Pantry Dilemma Solved

For the last few weeks I have been trying to finalize how I wanted my finished kitchen to look (you know - after the 3 years I have been designing it in my head).  It isn't easy - I have to not only decide what I want now but what I may need in the future, and what will work for a long time to come.  I have almost everything figured out - but the area I am most excited about is my Pantry.  Instead of the tiny walk-in pantry the kitchen originally had (it was 6 shelves that were 24" Wide x 18" Deep), I am putting in an entire wall of pantry cabinets.  The wall is approx. 103" Tall x 113" Wide x 18" Deep.  This seems huge - and it is - but it will have to hold all of our pantry food, seasonal dishes/small decorations, candles and vases, serving dishes, ect...I am sure there is more that I haven't listed.  I have made a commitment to not keep things I don't have a place for - so the pantry is kind of the catch-all for the entire 'living space' of our house.  The other side of making sure it is organized and functional for the space, is to make sure it is nice to look at - it is an entire wall and can be seen from several different places in the house.  So first on my list was function then form, but I also have to worry about price.  (Can you see why it wasn't easy yet?)  I need a lot of cabinets, and because of the size of the pantry area - these cabinets in particular are not cheap.  I obsessively searched for ideas on my favorite sites: Pinterest and Houzz.  (If you have never been to Houzz - I recommend it for anyone who likes pretty house pictures.)

I have probably spent close to 100 hours over the last 3 years looking for, designing, looking again, re-designing, and throwing out options for my pantry cabinets.  Some were just boring, some were really expensive, some didn't fit the space (wrong design style).  Once I had a few I liked, I then spent about a week comparing the functionality and price of each of my options.

I finally decided on this:

I'm sure that looks super impressive!  I do not have the ability to make it in 3D - I just make everything in Excel lol.  Here is a better picture of what I want, which I found on Houzz:
 

Pantry Idea


 I love that there is a visual break in the cabinet doors.  I also love the idea of putting cookbooks and pretty dishes in there (this is my knickknack space for the kitchen).  This not only solved my boring wall of cabinets issue, but it gave me an additional cabinet to use in my island since I would no longer need to put the cookbooks there.  As an added bonus - eliminating the need for 3 cabinets (12"x36" each) saves me a suprising amount of money.  Originally, I wanted drawers on the bottom and several different cabinets stacked on top for visual interest but all the diferent cabinets were really pricey so I was hesitant about that - and I actually really like the clean look of this and I plan to put pullout drawers on the inside of some of the cabinets.   

Hopefully, I will be ordering all of our cabinets next weekend...If I can decide on everything before then.  Wish me luck - I am equally excited and terrified! :)