In addition to pantry fun we've had some professionals come in and prepare the cracked beams in the attic (shown here, you can see the crack around 2:00). The cracks has allowed some moisture to come in and cause some cracking in the plaster of the second floor hallway ceiling. Not sure what we're going to do about that at this time. But the cracked beams have been daughtered and the roof exterior will be repaired as the weather permits.

My Dad strikes again. (Thanks Dad!) He is the creator of these fabulous, custom made shelves for our new pantry. They look really great and have a really nice routed edges and really sturdy supports. My folks brought them by about a week and a half ago and we were able to get the top trimmed (on just one side because the floor and/or ceiling is a little uneven, to noone's surprise) applied coats of primer, paint and attach them to the walls. Then came the fun part of filling up the shelves (and consequently emptying out our overstuffed kitchen cupboards). Who knew we had six jars of spaghetti sauce hidden away? We've even got some expansion space left on the shelves.

Here's another shot of the shelves in context to the rest of the pantry.


We still have a few minor things to do in the pantry, but it's really close to being finished and fully utilized. I'll have to take some more finalized pictures this weekend when I can get some good daylight shots.

In between working on different aspects of the pantry, we had to have a little fun last month when we had absolutely perfect packing snow on a sunny day. The result of our efforts is seen here as the fabulous snow family. Shortly after their creation we had a big thaw (not that you would know it by much of today's single digit temps) and the snow family slowly disintegrated. They were a lot of fun while they lasted.

Work has continued on the pantry, but unfortunately gone undocumented, so in an effort to get caught up. Here's a picture of the installed upper cabinets.