Coat closet turned pantry!

As far back as I can remember I have dreamed of having a pantry.  I love our kitchen, it has a pantry-ish cabinet with slide out drawers, but it is definitely too small.  We have a coat closet right outside the kitchen that was rarely used and was turning into a junk collector.  One day when I was pouting that I had no pantry and no place to store extra stuff and it hit me! Turn the coat closet into a pantry! I have no idea why it took me 6 months to realize what a brilliant idea that was.  It only took me another 3 months to make it actually happen. But alas- it is done, and it is glorious.  Just imagine, a place to store extra food and supplies.  No more running to the store for tp because we ran out? No more eating out every night because there is nothing to eat in the house?  What a great concept.

I do not have a before picture because I just started ripping it apart without thinking. So here we have the during and after shots:

During:

See the two stripes going around there? That would have driven me insane.

So I sanded, primered and painted again!

After!:

Isn't it amazing?  I would like to think so.  It still needs one more shelf so that's why the spacing of the shelves is wonky. We thought painting it a bright fun color would be exciting.  The door will be shut 99% of the time and every time I open it, it will make me smile =].

Instead of buying the expensive shelves made to go on the brackets, we just had wood cut to size and covered it ourselves with checkered contact paper.  Had we bought the shelves it would have cost somewhere around $80 instead of the $25 we spent on wood.

Let me tell you something about myself, I am a bit of a perfectionist, yet I am extremely impatient.  Oxymoron much?  I think so.  So after my rampage tearing out the shelves and rod, I patched the holes and almost immediately painted.  Bad idea.  I didn't wait long enough for the spackle to dry, and I didn't prime the areas where the shelves had been.  So I got to re-spackle the holes, prime those areas, and paint again! In the end it was worth it (though I should have taken the time to do the proper steps in the first place).  I LOVE my pantry.  I have grand plans for awesome containers for my dry goods (flour, sugar and whatnot) but I sadly do not have unlimited cash, so they will have to wait.

Cost breakdown:

Paint (I had to buy a second quart because my impatientness)-
Tracks-
Brackets (12)-
Wood for shelves-
Contact paper-Free! (leftover from when we covered our nasty apartment shelves)