DESIGN PLANS FOR THE WALK-IN PANTRY RENOVATION:

• Prime and paint the walls
• Install the cement board and the black & white hexagon tile floor
• DIY magnetic chalkboard command center
• Add glass to a solid wood door we found at the Habitat for Humanity
• Build the pantry shelving and a supply cabinet
• Faux soapstone countertops like I did in this post
• Add steel and glass shelving beside each window similar to our custom Etsy steel shelving
• DIY labels for organizing the pantry canisters and baskets

Check back next week for more updates on where we’re at and don’t forget to head over to the rest of the One Room Challenge entries for more inspiration!

Update: See the pantry reveal here!

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