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Butler’s Pantry Makeover

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Amy

I have always dreamed of having a Butler’s Pantry, so much so that it was probably the biggest factor in selecting the floorplan for our new home last year.

While this space is useful as it spans the hallway between my kitchen and dining room and stores quite a bit, with just the white cabinets it seemed a little boring.

So, not to keep running on about the great MacBeth shelf paper I found at TJ Maxx, but since I just happened to have a few rolls left after my pantry makeover I figured it would be the perfect way to jazz up these cabinets too.

So as Hurricane Sandy hit our area last weekend outside {thankfully our area was spared from too much damage}, I started pulling things out of both my Dining Room hutch and the Butler’s Pantry cabinets. Because that is what you do during a hurricane, right?

Since the shelves in these cabinets all came right out, sticking the shelf paper against the back wall was so easy.

I also pulled all my fancy {aka my never-used} china out of my dining room hutch and moved it into these glass cabinets. I love how the gold accents look against the black and white quatrafoil background.

I am still tweaking things, but think this space is so much more interesting now. Do you?

And….the winner of the PSA Essentials Stamp Giveaway is comment #26 (via Random.org)

Nicole-Lynn says:

I follow you on twitter (newlywed_nicole)

Nicole we’ll be in touch to get the details of your stamps. Thanks to all who entered we have several more great giveaways coming up in the next few weeks so check back soon.

Thanks for stopping by~

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Posted in Before and After, Closets, Home Inspiration, Real Spaces | Tagged butlers pantry, cabinet, china, organization, shelf paper, storage | 1 Comment

Pantry Makeover {Organizing Life}

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Amy

I don’t know if this happens to you all, but sometimes I start a project get to a point with it, and then it stalls for awhile. Then, suddenly something falls into place and suddenly, I get crazy motivated and just can knock it out. Such is the case with my pantry.

Since we moved last year, our pantry is a little on the small side.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful–I have a pantry after all–but this was our former pantry {funny, I used to think this was “organized” but compared to the beautiful ones out there now, it just looks a mess} it was large, a walk-in space, and it held a ton.

I really am trying not to grocery shop every day or two, which I tend to have to do when I am not organized and don’t plan our meals. But without a lot of storage space for food, its hard to really stock up. So trying to deal with this issue, I got motivated last spring and spent many hours on The Container Store and other websites looking for ways to make this small pantry more functional for us.

I got to this point {above} with it, I added some organizers and put corkboard on the door and added a nice recycling bin, but then couldn’t decide what to do to make it “pretty”. After all when one of your best friend’s pantry looked like this….

and currently looks like this…

Yes, in my world the bar is HIGH! {which I mean in a good way, the best part of blogging with inspirational friends is the positive motivation }

So, I thought about painting the back wall but the shelves don’t come out and that would require much taping–just too much work for a small space. So, I also thought briefly about stenciling but again, that would have been a lot of work for a place where the door is closed 99% of the time.

So I just did other things in my home for the time being.

Then last Saturday morning I stopped in my local TJ Maxx looking for something–don’t even remember what–and saw this shelf paper.

At this point, I whip out my phone and text Christy and Terry “Look at this great shelf paper! What color do you want?” because I can’t keep a good find to myself. And, I tweeted this find for you all, too. {Make sure to follow us @11magnolialane on Twitter so you don’t miss out on any of these goodies}. I bought several rolls not even knowing which one I wanted to use but knowing that shelf paper was going be the perfect way to jazz up my pantry.

Within an hour my kitchen looked like this.

But it took very little time until my formerly white, plain-jane pantry looked like this.

It was so easy to stick up on the walls and made it so much more interesting inside.

So, I did do a small bit of purging then put everything back in neatly and in a more organized fashion. Ta da!

I did add another shelf way up high, something I had also been meaning to do. Its ugly and wire, but I had it laying around and I wanted to use all the wasted but hidden vertical space above the top shelf.

It holds things I need to get to very rarely, like extra plastic bags, wax paper, plastic utensils etc. and it’s out of sight.

Here is a shot of my counters after–just to prove I didn’t have an extra stash of food still to put back in the pantry after I photographed it. I actually can’t believe that I didn’t.

And, if anyone is wondering, here are the tricks that got me to this nice, neat space.

The best advice came from one of our favorite girls, Ashley, from Mini Manor. In her kitchen organizing post she brought up the brilliant concept of “not moving the baking [insert baking supply here} I use rarely to get to the {insert word here} I use daily”. Since I read that, I keep all my baking necessities in another cabinet, in a basket that I just pull out when I actually bake, which isn’t very often. Only what we regularly is stored in my kitchen pantry.

I used as much vertical space as I could. You can find the can rack HERE and the canisters came from IKEA. The risers are available at Bed, Bath & Beyond, The chalkboard labels HERE.

I made use of the door space as best I could. I added a rack to hold plastic cups and water bottles for the kids. Their lunch boxes are in what is actually a rack for plastic wrap from The Container Store, I flipped around and used to hold lunchboxes which freed up a ton of space on the shelves.

I also covered the door panel with adhesive cork board with shelf paper. Its so much prettier now and it holds my shopping list and lunch menus.

If you are someone who likes before/afters…here is our transformation.

So in celebration, I have decided to gather up some of my favorite organizational supplies and give them away! I will announce what they are and begin the giveaway on Saturday, so be sure to stop by then.

In the meantime, thanks for visiting.

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Posted in Before and After, Closets, Organization, Pantry, Real Spaces | Tagged chevron, organization, organizing life, pantry, shelf paper, storage | 13 Comments

Kitchen Hutch Makeover {Craig’s List Find}

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Amy

I am jumping right to the “After’ for this, but after months of searching, I finally found the perfect piece for my kitchen on Craig’s List. It was perfect in size, look and best of all–price, it was only $30!!! It had been donated to a church, and it was even relatively close by, I couldn’t get there fast enough to pick it up.

