House renovations

[Hideous Hog]

I've got a couple of projects in mind that I'd like some advice on.

The pantry in my kitchen is perhaps the most inefficient design possible.  It's 4' wide and 3' deep.  It's also 7' tall. There's 5' between the top of the pantry and the ceiling of the kitchen.  The way the shelves are installed, I only really have use of two of them (plus the floor). It really looks like a wall locker that's been repurposed.  The doors need to be rehung also, but that is relatively minor.

My thought is to empty it, haul it outside, disassemble it, and simply cut it in half width-wise, thus reducing the depth to 18". Then sand and repaint and put it back together again, with a more efficient shelf arrangement.  AND rehang the doors properly. Thoughts?

That leads me to... replacing floors.

We have really awful linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms, and mangy wall to wall carpet in the rest of the house.  We'd like to replace this with something nicer - not hardwood, but faux hardwood.  One of my friends is singing the praises of vinyl tiles (they're waterproof, etc).  I have no experience with this. Any recommendations? Gotchas I need to know about?

[luminajd]

About 12 years ago we pulled up all the carpet in our house and in the kitchen installed snap together type tile and snap together laminate wood. Both products still look amazing after 12+ years with 3 dogs and 3 kids. Install was fairly easy as well.
In our bathroom we have vinyl stick down tiles and they also have held up very well for 12+ years, surprisingly. Again, easy install.
I would use these 3 types of products again in a heartbeat.

[pbkmaine]

Photo, please? I'm thinking it might be cheaper and easier to put pull-out shelves in your pantry instead.

[SwordGuy]

About 12 years ago we pulled up all the carpet in our house and in the kitchen installed snap together type tile and snap together laminate wood. Both products still look amazing after 12+ years with 3 dogs and 3 kids. Install was fairly easy as well.
In our bathroom we have vinyl stick down tiles and they also have held up very well for 12+ years, surprisingly. Again, easy install.
I would use these 3 types of products again in a heartbeat.

Ditto on the snap-together wood floating floors.   We were very happy with ours.

The vinyl tiles are easy to use and will last a long time as long as the underlying floor doesn't get wet and stay wet. 
If you have a bad plumbing problem that messes them up, they're easy to remove and replace, and cheap, too.   So it's no biggie as long as the water damage is once a decade as opposed to routine.

[topshot]

The pantry in my kitchen is perhaps the most inefficient design possible.  It's 4' wide and 3' deep.  It's also 7' tall. There's 5' between the top of the pantry and the ceiling of the kitchen.  The way the shelves are installed, I only really have use of two of them (plus the floor). It really looks like a wall locker that's been repurposed.  The doors need to be rehung also, but that is relatively minor.

I was thinking real pantry at first until you said take it outside in the next paragraph. Is there some reason you can't just build a real pantry in it's place? Your kitchen has 12' ceilings???