Upcycled Pallet Mini Pantry

A few changes have happened as of late in my kitchen/dining room area.

I have wanted to take down the upper cabinets above my peninsula that separates the kitchen and dining room for the last little while. The reason being it would open up the space and I would also never have to bump my head up against it again!

These are the cupboards I’m talking about… (sorry for the bad lighting in the picture – it really is a nice warm taupe wall – not yellow!)

It would seem that after the first time, I would figure it out and it wouldn’t happen again, but alas! I have many times crouched too far over my work and come up with a WHACK! As you can imagine – it doesn’t do much for making my day!

But, I use those cupboards as my pantry (because I am not fortunate enough to have a large built in pantry!) so I needed something to replace that storage first. Being the cheapskate that I am – I decided to try to use as many free materials as I could! That meant going to a local store that lets us take wooden pallets off their hands. My husband found some really nice ones with 1×6 boards on them. I loosely followed Ana White’s simplest armoire instructions but used the boards I had. This meant that each side, the bottom and the top consist of 2 1×6 boards. I used extra boards at the top and bottom to air nail the boards to in order to hold it all together! I also used cleats to hold the side which are nailed to the side and hold the 2 boards as one also. It turned out really sturdy that way! I think it adds to it’s vintage vibe too.

I knew I wanted it to fit in between where the kitchen cabinets end and the dining room starts so that meant it could only be 36” wide. I didn’t want it to be overly tall and take up lots of visual space so the 48” length of the pallets made 4’ the perfect height!

I even made rail and stile doors for the first time with some 1/4” plywood I had laying around. They are definitely not perfect, but they are functional and I’m happy with how they turned out! I wanted to go for a rustic antique vibe so I wouldn’t have to worry about being perfect anyway. That is difficult for me because I tend to be a perfectionist – but I’m working on it!

Here is the inside. The shelves are really close so they can be used for cans – by laying them on their sides. As you can see I used old shelf boards from the old bathroom closet and some other miscellaneous boards I had around for all the shelves.

I added a small 1/4 round edge to keep the cans from rolling off the shelves.

My plan for the finish was to paint it a light green and distress it by sanding the edges, etc. and then applying a dark glaze to highlight the knots and rough sawn edges. I got the green painted and really like it right now. Besides – I’m not that patient and I wanted those cabinets down! When I get tired of that finish I can always distress and glaze later!

Anyway, here is the finished product.

I added the old fashioned wood latches for character AND to hold my not-so-perfect doors closed!

Here are a few shots of the imperfections that make it rustic – these will really stand out when I get around to glazing it!

One of the knot holes goes all the way through!

I am really proud of how it turned out and it is a storage mule!

I need to prop the back of my can shelves up just slightly so that the cans roll to the front naturally and I have some other plans for storing all my pasta noodles. We love pasta here! But I can see everything that I have and will hopefully use up some of the duplicates that I accumulated from my previous storage situation. That will give me even more room.

A side benefit is that our TV (on a lazy susan) fits on top of the cabinet perfectly. It is much easier to see from both the dining room and kitchen now.

This is a very narrow cabinet – only 11 inches deep so it doesn’t take up much room in the dining area. I had been trying to find a china cabinet or buffet or hutch to fit the area but everything was too wide, tall or deep. This way I got a custom cabinet for a fraction of the cost. I only needed to purchase hinges and the 1/4” plywood for the back.

So – this is just another way to use free pallet wood. Ya gotta get ya some!

Next up – demolition of the cupboards!!!