In Your Pipe Dreams

There is one room here at Farmhouse 1820 that has been a thorn in my side since we moved in. A room that looked clean and decorated to a T, for about five minutes. Then reality set in and said room became a dumping ground for mail and weekly circulars. I would clean, sort and file everything, then only a week later it would look worse for wear. An uphill battle that I wasn’t going to win. A well-functioning room was only a pipe dream.

Almost nine years have passed since we moved into this fossil, and this one room is starting to speak to me like a field of corn.

“If you build it, they will come.”

So whether it be the old house speaking to me, or me being fed up with the dumping ground, I’ve come to the realization that this said room is to graduate into the royalty of a butler’s pantry with some show-y pipes to validate my dream.

Makes sense. It’s directly off the formal dining room and not even a stone’s throw from the kitchen. We do like to entertain, but it would even justify my hoarding of all things involved in beautiful tablesettings.

Once again, we have cleaned and cleared out this room. Quite a bit of paperwork was burned in the fire pit, and some was filed. A quaint closet off to the side has now become home to all that whoo-ha. The rest is a clean slate. China cabinets and shelving units are getting made over, and to honor this pipe dream of a butler’s pantry, one wall has been dedicated to the pipes.

An amateur drawing and some finessing got me through Home Depot and I brought my loot of pipes home. I scrubbed them all, along with their joints with TSP, and sprayed them with a couple coats of metallic gold spray paint. Why did I choose metallic gold, you ask? Because I wanted the durability of the pipes, yet I wanted to dress up an otherwise trendy farmhouse decor solution. A win-win in my book. A dressy pipe situation.

And one that I welcome. A DIYer’s dream made easy. Measure, design, buy, spray paint, and hang. Durability meets fabulous. You’re reading my mail.

With some shelving we had tucked away in a corner with the best intentions, it makes a decidedly smarter appearance with these now brass-y pipes. Secure, stable, sassy and now a pipe-dream-turned-reality. Be forewarned, this is not easy on the budget as the pipes and joint costs add up, but the dependability and functionality are worth their weight in gold. Or, spray paint gold.

My advice is this: don’t be deterred when entertaining iron pipes when designing your shelving. Anything can be painted, including pipes. So if you have a pipe dream of an organized room full of shelving and storage, then look no further than the utilitarian pipe. Because really, pipes are the Hulk of storage.