Shallow Pantry Inside a Wall

Like in a boat, storage space is at a premium in our small house. One solution was to use the space inside the walls for shallow pantries, perfect for stashing little doodads. Turns out, good spots for these are wherever there's a blank wall with no furniture around, like in hallways or in the corner of a room, adjacent to an existing door. In the past, a family of five has lived in our house, and now, just two of us have so much junk we're using the walls for storage.



This pantry is in the kitchen, next to the door leading out to the garage. You can see that it was wasted wall space until I added the pantry.




The open pantry and it's contents. Bottles, boxes and cans. The 2 x 4 wall framing is still in place, a stud in the middle and two fireblocks which now serve as shelves. I left the framing to avoid damaging the wall on the other side during removal and besides, I like to see the structure of the house; to think about the post WWII builders and what the world was like then.

Building It

Cut the hole

Cutting the drywall in two stages worked best for me. First use a drywall saw, cutting along the inside edges of the 2 studs which will be the sides of the pantry, using the stud as a guide for the saw. Be careful figuring out where to make the cut across the top; you want the pantry door and trim to line up with the adjacent interior door. (See below, the bathroom prototype, which is too high.) Then, with a box knife, trim off 3/4" more from the edge with the knife, exposing half, or 3/4", of the 1 1/2" wide stud. This leaves 3/4" overlap of the remaining drywall edge and the stud. You'll dull your box knife blades in a hurry, as you'll be hitting nails or screws used to attach the dryall to the stud. Yank the old fasteners and install new ones. This edge doesn't have to be pretty, as it'll be covered with trim.

Install the door frame

By "door frame" I just mean any pieces of wood which will surround the door; what's called a jamb for a regular door. Here, the hinges attach to the stud and the frame serves more as a way to cover the raw edge of the cut drywall. The door frame design will depend on the thickness of the door and whether you want the door to be inset into the frame or overlay it.

I decided to make my doors out of 3/4" poplar, which is readily available and seems to be straight and stable enough for the job. Any thicker than 3/4", the door would stick out from the wall too far and any thinner they'd be too flimsy. As for the relationship of the door and the frame, inset is really the only option. The problem with the overlay option is shown in drawing 4 below. The first three drawings show options within the inset door choice. Sorry about the crude drawings but I think you'll get the point.


  1. The door is inset and the frame piece is 3/4" wide by 1/2" thick, so it's flush with the drywall. The door edge will stick out 1/4" from the frame, leaving a recess before the casing edge.
  2. Inset door with 3/4" X 3/4" frame piece. A rabbet needs to be routed along the casing inside edge to accept the 1/4" protruding frame piece. If the casing isn't that thick along the inside edge, a 1/8" rabbet will do and the casing will lay a bit angled. This is the option I took, but looking back, I think option 1 is the best, especially if you're not up to routing the rabbet..
  3. Inset door but set back 1/4" into the stud space. This reduces the storage space depth from 3 1/2" to 3 1/4", so I didn't like this option. Also, my pantries all span two stud spaces, (the third, middle stud isn't shown in these drawings), so I'd have had to either remove the middle stud or shave the edge of it down 1/4".
  4. The overlay option, shown at the bottom, really isn't an option, because you run out of room on the stud to attach the drywall to. The width of a stud, 1 1/2", isn't enough to accomodate the 3/4" required for the overlay of the door, plus about 3/4" for the drywall attachment and a bit of wood trim, say another 3/4", to hide the raw drywall edge and attach the final casing trim to. All that adds up to 2 1/4".

Make the door

I designed the doors to match the rest of the interior doors in the house. I made the door frames from 3/4" poplar and the panel from 1/4" birch plywood. I used a matched set of router bits for making the frame pieces, which simutaneously cut a groove for the panel, the relief on the inside of the frame and matched gluing surfaces at the joints. Without these router bits, dowled and butted, or mortise and tenon joints would work just as well. Then, in separate steps, you'd rout the relief on the inside of the frame and a groove to accept the door panel. Or, you could glue up the frame pieces and after assembly, rout the relief and then a rabbet in the back to accept the panel. Make sure you use flat boards. I was worried such thin doors would'nt be flat but 4 of 5 of the ones I made are very flat. The 5th sticks out about 1/8" on the bottom.

I used 4 european style kitchen cupboard hinges per door, designed for frameless cabinets with inset doors. You'll need a forstner bit to drill for the hinge cups but you don't need a drill press for this. I just used my hand drill. I made a small template for marking where each hinge piece would go on the wall studs, which had three small holes indicating where the three mounting screws would be and a small fence to lay against the edge of the wall stud.

Trim the Opening

Trim was covered in the frame section above, but I'll detail what I did, using design option 2. Assuming you've got 1/2" drywall in your house, the frame pieces will stand 1/4" proud of the wall. Door casing should lay flat against the wall and the door frame, bridging the gap where the messy looking drywall edge buts against the frame. But the differences in thickness between the drywall and the door frame means the casing will lay at an angle. One thing you can do is trim it with a simple, flat, 1/4" thick piece of casing which covers the ragged drywall edge but doesn't overlay the frame at all. I did that in the bathroom. Just butt the edge of the trim against the frame, sand the junction so it's flat and smooth and fill any small gaps before painting. If you want to use more decorative trim, as I did in the kitchen, you'll have to break out the router. The casing I used in the kitchen had an inside edge that was 1/4" thick. I routed a rabbet, (a groove to accept another piece of wood), along the inside edge of the casing pieces to accept the 1/4" of exposed door frame. But since the casing was only 1/4" thick on the inside edge, I cut the rabbet only 3/16" deep, leaving a fragile 1/16" thickness to overlay the door frame. However, the casing was made of wood and was a good 1/2" thick just 3/8" in from the edge, so it was stronger than you'd think and I never broke any casing while nailing it in place. I imagine you could use 1/2" thick frame pieces, matching the drywall thickness, but you'd have other casing issues to deal with. You might be able to make a 1/2" door, which would solve all the problems, but I thought a 1/2" door frame would be hard to get flat, and I don't have a planer to make 1/2" stock.

A couple quick door painting tips. Sanding between coats, makes for a smoother surface. Also, for latex paints you might try a paint additive which increases dry time and reduces brush lines. I use a wide brush, 3 1/2".

Seems like a lot of work to store a few cans, and it is. But in a small house where space is a premium, and now that it's done, it's worth it.


More Pantries. This bathroom pantry was the proof of concept, which taught me to pay more attention to design. I think the bathroom and pantry doors should match but I made the pantry taller and added a middle rail to the door. The trims should match too, but still, I like the simple 1/4" thick, 2 1/2" wide flat piece of wood, for a bathroom.


Hallway pantries. The pantry doors are painted to match the walls, but I don't like it - I think they should be white like the room doors.