Life of an Auntie And Mum

We’ve been in our house15months now and still have lots of little bits to sort out.  When we moved in I saw potential in 2 little spaces in our kitchen one been the understairs cupboard and the other been like a utility that was called the “coal house”.  The previous owners used both as junk storage.  This is what I have done and it hasn’t cost me much money either.  Just proves you can do a lot with small spaces without breaking the bank.

The utility

This room once was a storage room, painted in a dark horrible colour that made it look dull and dirty, which housed a wooden storage unit full off rubbish, a washing machine, fridge/freezer and general junk. I gave it a lick of white bright paint to make the room look bigger.

It is not a very big room but it is big enough for what I need it for.  There was no worktop there when we moved it, but I said I wanted to add a worktop to be able to put things in there e.g the microwave to keep the worktops in the kitchen free.  So to save a bit of money I phoned round kitchen places to see if I could get a pieces (I only need 1metre length) for as cheap as possible,  Well after phoning round I managed to finally find a company that had a perfectly sized piece for…FREE.  There is still plenty of room aswell both on top and underneath.

Understairs storage cupboard

Again, when we moved in this room was used as a junk room,  We cluttered the room with dog food, alcohol/Beer – Obviously most important thing, coats, ironing board and anything that would fit really.  Then I thought one day I want to maximise this space and make it in to something that was useful.  I said to my dad, can we make this room into a pantry?   He didn’t see why we couldn’t.  With me and my fiance working full-time it was difficult to find time to help my dad get it sorted, other than weekends but we always seemed to have something on.  Finally a few long months May bank holiday Monday arrived and my parents said they would come round and help get it started.  This is what it looked like before, a shell that we used as a junk store, coats, paint, alcohol, ironing board, dog stuff and more….

After a few weeks of cutting and prepping wood and painting it all to give it a nice finish.  Then it was time to cut some battens to create the supports to fix the brackets on to.  It’s not a difficult task but took a good few hours to complete, lots of drilling, screwing and sawing later, These are the end results.

As you can see we made sure there was plenty of spare room at the bottom for the alcohol.

I am in love with my pantry/understairs cupboard (Sad I know), but it has given us so much more space to utilise in other cupboards and drawers.

What spaces have you changed in your house?