The Pantry

Tim had a great idea (one of many) to put the kitchen cabinets in the pantry. Many probably wondered why we would crowd a pantry with cabinets, but if you haven't seen our pantry, it's HUGE! Before closing on the house we looked on the internet for remodeling ideas and we found a picture of a kitchen with no cabinets above the countertops.

How intelligent? It opens up the kitchen soooo much. So then we didn't want to waste the cabinets, hence Tim's grand idea of putting them in the pantry.
Before we could do anything in the pantry I had to take down the plywood shelves the previous owners mounted and take up the tile.

(The first posted picture of me working on the house)

Afterthat, Tim placed a cabinet in the corner to test it out... he built a frame out of 2x4's (saved from taking the wall down) to place the cabinets on and raise them to counter height.

	We decided to put 4 outlets above the counters so we can plug in the small appliances everyone always stores under their cabinets b/c they don't have the counter space. Tim has a little bit of rewiring to do...

The cabinets are oak and the previous owners never stained or finished them so we tested one out and stained it "Early American". We wanted the rustic/old/worn look so we took a hammer to the doors and stained the crevices "Dark Walnut".

I finished the staining while Tim was working Tuesday. I still have to coat them with poly. Don't they look cool? The pictures don't do them justice :)

Tim put the wall back together and started measuring for the countertops. We purchased pine 2x8's and will probably stain them "Early American" as well. If you've seen the end table he made out of logs earlier this year, the countertop will come out like the top of that end table.

The next steps are to sand the walls, respackle, paint, poly the cabinets, finish the cuts for the counters, stain counters, and mount :) Tim is also building a wine rack in the opposite corner where we don't have a corner cabinet. We will mount a microwave in there also.