The Interior DIYer
CIL Paint

Our Victorian pantry – before

Despite our new home being a Victorian, there’s no area of our house that needs to be worked on or upgraded with any urgency. Our home is very livable in it’s current condition, which is what gave me some design paralysis since moving in in September [nothing was urgent but I have 100 ideas for small-to-medium projects but how do I prioritize them when none of them are urgent, okay I’ll just sit here and overthink everything until I spiral out of control]. Aside from the basement, the only space in our home that was questionable was our kitchen pantry.

I will now take you on the grand tour that is the most murdery pantry you’ve ever laid eyes on. In preparation of viewing our pantry, I suggest acclimatizing yourself by first watching The Blair Witch Project, then The Thing quickly followed by Hereditary and you will find yourself in the right mindset for our pantry.

I trust you have gone off and watched said suggested movies.

You are now acclimatized to view our pantry:

It’s the only section of our house that hasn’t been updated [or cleaned, it seems] since 1948. It is a very functional little space under the kitchen stairs and we used it right up until yesterday morning, when I woke up and decided that was the day I was going to update it.

The shelves are supported by the bottom of the back of each step. I have no intention of replacing the shelves as they’re perfectly functional and I think it would be wasteful to get rid of them. Each shelf is made out of old floorboards, which at some point were covered in contact paper. I’m hoping to update them by simply recovering them in a new layer of contact paper.

As for the rest of the pantry, I will work on filling in all the cracks and gaps, removing the horror-movie array of nails and giving everything a fresh coat of [washable] white paint. Or seven.

I’m hoping to finish updating [and scrubbing and cleaning] our pantry by Monday morning, when I return to work after the Christmas holidays. Because I have achieved absolutely nothing over the Christmas holidays other than eat my own weight in soft cheese and chocolate while entertaining friends and family. This is the equivalent of me starting an essay the night before it’s due. Look! I was productive! See!

Artwork

A simple update with paint

I made a really simple update this weekend to a kitschy rose I bought in Value Village a few weeks ago. The matte porcelain flowers were a shade of purple I wasn’t particularly in love with and they were also worn and chipped in a few places. I grabbed my favourite tin of Classic Burgundy paint from CIL and painted two quick coats of paint on the petals, front and back.

Though this was a really minuscule project [so small infact that I need a magnifying glass to read the likelihood of it being allowed to be even called a ‘project’], it was a kind of project I need right now; something that can be done in 20 minutes.

Have you worked on a tiny project recently? Sometimes I love tiny projects. They’re enough to get finished with a toddler running around in the background and also make me feel like I’ve achieved something other than perpetually cleaning up after said toddler tornado.