From Mudroom to Pantry!

The kitchen in our Young Victorian was pretty big. You would think a pretty big kitchen would also come with a pretty big pantry. Okay, how about a pantry, a pantry of any size? Nope, no pantry in this beauty.

The kitchen ended up being pretty darn special; at least we loved it. You’ll have to jump over to my other kitchen posts, here, here, here, here and here to see what all we tackled in the kitchen.

During our planning phase, we tried to figure out how to resolve this pantry-less kitchen situation. We were already planning to use our upcycled bedroom armoire as a coffee/breakfast nook (which I was pretty excited about). But there really wasn’t any other space for another stand-alone piece to serve as a pantry. I mean the kitchen was big, but it wasn’t that big! And we had to have a pantry!

Enter the Mudroom

Enter the mudroom…see what I did there? There was one option and it actually turned out to be a pretty awesome option. A small room off of the kitchen that the original owners used as their main entry and mudroom.

I had struggled with the space as a mudroom. One, there wasn’t a whole lot of wall space to accommodate all the stuff that makes for a great mudroom. Two, it was right off of the kitchen so I imagined that the “mud” would never end up completely contained to said mudroom. Three, you had to climb a lot of stairs from the driveway to get to the porch where the mudroom door was. And I was not too keen about climbing those stairs with groceries in the dead of icy winter. And four, we wanted a true okay-to-get-it-messy mudroom for us and the extended family to land.

Hey, What if…?

Lightbulb Moment: “Warren, what if make the mudroom the pantry?” And so the pantry was born! A really cool butler’s pantry where we could incorporate some of the original kitchen cabinets and another concrete countertop.

The last design decision was the floors. This space originally had the same tile in it that had been in the kitchen. Initially, we thought about putting a new tile down to match what would ultimately go into the bathrooms but we ended up deciding to put wood down instead. Rather than finishing them with the same oil we had used on the other wood floors, we chose to paint and stencil this floor. And we loved the results! We took the black and white theme used elsewhere and applied a porch and floor paint with a white field and a black stenciled design.

The longer we used the floor, the more worn the painted surface became and we thought it was perfect. Not everyone is drawn to that timeworn, imperfect look but it suited us perfectly and the entire room ended up being one of my favorite spaces in the house.

Wait for it…

So that’s the tale of how a little mudroom grew up to be a mighty pantry. Oh and you may be wondering about that messy mudroom we wanted. Well hang tight, in the end we would end up with a magnificent mudroom down in the basement! Unfortunately, that was still a ways down the road. In the mean time, let’s just say there was definitely an emphasis on the “messy” in our interim mudroom!

Next, we’re going to get into all kinds of bathroom renovations. We’ll cover all three, count ’em, three bathroom renos over the next three posts! Fun stuff!

Blessings,
{Shelley}

P.S. We’re close to the end of the renovation people! It won’t be long before I post ALL of the “After” pictures (I slipped in a sneak peek of the kitchen at the top of this post; did you catch it?) Stay tuned!