Throwing back to when I Built my own Rolling Pantry

Man this throwback every month has sure been giving me some strange and cool memories. This one came out back in October of 2015 and I just remembered when I was in the middle of building it my dad stopped by for a visit and was just staring for a minute at all the power tools, wood, saw dust and me in the middle of the kitchen. He was like, “What are doing?” LOL “Oh just your daughter building a rolling pantry, making a total mess!” He helped me finish it and get it all stood up and rolled into place.

Unfortunately I had to eventually replace this pantry because it was absolutely destroying the floor.

IT WEIGHED ABOUT A THOUSAND POUNDS.

But I actually miss it! It worked awesome for canned goods and the like and stood on its own as well and rolled really smoothly.

I replaced it with a much lighter alternative that, of course, is too flimsy for canned goods so, in this case it was really a give and take. I miss the one I built but I just couldn’t live with it making grooves in our hardwood floors anymore.

I actually ended up taking it entirely apart and recycling all of it to build shelves in our laundry room.

Still though I was really proud of it when I finished it!

Its pretty amazing to read back and realize how much has changed here at Grandma’s house! Here is the original post:

I knew from the very beginning with Grandma’s house that the kitchen would end up being a bit of a galley. At first I leaned to using the closet under our stairs for our pantry but it worked out too well for that to be our wood storage.

I also knew that we would probably have enough storage to make it work without a pantry but upon running into several, narrow, rolling pantrys on Pinterest (Check out this one, isn’t it gorgeous!?) I knew exactly what I would be building!

I have lived in several houses now with the nightmare situation of having a refrigerator smack up beside a wall, making it impossible to open it more then half way.

How on earth anyone manages to design a kitchen with this horrible flaw is absolutely beyond my comprehension. So, moving the refrigerator over a little (so I could open it fully) meant I created the perfect little hideaway for a rolling pantry.

I had a couple of things I needed to do to “prep” the spot first before I got to building the pantry. It had to sit far enough out from the wall to clear the light switches so I added two 2x4s to give it the support it needed and also to bring it out for the clearance. I also added this going straight down from the cabinet above it.

(Meanwhile I was also building the above the refrigerator cabinet so I could trim this pantry out along with the cabinet above it)

I chose to build the whole thing out of 2x8s knowing that that would give me a 7 inch depth. From there I took some measurements. To get the height I also made sure to account for the height of the casters I chose. To get the depth I made sure that the pantry would not actually hit the wall in the back.

It was just a case then of getting all of my boards cut and screwing it all together. I chose to put the shelves about every foot.

The casters I chose DO NOT swivel, I made certain to get the ones that were set in one direction and then, when I attached them with screws, I put them as widely spaced on the bottom of the pantry as I could.

Because of this the pantry actually stands on its own as long as no one (or any big dogs…) bumps it, though it will never really need to.

I had several pieces of bead board left over from when we covered my ceilings so I’ve been using it pretty liberally for all of the kitchen cabinets etc. I simply cut a full piece of bead board with a jig saw and tacked it to the back of the pantry with my brad nailer.

Unless I was standing literally outside the house on the deck, with the back door open, I would not be able reach for anything on the other side of the pantry anyway.

You can see how out of level my floors are by looking at the gap between the pantry and refrigerator, oh well, its an old house!

You can also see I had already tacked on the 1×4 trim running down both sides of the pantry but I still had to add the trim to each of the shelves and the front.

Trimming out the whole pantry was a little tricky when it came to the material I had to work with. (I own a small car that will not accommodate much and we’re ten miles from town so I just work with what I’ve got most of the time if I can.)

All I had in the garage at this point was either 1x8s or 1x4s… and I couldn’t use either of them to make me happy. So, I ended up using one 1×8 and one 1×4. 

You can see how I over hang the 1×8 by quite a bit so when the pantry rolled back the 1×8 would hit the bottom of the top cabinet and all along the right side of the 2×4 brace I put on the wall (which I also covered in a 1×4).

When the pantry is rolled away it is completely supported and is not so deep that it hits the wall behind it.

I added 1×4 trim to each one of the shelves. It tidies up the look of the whole thing but it also created a lip to help keep everything on the shelf. At some point I may make this pantry a bit prettier (much like so many of those amazing ones on Pinterest) but as it is the bare wood is ok by me.

And there you have it! After two coats of paint and two coats of poly on the front of it I added a simple chrome handle and am absolutely over the moon with how much storage I have!

I emptied out my cabinets of ALL of my dried goods, baking goods, pasta and canned goods and they all fit!

And I was finally able to bring everything into the kitchen and store it there. No more crock pots in my entry bench! And no more random appliances taking up room in my hutch!

Some updates have happened since this post! Check out the entire kitchen reveal post here!