The Pantry — project details

Town Syracuse, NY
Species Solid wood and cabinet-grade ply, painted finish
Type Pantry Cabinetry
Attribution Maker's own home — personal piece, not a paid commission
Construction Face-frame, solid wood & cabinet-grade ply
Features Pull-out shelves, adjustable storage, soft-close hardware
Floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinet — maker's own home, Syracuse, NY. Personal piece, not a commissioned project.

About this build

This is the piece that started the shop's public work — a full-height pantry built into a Syracuse kitchen, fitted to the walls it lives in rather than ordered to the nearest three inches.

What the room needed

The wall was the usual CNY problem: a run that wasn't square, a ceiling that wasn't level with it, and a homeowner who wanted every inch of the height working. Stock cabinetry would have meant a filler strip at one end, a soffit of dead air at the top, and shelving on a fixed pitch that ignored what actually gets stored.

Building to the wall solved all three at once. The carcasses were sized to the opening, the face frame was scribed in, and the run goes to the ceiling with crown tying it into the existing trim.

How it was built

Face-frame construction in solid wood over cabinet-grade plywood — the boxes carry weight without racking, and the frames give the doors somewhere solid to hang. Pull-out shelves in the lower bays so the back of the cabinet isn't a place things go to be forgotten, adjustable shelving above on a shop-drilled system, and soft-close hardware on every door and drawer.

The painted finish was sprayed in the shop rather than brushed on site, which is the difference between a surface that reads as cabinetry and one that reads as carpentry.

Where it holds up

Pull-out shelves are the detail people notice second and use most. The first thing they notice is that the run goes all the way up — no soffit, no gap, no strip of trim covering a compromise.

Face-frame doors with matte black hardware · Adjustable upper shelving, painted interior · Drawer joinery and solid wood edge banding

Want something like this?

This piece is a custom pantry build. That page covers how these come together, what drives the cost, and the questions people ask before they commit. The rest of the portfolio is on the work page.

Got a wall
that could do more?

Send a photo of the space and I'll tell you what it can hold.