My parents had a custom home built for our family back in the early 1960s (I was very, very young). The house had the latest modern conveniences, especially in the kitchen. One of those conveniences was a pantry with a two-level lazy Susan to conveniently present whatever my mom was looking for with a simple spin of the wheel (sometimes it presented me, if I was playing on the lazy Susan at the time. We younger kids thought this was fascinating - no more going down to the cellar for the flour or sugar.

It all seems so primitive now, though, as the pantry has become 'a kitchen within.’ The Pantry is a room of its own, sometimes even expanded into a Scullery Kitchen as today's kitchens are approaching truly gourmet level. For most folks today, the pantry is an overflow area to the kitchen, and is designed to look and to serve as not merely a storage area, but a mini-kitchen in itself.

If the pantry is still a cabinet, it is a bank of cabinets with roll-out shelves to make reaching the stuff in the back much easier. Sometimes it doubles as an appliance garage, with the microwave oven, toaster, blender, and mixer in place, plugged in, and ready to use. But if space allows, the pantry becomes its own domain, with open shelves, coffee bar, microwave station, and loads and loads of storage. A second sink, and even a second dishwasher, takes the load off the main kitchen.

Sometimes we announce the pantry with a frosted glass door, other times we hide it completely with faux cabinet doors - but it's there, and it has taken on an outsized importance in the modern kitchen, the 'kitchen within.’

We at Designed for Downtown, LLC strive to incorporate the latest labor-saving and user-friendly features in our renovation and custom home designs, including the most beautiful as well as most functional pantries.

Give us a call today to start the conversation about how to make your kitchen work better by adding a 'kitchen within.'

In our last blog post, we spoke of the home renovation process as a metamorphosis, the transformation of the tired caterpillar into the beautiful butterfly. To carry that analogy a little further, if you look closely at the butterfly you can still see the former caterpillar. In a similar way, we at AJH Renovations, LLC and Designed for Downtown, LLC will design the renovation of a mature home so that the shadows of the former house remain, only beautified and accented. This process is called reclamation, and it’s both a lot of fun and a lot of work.

Due to the conditions of construction fifty or more years ago, and the rigors of the modern International Building Code, we are not often able to reuse existing materials in the same use for the renovation. Hardwood flooring may have been refinished one too many times to allow it to be reused as flooring, original windows are usually single-pane and no longer meet energy standards, lighting fixtures were installed before UL ratings and are probably no longer safe enough for reuse for the same purpose. But all is not lost, and these original materials need not be sent to the landfill.

Early 20 th Century single-pane windows can be repurposed as accent cabinetry doors for a wet bar or utility zone; attic plank flooring becomes wainscot for the new second-story living space, and old wall paneling is incorporated into the custom cabinetry design as door and drawer panels. Old beams in an out-building become new mantels, and even an unused old washstand can be converted into a single-sink vanity. A new renovation, and a house full of memories at the same time.

We at Designed for Downtown, LLC and AJH Renovations, LLC frankly love old homes and, while we understand that times change and houses need to keep up with the latest technology, safety features, and styles, we still want to be able to see that caterpillar almost hidden, but not quite, by the beautiful butterfly. Give us a call today to start the conversation of mixing the old with the new in your home’s future life.