Power Tools Required

It appears as though my posting frequency isn't improving any, so I thought it was time to show a "real" project I completed towards the end of June. I had been delaying the move-in and de-box process as long as possible, so that I could keep all of my tools out and have easy access to projects before things were in place. However, as I was starting to face the deadline of when I would have to be completely out of my rental, it became imperative that I had a place I could store and prepare food. I really lucked out in terms of kitchen storage at this house, as it came with two fairly large pantries - compared to the single open shelf I was using previously, this seems pretty luxe! I will likely want to put some thought into how I want the pantry area designed down the road, so for now, I wanted to do a "temporary" cleanup that could still last a couple years if necessary.

For context, below are a couple of the "before" shots. The shelves were all 10" boards side-by-side, with a couple of layers of shelf paper on top. The way the shelves sit behind the door jamb, it is necessary to leave a little space between the shelves and the wall, so that also led to areas where debris was able to gather over time.

After all the boards were removed, before the pantries were cleaned and primed, the below photo is what I was dealing with. As you could imagine, just priming the walls made quite a difference in the ambiance.

The longest part of this entire project was actually priming the walls and ceilings - with the wall supports, it ended up being a lot of picky brush painting and fewer opportunities to knock out large portions with the roller. However, even with two coats of primer taking a good chunk of a day, this luckily ended up being only a daylong project; I think this is good every now and then to keep the momentum going.

So, to the fun part. With lumber (read plywood) being so incredibly expensive at the moment, I decided to go with particle board for the large shelves, and pine just along the top half shelves. A fun fact about Home Depot is that they will cut lumber you wish to purchase on a radial arm saw or panel saw, as long as it's longer than a foot. In theory you could give fairly precise measurements, but I prefer to do the final cut myself after measuring three or four times. Home Depot actually has a section with 2' x 4' panels of different materials, including plywood and the particle board that I wanted to buy. However, it's more expensive to buy that dimension plank than it is to buy a 4'x8' sheet and have them cut the sheet into 2'x4' sheets on the panel saw, so I chose to put their panel saw to work. That gave me pieces small enough to work with on my table saw at home.

Each pantry is a slightly different width, and the depth changes as you move upwards. Therefore, I decided to take the shelves one measurement and one cut at a time to prevent heartache. Luckily, that tedious method paid off, and I ended up with shelves that fit in snugly but can still be easily removed. You'll see in the photo below that I had to leave the same small gap that was present in the existing condition to clear the door frame and wall supports, but by not securing the shelves in place, I can pop them out and clean the supports when needed. The freshly cut wood makes the pantries smell new, and I am now able to safely store my food - a win/win for a day's worth of work.

I'm now noticing that these after photos are pretty dull and visually unexciting, so I'll try to up my game for next time.