The Pantry: Plan B

Well my brilliant brick-and-board idea didn't work because the bricks were too long to allow the inner door to close on the back shelves. Pictures say a thousand words, or so I've heard, so I'll throw a couple up and see if they can tell the story better than I.

This is what the pantry looks like when you open the outer doors. This shot is the right side of the pantry, the left was identical, except that behind the shelves of canned tomatoes there were no shelves, just storage space. (Probably should have taken a "before" photo of the propped-up ironing board that used to be in there.)

This is the view of the new shelves, in place and stocked. I ended up having to use traditional hardware to install the shelves. It looks much nicer, there's more usable space and the interior door closes.

After I put all that food on the new shelves, I decided I'll probably – soon – take everything out and organize it more efficiently. The interior door shelves are deep enough to hold one can, while the new shelves can handle two. Or, better yet, the wider items I've had trouble finding space for, lo these many years.

At least one of you should be pleased that I actually got a weight-training workout done yesterday. I moved 42 bricks, three or four at a time, from behind my garage to my back patio, a distance of 30 feet or so. After I rinsed them and they were dry, I moved most of them into the pantry, another 18 feet or so. (Incidentally, this is the kind of workout I really love: using my muscles to actually complete a task,  rather than simply repetitively lifting heavy pieces of metal. And yes, I realize that there is a goal in mind with weight training, but I haven't made the mental leap I need to make to accept that I'm the task that needs to be complete. Hmmm.)

I didn't try to close the inner shelf until I'd put every brick and board in place. CALL ME STUPID! So I then had to move all the bricks back to their starting place behind the garage.

Fortunately the local (12 miles away) hardware store had the materials I needed to finish the job. If you were looking for me yesterday afternoon I was stuffed into the inner recesses of the dark pantry cupboard installing shelf rails.

I'm much happier with Plan B. It looks very professional, it matches the other side of the pantry and there's more storage room than there would have been with the [free] bricks. To sum up:

One long Aspen board, cut into five pieces: $23
Four shelf rails, 24 sheet-metal screws, 24 shelf clips: $21
New storage space in kitchen pantry: Priceless!