The Pantry

In an effort to make the house more 'our own', we opted to leave out the wire shelving in the pantry. We intended to do a fancy pantry system with solid shelves, but when the time came we decided that - right now- that project is a bit more labor intensive than we can handle. Also, we were told that solid shelves can be harder to clean, because you have to take everything off of it to wipe it down. 

So, off to Lowe's we went. 

We ended up purchasing Rubbermaid tightmesh shelving and had it cut to the width of our pantry. We were happy to find brackets that fit snug to the shelf, so we don't lose any space with low hanging shelf mounts. 

We struggled to find a stud for our top piece, so Arthur spent the better part of the night drilling his way through metal in order to create additional holes that aligned with the stud. 

At first we thought it would take no time at all...

But after about an hour in, Arthur took off his sweatshirt - and that's how I knew he was on a mission

After nearly two hours of drilling, I even got on on the action! 

This experience pretty much taught me I'm a natural carpenter. Success!

After we drilled the uprights in we fought with the actual shelves. The way the mounts fit onto the brackets is a little odd, and definitely took two people to align, push, pop, and prod the shelves into the brackets before mounting them. 

Four hours later we finally had a pantry! Our best friend IKEA provided us with great food storage containers for about $3-6 each. 

We also picked up some baskets from IKEA as well.

Overall- 

PROS:

-relatively inexpensive. This whole system cost about $130

-customizable. You can get the shelves cut however long or short you want them based on the look you are going for 

-adaptable. We can move these current shelves around with ease. We just pop them out and move down/up then pop back in. We can always add more, if necessary, with ease 

-it's wire, so any crumbs will fall straight to the ground for sweep up ease

CONS:

- took 4 hours (mostly because of our stud situation) 

- the brackets pop up a bit through the wire, which makes food/containers a little crooked when placed in certain spots 

- it's wire, which isn't the most aethestically pleasing 

- it took FOUR HOURS 

- scratched up walls. Tip: cut shelves at least 2 inches shorter than the width of the pantry. We cut it the exact length and therefore had some shoddy rough edges put divots in the wall 

- takes 2 people 

- not sure if, at the end, we have any more space than people who kept the original wiring in.