Features that I love about my Butler’s Pantry and Laundry Room

When we looked at this house, this space looked like this:

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that I divided this space into a butler’s pantry and laundry room. It is a huge space (over 160 sf) and was underutilized. Here is what it looks like now:

The colors that we chose for these two rooms were white for cabinets and trim, black hardware, navy blue (from the mosaic tile band in the laundry room), and a jadeite green from the light fixture in the laundry room.

In the butler’s pantry, we used stock pantry cabinets, and were left with about 15″ at the end of the run of cabinets that we could either wall up, or use. I had my contractor build in a shelf that I could use for all my platters and trays. It really is one of my favorite things because these items are so difficult to store in a way that you can get to them easily without having to unstack a bunch of stuff.

I wanted to add a little bit of a vintage vibe in this room, so we replaced the glass in the upper cabinets with reeded glass. It provides a little camouflage along with the vintage 40’s vibe.

We used to have our extra fridge and freezer in the basement which was inconvenient and when we did the renovation, I wanted to move them into the butler’s pantry. We ended up buying Whirlpool units that bolt together and you can get a trim kit to make them look like one big (and more expensive unit). In this photo, you can also see the porcelain tile floor. This is one of the most commented on aspects of the room–almost everyone comments on how much they like it. It has as much texture as it looks like it does. We would have used it in the kitchen but were concerned that it would be a nightmare to keep clean–especially since I am a messy cook and an even messier baker.

We installed a pocket door between the butler’s pantry and laundry room for noise, and also to close that off when we have people over–I mean no one wants to see our laundry. A funny story: We had planned to have a get together on our dock shortly after these rooms were completed and it ended up raining that day, so we moved the party inside. We set beer in the laundry sink and filled it with ice, and set up serve yourself wine on the counters to the right and left of the refrigerator/freezer. We could not get people out of this room that night. So, even though they are meant to be primarily utilitarian spaces, I guess that they work for entertaining too.

There used to be a door into this space from the hallway, we took it out because it was always going to be in the way.

The finished laundry room looks like this:

I hate ironing boards because I hate ironing (obviously), but also because they are a storage nightmare–always in the way. When we were planning this renovation, we added a built in storage cabinet for the iron and ironing. It is so handy when I do reluctantly have to iron, but it is completely out of the way the rest of the time.

I hope that some of these ideas will inspire you to amp up the utilitarian spaces in your home.