Custom Pantry Storage

Finding the Storage a Galley Never Had

Very few mid-century galleys in Palm Springs were built with a real pantry. There might be a broom closet at one end, or a single tall cabinet beside the refrigerator, and that was considered enough. Today the same room has to hold a stand mixer, an air fryer, bulk dry goods, a water filter and more pans than anyone owned in the early 1960s.

Adding square footage is expensive. Using the square footage you already have is not. Custom pantry storage is the work of finding the dead space in a narrow kitchen and turning it into something you can reach.

Where the Space Is Hiding

• Above the uppers. Original cabinets often stop 12 to 18 inches below the ceiling. Extending them, or adding a row of short cabinets on top, is storage for items you use a few times a year.
• Blind corners. Where two runs meet in an L at the end of a galley, the corner cabinet usually hides most of its volume. Swing-out or pull-out corner hardware, or simply giving up the corner and using a wider drawer bank beside it, fixes that.
• The end wall. Many galleys finish at a blank wall or a doorway. A full-height pantry cabinet, or a set of shallow shelves no deeper than a can, can live there without narrowing the aisle.
• Between the refrigerator and the wall. A six or nine inch gap is common. A narrow pull-out on full-extension slides holds oils, spices and baking sheets.
• Inside existing base cabinets. Replacing doors and fixed shelves with drawers or roll-out trays often doubles what a base cabinet can hold, because nothing gets lost at the back.

Pull-Out Pantries in a Narrow Room

A tall pull-out pantry is a cabinet about 12 to 24 inches wide that slides out like a drawer, with shelves on both sides. In a galley it has a big advantage over a swing-door pantry: it needs no door clearance, only the aisle you already walk in. The catch is weight. A fully loaded pull-out puts a lot of load on its slides, so we use heavy-duty full-extension hardware and fix the cabinet to the wall and floor properly. Cheap slides are the first thing to fail in a pantry.

Depth Matters More Than Width

Standard base cabinets are 24 inches deep. That is ideal for pots and poor for cans, which disappear behind each other. For food storage we often build shallower cabinets, 12 to 15 inches deep, so everything sits one or two items deep and can be seen. On the side of a galley where the aisle is already tight, a shallow tall cabinet can add storage while actually widening the walkway compared with a standard run.

Materials and the Desert Climate

Pantry boxes see less water than a sink base, but they still take heat, and a Palm Springs house closed up during a summer away can get very warm inside. We favor plywood boxes with durable finishes for tall pantry units, because long vertical panels in lower grade particleboard can bow under load and heat. Soft-close hardware keeps doors and drawers from slamming in a small room where every noise carries.

Appliance Garages and Counter Clutter

In a galley, counter space is the scarcest thing you have. An appliance garage, a short cabinet sitting on the counter with a lift-up or pocket door and an outlet inside, keeps the toaster and coffee maker plugged in but out of the way. We add a dedicated receptacle inside with GFCI protection so appliances can stay connected.

When a Pantry Is Not the Answer

Sometimes the most useful storage fix is getting rid of something. An oversized microwave above the range can become a hood with a small microwave drawer below the counter. A rarely used wall oven can give way to a tall pantry. We look at what you actually cook, and what you actually keep, before designing storage for it. Building beautiful shelving for things you do not use is still wasted space.

How This Fits a Larger Remodel

Pantry work can be a standalone project, especially refitting existing cabinets with drawers and pull-outs. It works best, though, when it is planned alongside a full galley remodel, so the pantry, the appliance layout and the aisle width are designed together rather than competing for the same wall.