100 Year Old Pantry - The Big Reveal

Thank you for your patience.

The time has finally come to open the French door and invite you into my pantry.

Before you can appreciate how far it's come, you may need a reminder of what it looked like when we bought our house.

And, here is what the pantry looks like now.

In comparison to the rest of my very modest sized home, our pantry is enormous.

The 10 foot ceiling provide room for the shelves to span well beyond my reach...which is why we decided to add a library ladder.

AND, I have a confession to make.  I am deathly afraid of heights.  Even being up on this ladder makes my heart race. 

This beautiful ladder was given to us for free.  You can find library ladders at flea markets or even on ebay, though they usually run anywhere from $800 on up.

My talented husband, sanded down the ladder and applied a Briwax in a dark brown finish. The Briwax is a stain and a wax and easily restores the beauty to old wood.

We bought the wheels,

the rollers, the rail and the brackets all from Van Dyke's Restorer's.

And, we installed them ourselves.  By 'ourselves', I really mean, I supervised my husband while he provided the manual labor.

We weren't able to get the angle of the ladder to come out more than about 2 1/2 feet so the steps are not level BUT it is still useable. 

Before the addition of the library ladder, the most impressive thing in our pantry were the walls...

which I hand painted thanks to the painted wall paper tutorial from Jones Designs.

And, just so I don't forget how lucky I am for not only my new library ladder but for everything I am blessed with and by, I gave my sterling silver Goodwill tray a makeover by adding chalkboard contact paper to it and this reminder...

And I am.

Library ladder - Make It Work

There were a lot of good guesses about what we failed to consider in our library ladder install.  Though, they were all good guess, only one person came close to our technical issue...which made me feel so much better since it didn't even cross my mind.

We knew our 12 foot library ladder would need to be cut down by 4 feet.

We brought in the big guns to help with this, father of while wearing heels...my dad.

Of course, as soon as my dad saw the ladder, he mentioned there would be an issue with the angle of the steps. 

Our ladder would need to come out approximately 5 feet, at the bottom, to have the steps level. 

Where most ladders have rungs, the angle of a ladder isn't important.  When a ladder has steps, the angle of the ladder is apparently incredibly important.

My dad suggested we make a new ladder...um, no. 

We decided, we had to make do, we had to try and get the most angle possible from our narrow pantry and 'make it work' {yes another Tim Gunn moment for sure}

And, make it work is what we did.

BUT before I invite you into my new pantry.  Before you can appreciate how lovely it now is. 

You have to see what it looked like when we bought our house.

Tomorrow, I'll dazzle you with the pantry transformation....unless I run into other technical difficulties :)

The Library Ladder Challenge

Installing a library ladder seems straightforward enough, after all, this isn't our first home improvement project.

You order the supplies...

You install those supplies

You clean up the mess your husband leaves behind from installing those supplies.

You admire the beautifully restored ladder that is about to be installed. 

Life is good until you realize there is one thing you didn't take into consideration.

Besides for the obvious, that this very tall and beautiful ladder needed to be cut down, to fit into our pantry {which will be revealed behind that French door soon enough}

What could we possibly failed to have considered?

Give me your best guess.

Cleaning Up My Craft Area

Thanks to October Overhauling, I have reorganized my craft supplies.

The real miracle here is that you can actually see the tile countertop again.

I tend to craft with reckless abandon.  In the process, I can't be bothered with things like cleaning and organizing. 

Instead, I stack and throw and jumble.

But, this often leads to me wasting a lot of time and energy looking for the most random of things. 

I'll admit, organized is probably a more efficient way to go.

That basket, on the top shelf, needs to find a new home because...

In 2 short weeks, we are having our vintage library ladder installed in our pantry.  When it finally gets installed, I'll be showing off the rest of the pantry.

I even cleaned the stack of crafts and supplies that have found a home next to my sofa.  

I purged down to the bare essentials.  The only thing you'll find next to my sofa {besides for cords} a small bag with some of my basic sewing necessities. 

Getting everything organized was actually the easy part.  Keeping it all organized is going to be the real challenge.

One step closer

I have big plans for my butler pantry.

I've mentioned before, I have dreams of installing a library ladder in our pantry. We've been scouring thrift stores, flea markets and perhaps my dad's shed for the perfect ladder. Lo and behold, in passing, we mentioned our plans to my husband's uncle AND it just so happened he had an actual library ladder.

It's about 4 feet longer than we need, but that can easily be corrected. This ladder has so much character and undoubtedly so much history.

I can't wait to see to see this ladder restored to its original condition, after the years of dirt are cleaned off and the ladder is refinished. Thankfully this is a project I'll happily be handing over to my husband.

Looks like our dream is one step closer to becoming a reality.