The Pantry Floor

Until we get all the drywall up in the pantry, we have this great little shortcut from the kitchen through the closet in the back of the library. I was thinking of putting a little secret doorway into the pantry, so we could store snacks in a convenient place. But then again, we could just as easily store snacks in the library if we wanted that.

Today we spent some time planning the shelves that will go from floor to ceiling against the back wall of the pantry (the wall shared with the library). I've had some bad experience with shelves that start at floor level (things get kicked, dirt gets on stuff, that sort of thing), and we had a small floor level issue to deal with anyway, so our solution was to build a platform bottom shelf to start from. It ended up this wide because of the location of the floor weirdness.

But we had bigger problems than a little bump in the floor. The pantry had been turned into a bathroom, and rather inelegantly so, so we had a lot of random holes all over the floor. These are conveniently located where we plan to put counters and the fridge, but there's a constant draft from the basement that we wanted to block. Also, the original floor is about an inch below the current kitchen floor, and anyway neither of those floors is going to survive our big post-Ten Year Plan floor project, so we chose the easy route.

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We cut a piece of plywood and nailed it in place over the floor. Instant smooth surface, and I'm thinking a package or so of those self-adhesive vinyl floor tiles seems pretty appropriate. Not my first choice, by any metric, but functional for the time being.

With that done, we took the first step to walls and put up two pieces of drywall. We had three sheets in the front hall (we like to store building supplies around for ambiance), and that was about what we could install without interfering with some electrical work that will be happening later this week. It's already noticeably brighter in there.

We stopped because of lack of materials (those 4x8 sheet goods are logistical nightmares), and cleaned the fridge. Which was an adventure all its own (John left behind a package of meat when he moved out).

Technorati Tags: carpentry, construction, flooring, drywall, renovations

posted by ayse on 07/13/08