Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

Today, we move into Phase 2 of the kitchen renovation: the main area of the kitchen.  Up until now, the focus has been on building the pantry and fixing up the breakfast room (immediately adjacent to the kitchen), because we were waiting on the cabinets to arrive anyway.  I love that Craig and Evan from Hunter Reising Design and Build have tried to preserve as much of my kitchen as possible during the construction, so I haven’t yet been completely without a kitchen – that makes life much easier with two kids!  But before I start talking about Phase 2, I have to tell you about this awesome pantry…

Ah, the pantry.

I have dreamed of a pantry for nine years.  It only occurred to me last year exactly how we were going to get one in our galley kitchen.

We have had a storage room in the back of our garage, which, luckily, shared a wall with our breakfast room.  Sure, we used the storage room, but we have a large garage, including one side of it that’s too small for a car to fit in – perfect for storage.

It finally dawned on me last year that we could cut through the breakfast room wall and make that storage room into a pantry and just close it off to the outside/garage.

I actually wrote it on my kitchen wish list and then, next to it, wrote, “OMG!”  I think it might have been the best idea I’ve ever had in my whole entire life.  No, I’m not kidding.

So, here’s how the storage room used to open to the garage:

Now, that door is a wall.  Here’s how they opened it up and then insulated the walls to make it an interior room:

And, three weeks later, the finished pantry (cue choir singing in background):

It’s a beautiful thing, yes?  I have never had so much kitchen storage in my whole life.  It’s amazing.

The next fun thing I got to do was fill it up!  I organized it into zones, cuz that’s how I roll.  I have a baking zone; a small appliance zone; a zone for paper goods; a snack zone; a dog stuff/food zone; a cooking/pasta/beans/canned goods zone; and a cereal zone on the lowest shelf, so kids can reach – see M helping me load up the pantry:

Here’s where we are, as of today:

I tried to organize the pantry so that the most rarely used stuff, like soup pots and thermoses, was on the upper shelves.  I also tried to keep things the kids needed/wanted on the lower shelves, like cereal and snacks.

I am beyond happy with how this turned out.  Honestly, it’s so. much. storage.  Now, there are no dishes or pots in the guest room closet.  There are no pots or baking gear in the laundry room.  And, to toot my own horn a bit, I think it’s a testament to my mad organizational skillz that I got most of this stuff into as little cabinet space as we had in our kitchen before.

Now we’re onto Phase 2 – the main part of the kitchen.  They are tearing out the rest of our kitchen tomorrow, so today I have to finish clearing out the cabinets.  I only have two more cabinets to empty, although it’s more challenging than usual because my knee is all messed up.  Craig had a great idea, which was to tell the kids we’re having a contest to see who could unload the cabinets’ contents into their box first.  Thankfully, nothing left to empty out and pack up is breakable, so that crazy idea just might work.

That’s the update from Dogs Don’t Eat Pizza kitchen HQ.  Thanks for stopping by!