Trent and Julian

Trent and Julian

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Pantry tour

My love of pantries began with my love of old homes,probably on the show This Old House!! It is one of my happiest memories of my childhood,watching the show with my mom. My mom loved that show and although we never did renovate our home growing up ,my mom would clip out ideas from magazines and file them away.I have kept up that tradition,lol! I call my notebooks with all the magazine clippings my "dream books". I have been lucky enough to have some of my dreams come true!!! One of those dreams was to have my own pantry! I have been obsessed with pantries especially after watching my favorite movie " Practical Magic".The whole house would be my dream home really but I learned in order to manifest your dreams it starts with appreciation for what you have. I do LOVE my home it is small but it has a charm about it.When we came to look at this house my hubby and I thought it had good bones,lol! We have been lucky enough to transform it into my little dream. So back to my pantry,this home was built in 1898 and it is almost the exact replica of Trent's grandparents home in Harvey,Il. Very strange since we live in Wisconsin but not so much if you believe in coincidences.I really loved grandma's sink which was an old cast iron farmhouse sink and the first room that reminded me of their home was our kitchen which has a huge cast iron farmhouse sink! The Harvey home had a pantry which was long and narrow in the back of the kitchen but our home had a huge kitchen with no pantry! Our house had a side enclosed porch that was small and wasted space.We basically didn't use it except to let the dogs in and out to the yard. One day about 3 or so years ago I told Trent that we should convert the porch into a pantry.He thought it was to much work and basically said NO.I kept talking about it and a year later he caved and said we could turn it into a pantry.Well, we started working on it and immediately stopped because the floor was sagging and we would have to rip it out and reinforce it and it was too much money.I still imagined the pantry and talked about it and then this June while we were cleaning out the porch ,the boys told me " dad is ripping out the floor" . So the pantry project began! My hubby redid the floor joists and re built the inside of the pantry!! We added wood ship lap looking walls and shelves ,a new hard wood floor ,electric and lighting ( which never existed before)and we have a dream pantry!!! The exterior is still being worked on but it now is to cold outside to complete.Hopefully it will hold up until we can complete it but here is a tour .