My Misleading Pantry

When we moved into our house, there were only three of us. It was a piece of cake to fit all the food in the small little pantry we had in our kitchen. It was as deep as a bisquick box. But no problem. Fast forward 4 and a half years later. Our "pantry" was spilling all over throughout the kitchen. There was food all over the top of the fridge, food stuffed throughout all our cupboards, etc. Needless to say it was driving me nuts. Numerous times I'd look at it and say, "Time to move!" Well, several months ago (I don't even want to say how many because it is embarrassingly long ago!) John decided that we could go into the wall behind the pantry. So that night, we emptied all our food onto the counter, took the old pantry out to the garage to hold all the outdoor toys, and cut a hole into the wall to see what we were up against. There was one duct running through it, but we could easily build around it. We were lucky to have a neighbor we could contract with to build the structure. When he pushed the cabinet back in there, I was in heaven. I seriously could not believe how much food I could now fit into our pantry. Everything that was on the fridge, in the cupboards, etc fit in with room to spare. I was able to bring up my big five gallon buckets from the laundry room for my sugar, flour, and rice. It was awesome. The only problem is that we only hired our neighbor to build the cabinet. We figured we could finish patching the wall, build the doors, and do all the finish work ourselves. And so it sat. Month after month after month. Because we weren't exactly sure how we wanted to do the doors. But eventually, we figured it out. We now have doors, the wall has been fixed to meet the cabinet, the painting and caulking is done, and it has awesome handles. I really like the handles...almost as much as I like how much food this deceptive beast can hold :)