Quick and easy pantry upgrade

We quadrupled the storage space of this tiny closet by using scrap wood pieces to give a dramatic pantry upgrade on a $0 budget!

Popping in with a quick post today… but one that SO MANY OF US could use!

Do you have a small cupboard in your house that you aren’t using to it’s full potential?

Come on, who doesn’t?

Instead of purchasing wire shelving and then battling with cuts and installation, try this quick and easy pantry upgrade using scrap pieces of wood.

This is the before – a typical small closet built to house brooms, mops and maybe a vacuum…. essentially items that are tall.

But how many brooms, mops and vacuums do you need?

I’m going to suggest the space is better utilized to house more food items, or as a linen closet, or game closet or something where you have more than two items.

Our pantry upgrade solution is as easy as a few pieces of scrap lumber;

I ripped down a few scrap pieces of wood – in my case 2″ x 4’s – to ¾” thick.

We then measured the back of the closet and the sides and cut the boards to length.

Okay, not quite exact length, but we were working with scrap wood, so we didn’t always have perfect lengths. 😉

We measured for the tallest item that would be housed on each shelf and attached the ¾” boards. In this case Chris attached the boards with nails into studs, but I would have used screws and drywall anchors to save the stud-finding. (I always drill several holes before I ever hit a stud 🤦🏻‍♀️)

The pantry shelves themselves were scrap ½” plywood that I had in my cut-off bin. I added a piece of 1 ½” trim to the front of each board using wood glue and nails and then sanded and painted them smooth and even.

The lip on the front of my shelves should have been longer to hide the braces behind, but again – scrap wood.