A Stylish Pantry Makeover for my Mom

Out of all the projects I’ve done so far, the one that I’m revealing today is near and dear to me. I’m not at my house this time around, I’m at my Mommy’s house. My mom moved into her new home, with her new husband in October 2020. It’s a beautiful newly built home, that has a kitchen built for a cook, which is exactly what my mom loves to do...COOK.

She’s from Guyana, and one of her ways for keeping up with her Caribbean roots is through food. She’s the best cook I know! And with that, comes her obsession with sauces, experimental ingredients, and a kitchen that looks like a literal stock room of a mini grocery store. The fridge and the pantry overflows with food!

She’s from Guyana, and one of her ways for keeping up with her Caribbean roots is through food. She’s the best cook I know! And with that, comes her obsession with sauces, experimental ingredients, and a kitchen that looks like a literal stock room of a mini grocery store. The fridge and the pantry overflows with food!

So my first Home Depot project at her house is to redesign her pantry with a ton of storage solutions and design it for a very stylish Mama! And since it’s so close to Mother’s Day, why not call it a Mother’s Day gift project!

Her current pantry was disorganized, (she did attempt to add some trays and bins), and it also wasn’t sturdy enough to handle the amount of groceries she packs into it. Like most builder grade homes, pantries and closets have those wire racks, and nine times out of ten, they’re not nailed into studs. So my mom’s pantry racks usually ends up on a mean lean overtime.

The first order of business was to clear the pantry out! What I thought would take me 30 minutes, ended up taking me a little over two hours. Needless to say, my sister and I had to have a pep talk with Mommy!

She’s clearly not aware of what she has, and just buys the same thing over and over. This is another reason why this pantry makeover is so important, because the end result will better show her what she has!

To jazz it up, we’re going to replace the light fixture with something cuter, add peel and stick wallpaper, wicker baskets and other cute storage items. Now, let me say that I would love to take things like her flour and sugar and add them to jars, but I know that she will not keep up with it over time. So, keep that in mind the next time you’re designing someone else’s space. Just because something sounds like a good idea, or it works for you, doesn’t mean it’s meant for them. So instead I got her these really cutedeep baskets that will adorn her shelves, and hold a lot of her items.

We built L-shaped shelves using 2x2s and 3 ½ inch construction screws and attached the framing to studs. Then covered the framing with ½ inch MDF on top, ⅛ inch hardboard tempered panel underneath the shelves. To cover the face of the shelf we used ¼ inch sande plywood cut down to size. Now in order to get all this to my mom’s house, we did rent a flatbed truck from The Home Depot for just $19 for 75 minutes. We tried fitting everything into our Jeep but that was pretty naive of us.

To make the install process easier, I used clamps which were extremely useful and helpful. Also, having the right tools is helpful too. But don’t worry about having to invest in tools, because The Home Depot has a Tool Rental departmentthat pretty much has EVERYTHING you need to get small projects like this done! Check your local store to see what’s in stock from power drills, to paint sprayers, to miter saws...you can rent tools for a fraction of the cost of buying it. Don’t let the lack of tools stop you from that DIY.

To save time and money I purchased stocked wall cabinets from The Home Depot for the pantry makeover, and set them on a platform to make it counter height. I then sprayed the cabinet (and shelves) a beautiful gray toned color with Behr Cabinet and trim enamel in a satin finish. The paint itself works really well, and all I needed was about a gallon for the whole pantry including the shelves.

It’s now time for the peel and stick wallpaper which was so easy to install. I recommend applying the wallpaper in cut sections to avoid the paper accidentally sticking to itself.

For the countertops, I chose a beautiful butcher block, to break up all the gray, and add some warmth to the space. You can purchase this online or on The Home Depot Mobile App and pick it up in the store. This saves me so much time vs walking throughout the store trying to find everything. They will even bring it to your car!