Pantry shelves

I've finished the shelves for the pantry.

I decided to go with permanent shelf brackets instead of having rails with slots for an adjustable bracket system.  I went with permanent brackets since I didn't want a gap at the back of the shelves from the rails on the wall.

Tammy and I looked and looked at shelf boards.  The pantry width is 58 inches - a little under 5 ft.  For some reason a pantry width of 6 ft was stuck in my mind when at the store looking at boards.  Fortunately I double checked the pantry width before buying the shelf boards.

Initially I thought I could get six shelves in the pantry.  So I bought three 10 ft boards.  The other choices were either 6 or 8 ft boards.  Less waste with 10 ft boards.  But when I began to place the shelves on the walls  I decided to have a larger shelf height.  Part of the reason is the top shelf needs enough (9 inches) room to get stuff up on the shelf to take advantage of the height above the top of the pantry doors. I ended up with a top shelf height of 19 inches.

Most of my other cabinets have shelf heights of 8 to 11 inches.  I figured slightly higher shelves would give me more storage items options so I went with 13 1/2 inch shelves.   That only left room for five shelves in the pantry.  So I took the last 10 ft board back to Lowes and bought a 6 ft board.  Again less waste of a board.

Another problem was my hands.  The boards I bought were pre-painted white but my hands - even when clean - leave dirty prints. Working with my hands all the time leaves them rough and dirty.  Tammy was not happy with my finger marks on the boards after cutting them.  She was unable to clean the marks off to her satisfaction so she decided to paint the boards.

Then...

She didn't like how the paintbrush applied the paint.  She switched to using a foam brush.
She didn't like how the foam brush applied the paint. She switched to using a paint roller.
She didn't like how the paint roller applied the paint.

So she quit.

I had to paint the boards.  I used the paint roller and the shelves looks fine.  The second photo is a closeup of one painted shelf.  Yes, that is white.

By the way, you may have noticed the cutouts I made in the shelf in the previous photo.  The shelf width is 9 1/2 inches and 11 1/4 inches.  The pantry width behind the walls is 9 1/2 inches.  I want as much shelf space as possible so I used the area behind the pantry doors almost all the way to the trim in the middle of the door frame, which is 11 1/2 inches.  It also helped that the board width was sold in 11 1/4 inch widths.

Ta da.