I suppose calling this a pantry make-over might be a bit of a stretch, but living in an older home means that storage is always at a premium. We have two staircases leading to our basement ~ one from the kitchen and one from the back door. I know ~ weird. The stairwell off the kitchen had slowly become a dumping ground for items that might be found in the pantry of a newer home. We did have some insufficient wire shelving on the wall, but it held very little and thus it seemed that items would slowly collect on the floor along the wall as well as on a large shelf in the basement. There was no rhyme nor reason to how things were stored and therefore, we often missed buying things we needed and over bought things we didn’t need. It was one of those things that constantly drove me about our house.

On the first Saturday of spring break, I was taking laundry down to the basement when the solution suddenly came to me. For months (maybe years) I had been trying to figure out how to solve this ongoing storage problem. I had measured and searched the web and just couldn’t come up with what I thought was a viable solution. It’s funny how ideas come to you at the strangest times. Such was the case with this. It was literally something I had tossed around for sometime, but just couldn’t seem to figure out how to make it work. The stupid part was there really wasn’t anything to figure out. The answer was right in front of me, I just had to shift my thinking.

The best part was that I had everything I needed to make it happen immediately and so that’s exactly what I did. I came up from putting the load of clothes in and set to work on transforming the dog’s breakfast at the top of the stairs.

You may remember the sliding spice storage racks I made to fit between my wall and fridge. I used old book shelves that were being discarded because they weren’t stable enough to be safe. They worked perfectly in the space and made for great storage.

An old book display rack was where this project all began.

Here is a “before” shot of the book display rack.

Here is the spice rack with holes filled and ready for sanding.

Here is a shot of both shelves.

I love the way the two pieces line-up so nicely and fill the gap between the wall and fridge.

I had two more sections that I had considered for can storage, but the depth of the shelves was too shallow and wouldn’t work. Over the last few years, I measure and tested cans again and again hoping I could somehow use the shelves as a pantry, but I just couldn’t figure out a solution….until this day! It finally dawned on me that the peg board backs on the shelves simply slid inside a groove about a quarter of an inch inside the top and bottom shelves. All I had to do was remove the back and let the wall of the stairwell become the new back! This quarter of an inch was all I needed to fit the cans and other small pantry items. I set to work and it was literally as easy as removing the screws from the tops and sliding the backing out. I planned on sitting the shelves on the floor and then securing them with an L bracket or something for safety, but when Tim learned of my plan, he offered to mount them up off the floor. I can not believe how well they work and it was such an easy fix in the end. The stairwell is now free of clutter and works perfectly for our needs. Our basement isn’t finished and so we don’t have to worry about company going up and down the stairs. If and when we ever do finish the basement, we plan to make the back stairs the main entrance to the basement anyway. So happy!

BEFORE: Disfuntional kitchen storage at the top of the stairs.

BEFORE: A nasty space that simply did not work.

The pegboard back simply slid out of the grooves once the top was removed.

WIth the back removed.

Mounted and ready to fill. They work so great because they were originally made with a small lip along the front edge to keep books from sliding out. The same is true for the cans and boxes I’ve now had stored on them.

AFTER: Upcycled book racks make awesome new kitchen storage area.