We did a project recently that has been on our “want-to-do” list for awhile. Our kitchen pantry has wire shelves in it, and we wanted to take them out and install wooden shelves. It took us 3 solid days, but we finally made our “want” turn into reality!

Here is our pantry before…

First step: taking down all the wire shelves. Those wire shelf brackets really tore up the wall in several places!

Stephen spackled all of the holes and let them dry. He put a fan on the spots, and they dried completely in about 5 hours!

Sanding time! Sanding these spots makes a HUGE mess. Stephen put plastic over the door to help prevent any drywall dust from getting in the kitchen.

Look at the floor now! Bleh!

Now, the spots are filled and ready to be painted over.

I used the Sherwin Williams color Repose Gray for the paint color in the pantry. It’s subtle but definitely stands out against the white trim.

We got wood for the shelves, cleats, and trim. The wood for the shelves were 1x12s and were pre-primed. I painted all of them white.

Stephen did all of the measurements for where we actually wanted the shelves to go. It was nice because we could measure certain items (like tall boxes of cereal, water bottles, etc) and plan around them.

He screwed 1x3s in the wall for the shelves to sit on. He wrapped them on the sides as well.

Using 1×4 pieces with pocket holes in them, he screwed shelf holders into the wall boards. these are what the shelves sat on and we’re screwed into for additional support. He put wood filler in the wall boards to fill in the screw holes.

He continued adding the shelves…

He nail-gunned in trim onto the fronts of the shelves.

He sanded all of the wood filler spots. I went back and painted things white (like making sure any supports underneath that might be seen were totally white).

Stephen caulked any gaps and I polyurethaned over the tops of the shelves, so the paint would be protected.

We’re done! It looks SO much better! The shelves are 3/4” less deep than our wire shelves, which doesn’t really affect what we can fit on them, but man… it makes the pantry feel so much bigger!

We also added a whole extra shelf on one side. The other side will hold out spice rack, so we left a top shelf off of that side. Check it out now!

Thing are much more balanced, and nothing falls through any cracks now. It’s amazing!