Making the Closet Pantry Prettier

A little closet pantry sits on the landing of our upper floor.

Prior to its overhaul last year it was a dumping ground for just about everything.

However since adding several shelves, our closet pantry has served its purpose gracefully – taking the overflow of tissues and cereal boxes and just about anything else we could shove into it.

But over time, like most storage spaces, it started to look rather sad.

Drab.

Messy.

Boring.

And since it’s not a main space in our house, I just closed the door instead of coming up with something creative.

Until I had a brainstorm and put Dean to work the other night. (Have I mentioned that I love that guy?)

Making the Closet Pantry Prettier

We started by emptying out the closet. That was a rather messy process – the upstairs hallway looked like a small store exploded.

Can anyone say organization needed?

Dean then removed the shelves from the closet. After all it is easier to tape and paint without the shelves in the way.

We were going to implement a more intricate pattern – like diamonds or plaid. But once we emptied the closet we realized something like that wouldn’t work because we had installed the shelving at different distances from each other to accommodate packaged goods. Which would have made a geometric pattern just look wrong and off balance once the shelves were back in place. So we decided adding simple vertical stripes would be a fun decor detail that would also be easy to implement in a couple of hours.

And who doesn’t love a quick easy project?!

Supplies

• ScotchBlue™ Delicate Surface Painter’s Tape or ScotchBlue™ Advanced Multi-Surface Painter’s Tape (width of your choice)
• paint
• paint brush
• pencil
• utility knife (optional)
• 3M™ Patch Plus Primer (optional)
• 3M™ PRO GRADE PRECISION™ Ultra Flexible Sanding Sponges (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare the walls for painting. Remove objects from walls. Patch any holes with Patch Plus Primer. Gently sand primer when dry with Pro Grade Precision Ultra Flexible Sanding Sponges. (These are fab because they direct the dust away from the surface of the sponge which helps it not get all gunked up.)

2. If your walls need it, give them a good coat of paint. Otherwise just skip to step 3. It turned out we didn’t need to do Step 1 or 2 as our walls were in pretty great shape. Thus no photos. 🙂

4. Measure out where you’re going to place your stripes. Dean started on the back center of the closet marking lines every six inches. You can choose how close or how far apart your lines will be.

3. Center tape on pencil line and continue taping until all the lines have tape over them. Areas covered by tape will remain the color of the base paint. If your wall paint is fresh, use the ScotchBlue Delicate Surface Painter’s Tape. Our paint had been up for months so we used the ScotchBlue Advanced Multi-Surface Painter’s Tape for extra sharp lines. If you’re not sure which tape to use try this Tape Comparison tool. If your pattern requires straight tape ends, use a utility knife to cut tape.

4. Now paint the walls. Be careful not to just glop the paint on or it may seep through even the tightest tape job. Alternately you can “seal” the tape edges by first painting the base color over the tape and then when that’s dry paint the second color.

5. Remove tape. Whether you remove it when the paint is still damp or completely dry is up to you. I prefer to remove it when the paint is not fully dry.

Now you’ve got fun stripes!

I love how the stripes just add a bit of visual texture, don’t you?

What other patterns can you think of to paint? Wide stripes? Plaid? Diamonds?

This post sponsored by 3M and ScotchBlue. All opinions are my own. I wouldn’t share it if I didn’t love it!