I fell in love with the quaint little 50s kitchen when we bought this house. The cabinets were still original, and after a few coats of paint, they looked great! All of the cabinets were in an “L” shape on two of the three walls in the kitchen.
On the third wall, however, there was nothing except a lonely fridge. We needed a pantry space, so I called up the cabinet shop in town and bought a set of pantry cabinets that went on both sides and over the top of our fridge (unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of this).
The new cabinets didn’t match the old. Usually I’m okay with the mismatched look. The best styled spaces are the ones that happen over time, in my opinion. These two sets of cabinets, however, were not meshing well at all. The function of the new cabinets also wasn‘t as great as I had hoped. I was grateful for the storage space that wasn’t there before, but the cabinets were too dark and deep. I had to completely unload them to get to the stuff in the back most of the time. The top cabinets just accumulated dust and junk because I couldn’t reach them without standing on something. A large portion of our canned goods were still being stored in our laundry room cabinets, because the kitchen just wasn’t functioning as well as we needed it to.
In another room in the house, I had this blue wardrobe. I actually purchased it from a yard sale and painted it when I was just a teenager. I still loved it enough to hang onto it after all these years even though I never really had a good use for it. It’s been in the playroom filled with board games and puzzles. It’s been in our master bedroom as extra closet space. It’s been in our front entryway as a coat closet. But it’s never felt exactly right in any of those places.
When I decided I was fed up with the pantry cabinets, I started roaming the house searching for inspiration. I spotted the big blue wardrobe and the gears in my mind began turning. I called Tripp at work to tell him my idea to move the wardrobe to the kitchen and asked him if he would build some shelves for it. As usual, he was on board. I don’t know what I did to deserve this man.
So far, it’s great. It holds all of our pantry goods including our canned food. The bottom drawer is perfect for tin foil, freezer paper, storage bags and containers, and other similar items. The basket on top holds all of our meat processing equipment and oversized bowls used during meat processing and blanching vegetables to freeze. I love that it fits with the age and style of the kitchen without being matchy-matchy. And of course, the pop of blue is just the icing on the eclectic cake.
Open it up and it’s even better! I waited until grocery day to take these pictures so the shelves would be at their fullest. Its amazing how even with less of a footprint in my kitchen, this little blue pantry holds everything in a way that I can still view all of its contents in a glance.
**If you noticed that the reflection in the pantry mirrors doesn‘t match the picture of the white cabinets, you are correct! Lots of changes are happening. Hopefully I’ll be able to share soon!
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