My new Kitchen Pantries- Thanks IKEA Pax Hack!!!

A few months ago I was scouring Pinterest for kitchen storage and pantry ideas, and  I saw a GREAT post about an IKEA Pax Wardrobe used for that purpose . It was so brilliant, and I told my husband I wanted to do it too.  He wasn't really getting the vision as I was trying to explain it, so I showed him that blog post from Jenna Sue Design.  He really liked the look of it and we decided that was the way we wanted to go.
We measured the back wall (which is almost like a little cove, so it was a perfect place to put these wardrobes) and figured out  how many we needed to fill it.  Our Small cove along the one back wall is 101 inches wide and 96" Tall. We realized we could fit in 2 full width pantries(39 3/8") and 1 half width pantry(19 3/8). There would only be 2 1/2 inches left (basically 1 1/4 on each side once centered) that we could fill in with 1 1/4" PVC wall plank for a perfect fit.
We headed up to IKEA to see which set-up we liked best, which baskets and shelves we wanted, which doors we liked blah blah blah. After deciding which ones we liked we decided to order and have delivered. (honestly best 100$ Ive ever spent. No way could we have gotten all that stuff ourselves)
We were going to order and something cam up that delayed our purchase.  Well at the beginning of March the new Ikea ad came out and guess what....they were on sale!! We ended up saving like $150!! (every little bit helps)
Fast Forward 10 whole agonizing days until they were delivered...

Step One...getting all the stuff out of the eating area, measuring the depth and figuring out where to remove crown and base moulding to fit these wardrobes in.

We get the call at 9am that the truck was about 45 minutes from our house and we couldn't wait!!

DELIVERY!!

3 boxes of wardrobes, 5 boxes of doors, 9 shelves, 3 baskets, 2 boxes of drawers...it was a BIG order.  Even Rusty the cat was interested in helping out.

We open the first one and start to work. Thankfully Ikea furniture is fairly easy and straightforward to put together.  Since this was our first one, it took about an hour . 

1st one up!!

Me for height comparison.  I am 5'11".

The second and third wardrobes went a LOT quicker, since we knew what we were doing.  The middle wardrobe was a half width so it went really smoothly. By the time we got to #3 we were blowing through it. We had them done in about 2 1/2 hours.

As you can see, we live in an old house. The walls, we discovered aren't exactly "level". Well neither are the floors for that matter.  Thankfully These wardrobes are built with levelers, so we were able to manipulate them to get them pretty straight.

You can see the small gap on either side of the pantries. We headed to Lowe's or Home Depot(cant remember which) and purchased 2 of their 8ft long PVC Moulding planks. They were the perfect fit. We adhered them to either side of the wardrobe, and when they had dried we fit the wardrobe into place. These babies are so tight they aren't going ANYWHERE.

We mounted them to the walls, put on the doors and started adding the shelves and baskets etc.

You can see the PVC moulding plank going all the way up to the ceiling. I also added the handles

Ta-Daaaaa.

It took us 14 hours from start to finish.  We ended up going back to Ikea last week and purchasing 3 more shelves and one more small basket for the middle unit. We now have so much room I cant believe it.

We have cleared up SO MUCH storage in our kitchen.  No more shoving everything in the little cabinet space we have, or using a small crummy storage pantry from Big Lots as our food pantry.

So we still have to put crown moulding across the top, but that will happen after we paint the kitchen and replace the moulding everywhere else. i am LOVING this.

Best thing we have ever done for this kitchen (well apart from taking down that tower of terror shelf/oven unit). I finally feel like I am making progress here with this house.