The Butler's Pantry

We have a little transitional area between the kitchen and living room. The area I'm referring to is directly in front of that huge wooden cabinet. I'm not sure what this area is called or even if it really needs a name. But, I like to have a name for each room... thus a purpose. I have dubbed this area, "The Butler's Pantry". It's highly doubtful that this house has ever had a butler... but it seems a fitting name for the area.

Picture is from the MLS listing.

As I mentioned, it had a huge unusable cabinet. I could never find anything in it and I began to think of it as a black hole for our pantry/dry goods.

My mission was to find an inexpensive china cabinet that we could repurpose for the little recessed area in our little butler's pantry.

During a return visit to Virginia I made it a point to visit one of my favorite junk/thrift shops. If you are in the Virginia area I highly recommend Class and Trash,

We found a mid century china cabinet that I felt would fit perfectly in the recessed area.

Purchased from Class and Trash for $125.00

I knew we could make this work. It was the right dimension for the recessed area (17" x 41") and I was positive with a little paint and a little spackle editing it would look perfect!

Once back home I removed everything from the huge brown cabinets and we carried them out to the garage. Yep, added storage in the man-cave.

I scrubbed the china cabinet down with warm soapy water and then we removed the top hutch from the bottom cabinet and removed the doors. This project was done pre-blog and I don't have a lot of detailed step-by-step photos.




Primed and installed.

We mounted the upper part of the cabinet 14.5" above the base cabinet. We then added spacers (raw wood along the edge of upper cabinet) and hung beadboard in the newly created area between the bottom and upper cabinet.

 

Prime, spackled and roughed in.

Once we were sure everything shored up, we then made a baseboard for the front of the cabinet... to give it a built-in/always been there look.

 

 

Once the two pieces of the cabinets were secured to the wall and the trim was added it was time to  paint. I used ultra pure white paint in high gloss. I have painted all of the trim in our house with it.

 

This is the view from our stairway. Excuse the mess... just keeping it real. *grin*

As you can see we have plenty of room to store our pantry/dry goods.

Now for the big reveal...

Viewed from the kitchen... still need to paint the walls.

I decided that it worked best for me without the upper cabinet doors. Again... I like to have open shelving to display some pretty dishes.

 



 

Taken from the stairway. Excuse the trashcan and broom handle.

Now for a side by side before and after.... Don't you just love those?

The true before and after. It's a little blurry to see... we added new aged bronze knobs and handles.

 

We built/repurposed the hutch back in the beginning of summer and I still smile when I walk through the area. Best Investment Ever!


Thank you for stopping!

Our 1940 Foursquare

We are slowly making our house a home. I thought I would share the house as we first seen it. These photos are the realtor's MLS photos and show the house as it was when the past owners lived there.

Our house is a cute little 1940 house built in the classic style of a "foursquare." They are very common in this area. It isn't very big and it is what it is, nothing hidden... just a simple basic layout that covers 1,300 square feet. The square footage doesn't include the full basement.

 As you come in from the large front porch you enter directly into the foyer/stairwell/living room.





The fireplace is a working gas fireplace. To the left of the fireplace is the doorway that leads into the walk thru butler's pantry and then into the kitchen.

 



Looking at the living room from the front door. 

It's a small living room that leads into the dining through the arched doorway to the right of the fireplace.

Looking from the far end of the living back toward the front door and staircase.
 

 

 

This is the view from the staircase looking down. I'm not sure why they had so many sofas in the MLS pictures??? When we viewed the house, only the gray sofa, mirror and curtains where in the living room.



To the right of the portable stand/window is the backdoor.

This was the view of the kitchen and as you can see... it is VERY small. It was one of our very first projects we worked on. In another post I'll show how we made it work and flow so much better for us.

The sellers kindly left us this rolling cabinet but it just wasn't our style. And, I thought that so much more could be done to make the kitchen more functional. To the right of the rolling cabinet is the back door that leads out to a little porch and patio area in our backyard.
 


This is the view of ALL of the counter space that was available.

The white door, in the background, is directly across from walk-thru butler's pantry and leads to the side entry off of the driveway.  


View of all the built-in kitchen cabinets.

See that little teeny tiny cabinet to the right of the dishwasher? That was the only drawer in the whole kitchen. No really, the only drawer and it was only 9" wide.
 


Looking back towards the walk-thru butler's pantry.

See the wooden cupboards in the background? That is the walk thru butler's pantry I mentioned. It doesn't look anything like this now. [huge smile]  Again, I'll share in another post.

As I said, these are the MLS photos and they didn't have a lot of views of the kitchen area.

To the left of the refrigerator you can walk through a doorway into the dining room.




Viewed from the arch way in the living room.

The dining room is a very good size and accommodates my family with no problems. As you can see, there is plenty of natural light.

The doorway on the far left side leads into the kitchen. You can get a little glimpse of the back door.



Plenty of sunlight streaming into the dining room.



Looking towards the living room.

That's it for the tour of the first floor of our house. As I said, it's a small house but it really does work perfectly for us. In the next post I will show the upstairs.

Thank you for stopping by!

Nan