Holiday Project

Matthew left for school as usual on Monday morning, but returned home about half an hour later because nobody was there and all the doors were locked due to the MLK holiday. Hooray for a forced vacation day! He considered working on the crown molding in the garage, but the last couple days have been freeze your face off cold and he's just getting over a sore throat, so we decided on a project that would keep him inside a bit more: the kitchen pantry.

The before shot, after it's contents were emptied onto the kitchen table

Our house as a whole does not have many storage options, and the kitchen is no exception. This little pantry is about all there is. We currently have two put-it-together-yourself cabinets that hold food and lots of random kitchen gadgets, but we have other places we'd like to use them, plus we need the room for a bigger kitchen table, so operation pantry make-over was put into action. 

Yesterday Matthew turned the bifurcating door into a solid, swing open door (he also did this to the coat closet door while he was at it), while I went through all the cupboards purging them of old items that have either been replaced (crock pot, waffle iron) or should have never been purchased in the first place (sandwich maker). We all drove across the river to the other Menard's to pick up some full extension drawer slides, and stopped by the grocery store for an easy to prepare meal since the kitchen was in total disarray. Matthew was also able to get all the pieces cut for the drawers, but it got too late for him to assemble them that night.

Abraham was having so much fun playing on the doors while they were out of their frames

Hyrum and Dad taking a little break to rest and eat some pretzels

Since the kitchen and playroom were something of a disaster zone and certainly not kid friendly, Matthew decided to stay home today and finish up. Oh the joys of Grad school. I don't know what we'll do when we have a real job and he can't just stay home on a whim. He worked hard and finished building and installing all the drawers. At around 8pm we re-stocked my new pantry and cleaned up. I gained at least 30% more space, though we still weren't able to empty out even one of the cabinets. Despite that, I think I'll really like this system better than what was there before.

Matthew will add face plates and the whole thing will get painted, but he really did need to go to work at some point this week so aesthetics will have to wait.