Transformation Tuesday: Butler’s Pantry

When we thought we were going to build a house I was in the process of sketching up some house plans, I mean some really rough drafts of sketches, like I’m talking me hand drawing with a pencil and paper type drafts because I had looked and looked forever for a floor plan that I wanted and I couldn’t find anything I was looking for. I wanted a floor plan that had a master bedroom on the main floor with his and her closets, a big open family room/kitchen with a large butler’s pantry or prep kitchen. When we looked at this home, it didn’t have everything I was looking for, but I could see there was potential to make it pretty close to what I wanted. Doug and I had a vision of what it could be right away. It was hard to explain it to others, but we knew it could work and that was super exciting and also a little scary because what if what we envisioned didn’t really work in real life?

This video was of my idea of how I could get a prep kitchen/ butler’s Pantry in our house. This was taken the day we got the keys to our house.

The plan worked, but it didn’t quite work exactly as we had hoped. We ended up having to take the jetted tub out of the bathroom to make our entryway into the pantry, which I had hoped to not have to do, just because it seems like you should never take out a full bath for a powder room, but a full bath really didn’t make much sense, there isn’t another bedroom upstairs, besides the master so why would any of my visitors feel the need to take a tub or shower anyway? LOL We did make use of the plumbing and put in a prep sink. I originally didn’t think we needed it but I’m so glad we put that in.

We were getting rid of our laundry room ( I know that sounds totally wrong, I will explain that on another post) So we had all the cupboards from the laundry room to use and I was getting rid of some of our upper cabinets in the kitchen so we decided to repurpose them all into the pantry. I wasn’t sure how it would all work out, I knew we wanted to keep the old appliances from the kitchen too so that I could have more than one oven and microwave for when we had parties or dinners. I also wanted to keep the extra fridge because we no longer have room in our garage for our drink fridge outside anymore. I also knew how hard it was to get appliances right now in these crazy times. Because we were using the old stuff I didn’t want it to be seen from the entryway, so I decided I wanted them out of the sight line, but I had no clue if it would fit or even workout but with the help of our contractor ( shout out to Precise Construction AKA Ty Flynn) we were able to come up with a pretty good layout and it worked out better than I could even imagine! I picked a fun tile for the floor, because I knew we wouldn’t have enough wood for the pantry and because I loved the floors I did in our pantry in our last house but I didn’t want to just do the same thing, so when I found this tile I knew it was it, it just seemed to match this house.

Because I was using all the older cabinets the only way to make them look cohesive was to paint them. These had lots of dings and knots in them and I wasn’t totally sure how they would turn out but they turned out awesome. I decided to paint these cabinets two toned. Our kitchen we painted darker because I painted the whole house a nice bright white (SW Snowbound). I love the feel of an all white house and even an all white kitchen, but decided to go for a dark cabinet because I think it would of felt too white with how tall our ceilings are. So In the Pantry I went with Dark on the bottom cabinets ( SW Peppercorn) and white on the top and on the other side of the room where the white appliances are. I decided to paint them all white so that the white appliances blended in instead of standing out. I really liked how that turned out.

showing you how the dark cabinets flow from the kitchen to the pantry.

I chose a stacked subway tile with a little bit of pattern and distressing for the backsplash to give it a little bit more character than your basic subway tile. I also continued with the brass hardware we used in the kitchen. We decided to use the same quartz throughout the house I didn’t want a super busy quartz and didn’t want a plain white either so we decided on Calacatta Acorn. We switched out the chandelier and added a few can lights too to help brighten up the place. I decided to add a few of the floating shelves like we had done in the kitchen to give a cohesive look. I also added a little bench seat, cause you never know when you will need to take a rest while getting your snacks. LOL

I tend to gravitate more towards the modern look, but this house is a French Tudor, So I tried to do a mix of modern farmhouse with a twist of boho, and a little bit of Janna ( not sure what to call that) LOL but I think it works, at least I like it, and that’s really all that matters!