Sugar, Spice and .... Paint?

When we bought our house we were kind of puzzled as to why there was a closet in the dining room. Ya know, the traditional style closet with bi-fold doors. From what we were told [Our Realtor told us she knew the owners from a couple of years prior], the dining room started out as a dining room, than the owner turned it into a bedroom because he had a fairly large family and needed the extra rooms. The the next owner after him turned it back into it's original purpose. A dining room.

So now we have a formal dining room with a closet. What we didn't have was a Pantry, and boy do we need a pantry! So in the end the fact that our dining room had a closet wasn't so bad after all and the fact that the dining room is right off the kitchen makes it even more of a good idea to turn the dining room closet into a pantry.

Up until now this is what our 'Pantry' has looked like. Pretty simple, messy and just that... a place for food storage and extra Kitchen gadgets.

The shelves Josh added a few weeks after we moved in. We were tired of rummaging through boxes of canned goods and spices, so he built some simple shelving. Very sturdy simple shelving. I than painted two shelves before I ended up running out of paint [that was 7 months ago... I KNow!] and up until now I haven't had the chance to grab some new paint, that and I always seemed to forget [I tend to do that sometimes].

So I completely cleared all of the mess contents from the 'Pantry' so I could finish painting the shelves and also the wall within the Pantry itself.

On a side note, I know the shelves look ridiculously uneven, but with the comforts of living in an old home, come the joys of uneven floors. The shelves really are leveled for the closet pantry however. 

Luckily I had JUST enough Valspar- Mount Pilier white [which is what the actual dining room is painted in] to finish the entire inside part of the Pantry.

Next up is to finish painting the shelves white. I have some ideas for the wall, one of which is 'drying' as we speak... although im not sure if im 'sold' on it just yet.

Other ideas I have cooking away in my brain are to removed the bi-fold doors [because honestly they just seem to bedroom-ish for me, and after all this IS a dining room] and organize all of our stash within baskets, glass jars and other 'easy on the eye' display wares.

Do you have a Pantry? Do you like exposed pantry items, or items that can just be stashed away quickly and out of view?