Pantry

When we moved into the house, there was a pretty little door to the pantry.  Oooo...impressive.  A door to the pantry.  Must be nice.

Uh no.  

Very shallow shelves that moved if you put too much weight on them.

And this creepy gap.  the shelves were at an angle in the closet and there was a gap where food had fallen through.  

Yes.  Seven year old, bloated cans of tuna is exactly what I want chilling in the creepy gap of my ridiculously shallow pantry.  Yes.  The tuna was really sitting back there, smoldering away.  Shiver. 

So...we asked a friend to take it apart to see if we could pull out some more space in the pantry.  We knew full well that we might just be pulling down shelves to reput them up.  But...we had to get to that tuna somehow.  Might as well finish the adventure.

Turns out that there was less space than we hoped but way more than we were currently using.

So we pushed it out.  And by we, I mean our friend.

Oh yeah...and we chucked the tuna cans that looked ready to burst.  Yuck!

L curved the drywall (I didn't even know that was possible) so that it conformed to the stairwell and we got as much depth as possible.

L made a doorway to further storage back under the stairs.

L let James take a turn on the nail gun for some of the new doorway trim.

L built in some seriously deep shelves...

Painted everything...

Added a custom spice cabinet in the little space by the doorway...

Added some lighting.  (He is a cabinet builder and electrician).

Left some space for large storage (or let's be honest, the greatest hiding spot in hide and seek ever...).

And built me another custom shelf for canned goods and jars.

It's been a long process because L has a day job and his family and ours went through the flu which delayed stuff quite a bit.  

But it is done.  And it is marvelous.   

I love my new pantry!