I lied

We'd better get this renovation wrapped up soon because we keep having new ideas. This time I'm placing partial blame on my brother. We were visiting my parents this past weekend and a few of us were discussing some possibilities for a kitchen renovation that my parents have been saying they might do for the last 5 years...My brother threw out the possibility of expanding the kitchen by taking out an adjacent half bathroom... and I had a light-bulb moment.

We have a pretty small half bathroom right as we walk in from the garage that isn't necessarily needed. We have a full bathroom just down the hall from the living areas that would be just as convenient for us to use. My original idea was to demo the whole thing completely and install floor-to-ceiling cabinets for "mudroom storage" -- you know, all the coats, hats, shoes, etc. I was a little hesitant to mention the idea to Luke because I knew he is getting a little reno-weary and he's looking forward to getting the house put back together -- but, I decided to run it by him and was surprised that he was more enthusiastic about it than I anticipated. He even improved upon my idea -- he suggested we turn the area into a pantry instead. In our current kitchen layout we have a tall cabinet with pullouts that we use as our pantry, but it is small and it sure would be nice to have some more space for food, small appliances, paper goods, etc.  We have had a few discussions about how we could add more pantry space, but really couldn't figure out how to accomplish it in the space we had. So, after Luke's suggestion I was even more excited about the idea. Also a huge bonus is the wall won't have to be as deep, so it will open up the entryway a bit. Right now it feels just a little bit tight, so win-win.

Straight ahead is the entrance from the garage. The room to the right is the half-bath we've opted to demolish:

This is the view from the entryway. We'll keep the coat closet you can see in the photo below, but at the edge of the closet is where the wall will end all the way across. The current wall extends about 6 feet into the room, but our pantry only needs to be about 3 feet deep, so we'll gain a whole 3 feet of space in front of the pantry and open up the sight-lines from the front door to the family room.



This is my inspiration photo for the pantry:

source

I love the doors, bracketed shelves and I love the size. Big enough to hold a lot, but not so deep that things get lost. My organizing style is to spread everything out so I can see everything at once. Hopefully we can pull it off!