Pantry Restoration & Renovation – ORC Week 5

Gulp…week 5! Next week is the big reveal, and to say that we still have some work to do feels like an understatement. At this point, I am confident that it will all come together, but I admit to being a glass half full kind of person.

Week 1 :: Week 2 :: Week 3 :: Week 4

This week it was time to push up my sleeves and dig into the dirty work. I took the window apart in order to paint it and so Andy can replace the sash cord this weekend. The jamb screws were covered with paint which made the job more demanding than it needed to be.

(Please, I beg you, do not paint over screws and hardware. It is a nightmare to deal with for window repairs, and it makes an otherwise great paint job look sloppy.)

I finished skim-coating the section of chipped paint on the right side of the pantry. For the walls, I chose Citilite (HGTV Home Citilite HGSW4028) by Sherwin-Williams. It is a nice, clean bright white with just a touch of grey/brown to soften any harshness. Online at the Sherwin-Williams website, my monitor shows it as a light beige. However, with various light sources in BHH, it reads as a gentle white.

In between my chauffeuring duties and my running training, I managed to get one coat of paint on the walls. Andy came home early from his business trip to Colorado yesterday, and he commented that the walls looked nice. I told him that I was saving the second coat for him to do over the weekend. He must have been feeling energetic and motivated because he went right upstairs and put on his painting clothes. We had the following conversation as I remember part of it and made up the rest:

Me: You are going to paint now? Thank you! (I like to think that I thanked him, so I wrote it this way.)
Andy: Sure, but I want everyone to know that I came home after being gone all week, and I jumped in to save the day by putting this second coat of paint on the walls right now. I know how important this One Room Challenge is to you. (Guess which sentence I made up.)
Me: I’ll tell people whatever it takes to get this pantry painted.

Andy is the nonsense in my no-nonsense personality.

We used Valspar Reserve tinted with the Sherwin-Williams color formula. Using this high-quality paint made the job easy. Even painting the ceiling was a breeze, and I usually avoid that task whenever possible by claiming to be too short to do a good job.

In other news, I cleaned years worth of dirt off the cabinets. There was a coating of grimy, waxy yuck at the top at the top of each. I used regular undiluted dish soap and some steel wool to soften the dirt and remove it.

Once that was done, I popped the hardware back on the cabinets and drawers. The new paint along with the restored hardware and the scrubbed woodwork makes the pantry look so fresh and clean. I am excited to begin putting our pantry items back in the cupboards and on the shelves.


Since there is just one week left, I decided that it might be a good time to write up a list of what needs to be done before the big reveal.

• Prime and paint the window, baseboard, and doorjamb.
• Repair sash cord and put the window back together.
• Caulk and touch-up corners as necessary.
• Buy, stain, and seal shelves.
• Organize pantry
• Stage the area and take photos for the reveal.

I am either optimistic or delusional (You decide.), but I think this is all going to come together just fine. I am headed out to buy the shelving and supplies this afternoon, and Andy and I will divide and conquer much of the work this weekend.

Please make sure and visit Calling it Home to see the other fantastic One Room Challenge Guest Participants. When this is all over, I look forward to linking several of my favorite participant projects in a separate post. Their talent and creativity continues to inspire me.

This post is also linked at Decor to Adore Thoughts of Home on Thursday.