I have been looking for something like this since before Christmas, so #1 Craig’s List lesson learned– have patience and the perfect piece will eventually appear-and maybe even for a bargain price of $30!

Once I got it home, I unfortunately discovered that it had an unappealing odor (perhaps even from smoke) as well as the lovely, typical, thrift store/mildew smell. After some google research, I tried every tactic I found that would supposedly eliminate the smell–leaving it in the sun for a few days, cleaning it well, wiping it out with vinegar, using odor blocking primer and sanding it very, very well.

It smells perfectly fine now, so something worked.

I chose the paint color Benjamin Moore’s Silver Bells, a nice pale gray. I wanted to coordinate the hutch with my white cabinets but have it still feel like a furniture piece. Ideally, I would have used chalk paint, but there aren’t any retailers here at the Beach, and unfortunately I completed the project just before my visit to Janet’s store. Chalk paint would have certainly saved quite a bit of work.

I also wanted to use chicken wire to add interest, which was one of the reasons I was happy to find a cabinet that already had glass doors (and easy-to-remove glass at that). I wasn’t sure where exactly the chicken wire would go, until my son accidently broke one of the glass inserts for the side. I may even eventually replace all the glass with the wire because I love how it looks.

The hardware on it was already perfect, and its even has a light in the top section if I ever want to use the fixture. It adds some nice (and needed) storage to our kitchen, and for $30 plus some paint, I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

Thanks for stopping by! I am finishing up the workroom today–stay tuned, its coming along great!

XO,

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Tatertots and Jello, Serenity Now, At The Picket Fence, Savvy Southern Style, Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Miss Mustard Seed Furniture Friday

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Posted in Before and After, Home Inspiration, Kitchens | Tagged chicken wire, kitchen cabinet, kitchen hutch, painted furniture, storage | 8 Comments

A Place to Create–My Teeny-Tiny Craft Area

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Christy

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Right before Christmas, I decided that I was sick to death of hiding my sewing machine in the guest room closet every time I was done using it. Surely (if I moved around several incredibly heavy pieces of furniture), surely there was room to carve out a craft corner. I already had an old sewing machine table I’d found at Goodwill years ago and painted white…I abandoned all plans of cooking dinner, which is what I was supposed to be doing (sorry honey!), and started moving furniture.

I painted the old sewing table and a thrift store chair in robin’s egg blue. In hindsight, I probably should have used a blue chalk paint so they’d be a little more muted (I used spray paint for immediate gratification), but it’s safe to say that they’ll be painted again one of these days, so I’m not going to stress over it. I covered the chair TWICE before my third try made me happy–Amy Butler’s Love Bliss fabric. The teal and aqua colors match my old mason jars.

Old chair recovered with Amy Butler's Love Bliss fabric in teal.

I already had the two white shelves with fancy scrolled corbels. My dad made them with me years ago (one of my first DIY projects!) to hang on either side of my recessed bathtub area in another house. I just hadn’t figured out where to put them in this house yet. They’re perfect above the sewing machine to hold notions and other crafting goodies.

I made the banner–it was my first attempt at such things! The flags need to be twice as long as they are wide, so just cut them any size you want based on those guidelines. I used tiny clothespins to clip them to the ribbon, which I thought was very crafty (LOL).

Let me give some credit where credit is due here: the “Get Excited and Make Things” printable can be found HERE and the cute number tags can be found at HERE.

I love old spice jars–the apothecary-style ones–and I picked up this spice rack at the thrift store. It holds my tri-beads, organized by color.

Why do I have so many tri-beads, you ask? I have one crafty-type thing that I can do, and that’s crochet bead socks for all the little girls in my life. Here’s an old pair of Annabelle’s to show you what I’m talking about:

Because I do sew things from time to time, I thought it would be fun and different to mount a yardstick on the wall to make measuring easier. I had an old one from my grandmother’s house in Michigan, and I love that it says “Big Rapids” (her town) on it. I secured it on the wall using 3M’s command tape (just no hooks this time).

Do you like my ribbon organizer/dispenser? I love those things, but I didn’t want to go out and buy one (not that there’s anything wrong with you if you do!). I had a wooden curtain rod in my garage, not being used, and when I played around with it, I realized that it was small enough to hold ribbon and small enough to go through the scrolled corbels of my lower shelf. I just cut it to fit and spray painted it blue (I’ll probably spray it white one of these days). Not bad, huh?

Yes, I do have more ribbon that just that. The overflow is stored in the little green box on the first shelf (pictured below) and in the dresser I have in the closet.

On the opposite wall is that old entertainment center armoire that I painted green in this post. It’s not being used for its true purpose in this house because we had to juggle the TVs around to make them work in this floor plan. But it’s great for holding some of my family’s quilts and overflow craft supplies.

Closed--to hide the big mess inside!

Open--because I like letting it all hang out!

I’ve got one more thing to do. The spice rack that’s currently living in the armoire needs to be mounted on the wall to the right of the sewing machine. Spice racks are the perfect size to hold acrylic paint bottles, and they make a colorful display all on their own. You can find an old spice rack at the thrift store almost any time you walk in there.

My craft area is smaller than ten square feet, but it’s big enough to hold everything that I need, and I’m happy with the colorful and fun way that it turned out.

Update: I mounted the spice rack on the wall. All of my paints dried out in the move this summer, so while I work on re-building my collection, I put my vials of glitter on the rack instead. The downside to this plan was that my daughter took the blue glitter and sprinkled it all over her desk and nightstand to “jazz up my room a little, Mommy.” Yeah…glitter defeats even my Dyson!