in the beginning, there was wire shelving. i honestly don’t know why. it’s the worst possible option for shelves in any indoor structure.

remove the wire shelves, paint and mark up the new pantry. the cabinet was actually too big to fit in the door so i had to remove the front frame and reattach it. it’s actually much sturdier now with brads than the previous staples. this process was a lot of fun because i didn’t have to paint much!

after using blue tape to get an idea of where the shelves will go, it was time to build the floating shelves using 2×2 boards. the most difficult part of this process was getting that first shelf level. it’s not perfect, but it was close enough. if you really look under close inspection you’ll see that the second and third shelves aren’t level in the middle, but meh. i’m not a professional, lol. obv i say that because i really wish it was better, but that’s not the only mistake made in this project…

sanding all the boards was a tedious process and made a huge mess. installing them was another issue because i cannot measure for shit. there were plenty of gaps, but caulk fixes everything! i wish this was put together better than it was. although it’s not perfect, it’s amazing what paint can do to help cover errors!

taped up and ready to paint! up to this point it was 2 days of work. the first day was all the framing and boards. the next day was the hardboard to cover the framing. spoiler alert: i didn’t cover all the framing! but after a few coats of paint, it looks mostly great! and the last pic of the final product…

a little hardware and cleanup is left, but all in all, not too bad!