Pantry floor. (Long time, no see.)

You know how sometimes something you thought was super-cool eventually gets tired and makes you wonder what you were thinking back when you were so young?

Sorry not sorry that I didn't wash off the recycling-bin residue before taking this photo. I was just going to rip it out anyway.

Well, that's how we started to feel about our turquoise laminate floor in our unfinished-for-5-years pantry/baking nook. It was basically the NKOTB posters of pantry floors. That turquoise junk cost about $24, so at least we got our money's worth.

So we had this simmering resentment over this floor. But then! We went to help Gabe's mom with some of her old-house projects and she had just taken down some pine shiplap. It was a little beat up, some nail holes, but not too old or stained, a little bit knotty but not too bad. In short, it came with a little patina. I had struggled with just what to replace the turquoise with, because the rest of the kitchen floor has plenty of patina, let's just say, and there's no matching that with something new. The rough side of the shiplap had been painted, but the smooth side was left virgin. Eureka! I had the brainstorm that it needed to be our pantry floor. I always get more creative when the price is right (free).

So we loaded it up, and since November is about the only time anything gets done around here, we got to work.

We ran the boards through the table saw to make them the approximate width of the existing kitchen floor. Then, we adjusted the saw blade to make the overlapping tongue part. We relapped the ship (technical terms).

Since the shiplap isn't tounge-and-groove, we had to nail right through the face of the boards. We pre-drilled holes, pounded in some finish nails (also free), and voila, we had ourselves a floor.

Old floor, meet new.

Someday we'll get around to sanding them and refinishing all at the same time. But since it's been 4.5 years since my last blog post, I don't want to make any promises I can't keep.

And just for good measure...

See what I did there?

I hung this cute rack I bought at the same junque shop where we got our beloved sink.

Did you know that smidgen, dash, tad, and pinch are actual units of measurement?

Maybe these things are yanking our chain a little bit, but they would come in handy for a person who's afraid to improvise.

Hope to get back to you all again before too long!