I just put adjustable wireshelving in my new (to me anyways) pantry. I love it. The only problem I have is that the shelving unit I bought only came with 5 shelves, when I would prefer 6- but I have contacted the manufacturer and found out they dont sell additional shelves at this time. grrr.

good luck!

me, I'd want cabinets w/ doors. I'm tired of looking at lots of stuff; I want some visual calm.

And, I'm tired of stuff accumulating dust--I want ENCLOSED storage.

If it were me, I think I'd be looking into Ikea kitchen cabinets (uppers) to stack on top of one another for the entire wall's worth. If I wanted an area of deeper storage, I'd be stacing Ikea's base cabinets w/ either 3 drawers, or w/ doors and pull-out shelves.

Bluejean, what a bummer about the shelf--esp. since it's wire shelving. If it were wood, you could just buy the shelf. Can you get a replacement shelf support (pretend you broke or lost one?), and then find some other way to juryrig a shelf? Even if you got some melamine-coated MDF from the lumberyard? Send us a link to your brand!

Talley Sue,

how sweet,thanks for your concern! I bought them at home depot. They are the "Heavy Duty Shelving Unit" It is actually manufactured for Home Depot, so it is their brand I guess. But I can't find links to it online. :( I have been looking at it trying to a way to rig up another one. So far I have come up with nothing short of going out and buying a 3rd unit- just to steal the shelves from it! lol. My husband frowned when I told him my great idea. The units are $65-70 (I can't remeber exactly). Not expensive, but my pantry is just turning into an expensive project when the money would be better spent else where. There is just so much wasted space between shelves... cans of veggies are only so tall!

I will see if I can take pictures and post so it maybe someone else will have a brain strom on how to create extra shelves.

Thanks!
bluejean
PS-roolinridge- sorry to hyjax your thread!

Bluejean,

I was in The Container Store in Boston last week, and they carry shelving that is very similar, maybe identical. Give them a google.

And buying another shelving unit may work, especially if you can use a shorter unit some where else. Another possibility is to look at some of the shelf racks that normally would sit on a cupboard shelf.

Barbara

Or, to simply ignore the existing wire etc., and mount a basic shelf bracket to the wall w/ anchors, etc., INSIDE the space that's framed by your wire shelving unit, and set a wood or melamine-coated MDF shelf on it.

Not as adjustable, but now that you have a better idea where you want your shelves, because you've set up that outer framework, it might be just as useful, even if it doesn't exactly match.

Or wall-mount a single wire shelf.
Like this one
http://doitbest.com/DoItBest/Main.aspx?PageID=64&SKU=230278

And I suppose you could also buy a stand-alone wire shelf and wire it in place w/ cable ties, etc. Might wobble a fit, but cable ties can be pretty tough.

Or you could buy an L-shaped length of metal stock, and find a way to bolt it to the supports (maybe with a

at each corner if things didn't like up perfectly) so it goes across each end, and then set a white wooden/melamine shelf on it (if your angled stock has holes in it, you can even screw that shelf in place). Depends what the shelf supports look like--if they've got spaces in them, you can make it work. If they're solid, you're probably out of luck.

Get your frowning DH to put some ingenuity to work on this! (I personally don't think that $70 for an extra unit would be a bad idea--you might actually find that you could use TWO extra shelves! Esp. if you laid the cans on their sides so you can read the labels, and put them in plastic or wire (Elfa) bins to serve as drawers. I can think of several discretionary things I'd give up to have an extra shelf.)

Is there a manufacturer's name on that unit made for Home Depot? I wonder if they make smaller units.

