Susan's gift is almost done.

Back before Christmas I had posted about a gift for Susan. Well we are still working on it, but it is almost done. We've been building a pantry under the planter.

Here is a before shot of the wall.



Once the drywall was removed we had a little bit of wiring to deal with. We initially thought this would be a simple removal but it wasn't. This wire fed every other outlet in the living room. So down to crawl space we went to rewire everything. Removing the wire ended up taking several days and not the 20 minutes we thought it would.



All of the old studs were removed and a new one was placed in the center. This along with the pantry should be good enough to support the brick planter above.



After we built the support for the pantry we relocated the outlet so it would be beneath the pantry and not in it.



New drywall is up and mudded.



After prepping the wall we were able to take measurements and start cutting wood for the pantry. My dad also made a jig and drilled hundreds of holes in the side panels so we would have adjustable shelves.



Pantry cabinets starting to be assembled.







Cabinets are assembled and ready to go in to the wall.



After a lot of adjusting and leveling we got the two cabinets in. However, once we put in a few shelves we realized the wood we were using was way to thin. Luckily we had only cut 3 shelves and hadn't gotten any more wood yet.



We ended up making the new shelves out of 3/4 inch boards with a white vinyl on them. These are much studier than the previous shelves and should clean up nicely in case something leaks. We also put several coats of polyurethane on the cabinets to make those easy to clean up as well. Once the shelves were in we quickly filled them up.



Here you can see how deep the shelves are and some of the many holes made for the adjustable shelves.



Yay for the doors finally going on! It's starting to look like something out of an Eichler which is what I intended.





All that's left building-wise is to put the front trim on.

So the question now is, what color do we do the doors? We plan on painting the trim the same color as the walls which will be white. We are torn between staining the doors and painting them. I know I don't want to paint them the same color as the cabinets because I don't think that will look good. Maybe I am wrong. What do you all think?