When we bought our house, the pantry door was heavy, solid wood. The pantry is tiny and inevitably messy and has no interior light. The electrician said it would be tough to wire electricity to the pantry–I forget why–so I wanted to find other ways of letting light in.

And then one of the kids had an accident with the door. Three of them were chasing each other in circles around the main level of the house, and the youngest girl ran into the door and fell down the basement stairs. It was horrible, one of those moments that haunts your dreams for years afterward. Miraculously, she was completely fine. After both of us calmed down, my first step was to take the door off the hinges and put it outside on the curb.

We used the pantry without a door for a while, but it often looked really messy. My dad came to the rescue!

I don’t have many pictures of the process, but it was pretty simple. Dad and I framed the door, as shown above, and added mesh wire to each opening. (The mesh wire comes in a roll, and if you get a low gauge wire you can cut it with scissors instead of a razor knife.) To hide the edges of the wire, we framed it out with some thin wood trim. Then I caulked every joint (being careful not to get any caulk on the wire), lightly sanded, and painted the door Moroccan Red by Sherwin Williams. We added hardware made for screen doors.

For fun, I made a couple of stamps out of potatoes and decorated the inside of the pantry. My inspiration was Elsie’s clementine wall from A Beautiful Mess.

My final result didn’t look as good as Elsie’s, but the process was really fun! And now our pantry brings some sunshine to each day.

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