Bluejean - I don't mind any hijaxing - any ideas are good ideas - gets the brain cells working. And I do think I saw something at Home Depot last weekend......(it's like you know what you want but you just can't figure it out)

RollinRidge, if you put kitchen-style cabinets in that area between the pull-down attic stairs and the wall, that would work--they're usually 12" deep. (sometimes 12.5, so you'd want to measure carefully)

Oh, and....

go to the Container Store website and use their Elfa planning software to plan out the room. Then, you can figure out what your optimal solution is, even if you don't use their products to implement it (many other companies make similar shelving systems; perhaps not w/ as many bells & whistles)

Oh, also, I'd want drawers in there somewhere--some pretty shallowish, and some a tad bit deeper. Even if what I did was set the Sterilite drawers on a shelf.

What kind of stuff is in that laundry/pantry right now?

Some laundry stuff, right? and some food stuff. And then other sorts of stuff? (camping gear, cold-weather gear, out-of-season clothes, stuff like that?)

Do you want a permanently-set-up ironing board? (I would; that's one of my dreams--or, maybe at least a drop-down one) Do you have/want a place to hang just-out-of-the-dryer clothes?

Another shelving idea....Sam's Club sells a chrome wire shelf unit that has 6 shelves, is 48 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and has wheels. It is under 80 bucks. This might be something that would work on the wall that has the 12 inch clearance for the pull down stairs, you could roll it out of the way. I use these for plant stands and they are really stout. I think Costco has the same thing.

Barbara

LOL, you guys are great, I knew you would brainstorm up a bunch of ideas. LOL! Get this, last night when hubby got home from work he stepped in the pantry (it was at one time a laundry room off of the kitchen, but now the laundry is an addition on the other side of the house). He looked around and said, "you know, this looks really nice in here. It's a shame you can't buy some extra shelves." I said, "yeah, there's just so much wasted space" He then (to my shock) said, "You might as well just go buy another unit." We are still relatively newlyweds (married 1.5 yrs) and this is our first house- a fixer-upper, so when he says stuff like that, it just makes me so happy! There is so much work to do in our house and that he thinks the pantry (my project) is worth it, that means a lot!

I will check and see if I can find the manufacturer's name on the box and see if I can find anything on them. I know when I looked online the other day I was striking out. But- who knows, maybe with help we might just find it.

Thanks for letting me share my excitement as I get my house organized with all your guys' ideas!

Bluejean

ooh--rolling shelves.

Here at work (the prop stylists have a TON of stuff), they've gotten a not-very-wide set of those chrome shelves w/ wheels, and they set it in FRONT of other shelves. Then they can slide it aside to reach the stuff in the back, but it still allows them to utilize the deeper storage. That might work for your 3-foot-deep section.

You could even set boxes on the shelves if you were worried about stuff flying off the edges when you moved the shelves.

(but I bet you I'd want 7 or 8 shelves in that same unit she described, instead of the 6; esp. if the shelves are moving, you don't want to be tempted into stacking stuff in those big spaces)

Oh, wow, I must have been having a brain cramp...Tallysue, you reminded me of the shelving we put in the dental clinic I managed. We had many many patient charts that needed to go into a shorter wall space. There are shelves that accomplish this. The base shelf units are installed against the wall, and then a track is installed on the floor in front of them. Additional shelf units are installed on the track, and the unit slide left or right to expose the unit behind. If you put 3 units on the back, you can put 2 in the front. Two on the back allows one in the front, always one less in the front than the back. I have seen photos of really large installations.
This could be adaptable to the home with these rolling units, I don't know why I didn't see it, after working with the sliders for a year...
It is not necessarilly the most ideal, but given a limited amount of wall space may make it very feasible.

Barbara

I've seen those set-ups!

At my pulmonologist's office, they have entire two-sided bookcases. Let's say, eight of them. And they sit on tracks, facing one another (you only see the ends of them) in a space big enough for nine of them. You push them over to be able to get in between the two you want.

Often the stuff available for offices is more expensive than people really want to spend for home. But it's worth investigating. And even if it turns out to be too expensive to buy, it can certainly be something you use as your model.

I have also seen that shelving setup you describe inside pantry cabinets, on a kitchen cabinet maker's website.