Happy Friday, everyone! Today is a weird day. Normally on the weekends, the fiancé and I have a plan: whether it’s just lounging on the couch watching How I Met Your Mother or going out for a night on the town. But tonight he is busy helping a friend move, so the girls and I are home all alone. Naturally I need something to keep my busy, so pantry-planning is full swing!
Cuddling companion #1: Spencer (2 years old)
Cuddling companion #2: Georgia (9 months old)
In my opinion, the pantry is one of the most important rooms in the house. Having a beautifully organized pantry just gives me a sense of calm – like even if the rest of the house is in disarray, at least I will be able to cook a delicious meal and find all of my ingredients because they are in their proper places. And while we have a ways to go before our whole basement will be finished (right now we are a couple of weeks in, but more on that later!), I am getting all of my plans set for the pantry!
Here are some of my inspiration photos that I am working off of in terms of design:
Photo from The Vintage Wren.
Photo from Bright, Bold, & Beautiful.
Photo from Houzz.
And this is the current state of our pantry:
View of the pantry door from the staircase to first floor.
View from the basement living space area.
Here you can better see the size that the finished pantry will be.
For the shelves themselves, our building guide is from Saw Dust Girl. I researched quite a lot of built-in shelf tutorials on the internet, and so many of them left me without an answer to the question: will these shelves hold the weight of all of our pantry items? Saw Dust Girl is the DIY tutorial we finally settled on because after taking a look around her website, she really seems to know her stuff when it comes to home construction and projects (plus the tutorial states that these shelves will be enough to hold the weight. Yay!).
Photo from The Sawdust Girl.
So far I am learning that this is going to be a pretty large DIY project, larger than anything the fiancé and I have done on our own before! However, I have full confidence in his carpentry skills (as well as the stockpile of tools he has recently amassed at home improvement stores, garage sales, and estate sales all over town).
Right now, our plans basically consist of this:
A Friday night spent drawing up building plans and a materials list!
Some drawings and a materials list. It’s definitely a start! And, of course, I have all kinds of ideas on how to spruce up the pantry a bit! Here are some ideas I’ve been bouncing around my head:
1. The Container Store (1, 2). 2. Wayfair. 3. The Container Store. 4. Etsy.
We have a host of items on the “Basement To Do List”, but the pantry right now is scheduled to be completed prior to finishing all of the paint jobs we have (ceiling, and walls, and floors, oh my!) Check back soon to see our pantry progress! I would also love to know your thoughts on these plans, so please comment below!
Please click here to see the rest of our home tour, and click below for the updates on our pantry!
Sarah is a food blogger from Metro Detroit who believes that gourmet food should be accessible to all home cooks. 
I definitely agree that one of the most important and beautiful part of the house to be improved is the pantry. This is were we prepare food. So it should be neatly and nicely built. And everything in there must be organized. Thank you for sharing.