Custom Pantry Storage

Building Pantry Space the House Already Has Room For

Very few Scottsdale kitchens need to get bigger to store more. What they need is a space set aside for food, dry goods and the appliances that do not belong on the counter. That space is usually already in the house as a closet, an alcove, a wide hallway or a laundry room that could give up a couple of feet. Our pantry work is about finding it and building it properly.

Walk-in Pantries

A walk-in pantry is a small room with shelving on two or three walls. The dimensions that make it work are not complicated, but they are easy to get wrong.

Shelf depth is the first one. Cans, jars and spice containers are happiest on shelves around 12 inches deep, where nothing hides behind anything else. Cereal boxes, bulk bags and small appliances want 16 to 20 inches. A pantry with 24 inch deep shelves all the way around looks generous and ends up with a lost back row on every level, which is exactly what most people are trying to escape.

The aisle is the second. You need room to stand, turn and bend down with a bag in your hand. We aim for about 36 to 42 inches of clear floor between opposing shelves. A closet that is only four feet wide can still work as a walk-in, but usually with shelves on one side and the back wall only.

Then the door. A standard swing door eats shelf space on the inside. A pocket door or a barn style slider keeps the walls usable, and a pocket door needs a wall section with no plumbing, wiring or load running through it, which we confirm before promising one.

Butler’s Pantries

A butler’s pantry is a working space, not a closet. It usually sits between the kitchen and a dining or entertaining area and holds a run of base cabinets with a counter, upper cabinets or open shelves, and often a bar sink, an ice maker or a beverage refrigerator. In the larger custom kitchens in DC Ranch, Desert Mountain and around Pinnacle Peak, it is where the coffee station, the serving pieces and the dirty glasses go during a dinner so the main kitchen stays presentable.

Because it is a work zone, the details matter. Counter depth needs to handle a platter. Lighting under the upper cabinets makes the counter usable at night. A sink means supply and drain lines, and a refrigerator or ice maker typically wants its own circuit. Those items go through a permit and inspection with the City of Scottsdale, and they are the main reason a butler’s pantry costs more than a walk-in of similar size.

Planning for the Desert

Three local conditions shape how we build.

Heat. A pantry that shares a wall with the garage or sits on a west facing exterior wall can run noticeably warmer than the kitchen through a summer of 110 degree afternoons. That shortens the life of cooking oils, nuts, flour and coffee. We either keep the pantry on an interior wall or insulate the warm wall and make sure the room shares air with the conditioned house.

Dust. Monsoon storms push fine dust through every gap in a house. Open shelves in a walk-in are fine for things used weekly, but anything stored longer goes behind a door or in a closed bin, and we keep the lowest shelf off the floor so it can be cleaned under.

Hard water. The very hard municipal water scales up a butler’s pantry faucet and an ice maker supply quickly. We plan an accessible shutoff and room for a filter cartridge under the sink, because a filter nobody can reach never gets changed.

Materials That Carry the Load

Shelving in a working pantry holds a lot of weight. Plywood shelves at three quarters of an inch are sturdy on spans up to about 30 inches; longer runs get a center support or a thicker shelf. Melamine particleboard is affordable and easy to clean, but over a long span loaded with cans it sags within a year, so we use it only on short spans. Solid wood edging on the front of each shelf stiffens it and takes the knocks.

Call (480) 499-6221 and describe the space you have in mind. We will measure it, look at what you store, and draw a pantry that fits both.