How to: Build Your Own Rolling Pantry!

I also knew that I would probably have enough storage to make it work without a pantry but upon running into several, narrow, rolling pantrys on Pinterest I knew exactly what I would be building!

I have lived in several houses now with the nightmare situation of having a refrigerator smack up beside a wall, making it impossible to open it more then half way. How on earth anyone manages to design a kitchen with this horrible flaw is absolutely beyond my comprehension. So, moving the refrigerator over a little (so I could open it fully) meant I created the perfect little hideaway for a rolling pantry.

I chose to build the whole thing out of 2x8s knowing that that would give me a 7 inch depth. From there I took some measurements. To get the height I also made sure to account for the height of the casters I chose. To get the depth I made sure that the pantry would not actually hit the wall in the back. It was just a case then of getting all of my boards cut and screwing it all together. I chose to put the shelves about every foot. The casters I chose DO NOT swivel, I made certain to get the ones that were set in one direction and then, when I attached them with screws, I put them as widely spaced on the bottom of the pantry as I could. Because of this the pantry actually stands on its own as long as no one (or any big dogs...) bumps it, though it will never really need to.

I had several pieces of bead board left over from when I covered my ceilings so I've been using it pretty liberally for all of the kitchen cabinets etc. I cut a full piece of bead board with a jig saw and tacked it to the back of the pantry with my brad nailer.

You can see how out of level my floors are by looking at the gap between the pantry and refrigerator, oh well, its my old house! You can also see I had already tacked on the 1x4 trim running down both sides of the pantry but I still had to add the trim to each of the shelves and the front.

Ok here we are now with my trimming out the whole pantry. This was a little tricky when it came to the material I had to work with. (I own a small car that will not accommodate much and I'm ten miles from town so I just work with what I've got most of the time if I can.) All I had in the garage at this point was either 1x8s or 1x4s... and I couldn't use either of them to make me happy. So, I ended up using one 1x8 and one 1x4. You can see how I over hung the 1x8 by quite a bit so when the pantry rolled back the 1x8 would hit the bottom of the top cabinet and all along the right side of the 2x4 brace I put on the wall (which I also covered in a 1x4). When the pantry is rolled away it is completely supported and is not so deep that it hits the wall behind it.

Here I have just finished up the pantry, adding 1x4 trim to each one of the shelves. It tidies up the look of the whole thing but it also created a lip to help keep everything on the shelf. At some point I may make this pantry a bit prettier (much like so many of those amazing ones on Pinterest)

And there you have it! After two coats of paint and two coats of poly on the front of it I added a simple chrome handle and am absolutely over the moon with how much storage I created!

With the completion of this pantry I have nothing left to build in our kitchen! Cabinets and everything are all done! *Dances!!!!*