A "pantry" for our kitchen

Yay for our new apartment! We have moved everything in (thanks to all those who helped) and I am determined to make our new place homey and looking nice. However, while our new place is much nicer, it is a bit smaller than our old apartment. At the old place, we had this huge pantry-type thing with closed doors, and all of our stuff and junk we didn't use much or didn't know what else to do with we just kind of dumped in there, and it was fine because it had closed doors so you couldn't see the mess behind it. Unfortunately we don't have a place like that in our new apartment. So we needed to buy a pantry for the extra kitchen stuff. And for cheap, because we're poor college students. Also, it couldn't be too tall, because the wall we wanted to put it against has this ugly, lonely shelf (that doesn't match anything else in the kitchen). We searched Wal-mart and Target, found bookshelves and pantries that would work, but I didn't like any of them. They were all between $60-$100, which I know isn't bad, but I could not spend that money for a crap pantry from Wal-mart. So, naturally, I turned to pinterest for ideas. And this is what we came up with!

First, crates from JoAnns. We bought nine but ended up only using eight.

 Next, we set up shop, taping garbage bags to the floor. We sanded each crate, and then vacuumed up the sawdust. One thing I loved about this project is I actually got to help do it. Normally when we do crafty things, I show Marshall what I want and he'll do it. He's got the artistic skill. I have none of that skill whatsoever.

 After sanding, we stained the crates. We already had the stain and supplies on hand since Marshall has more woodworking plans.

 I tried not to, but I splatter some stain on my legs. Lovely little brown spots all over, it looked like I had a disease. But they came off with some Dove soap and scrubbing.

 We set the crates outside to dry overnight. I'm sure other people outside the complex wondered who their new weird neighbors were with the crates outside their door. The next day, we decided we wanted to stencil it to make it more crate-ish style. We debated doing real companies, but I thought this would be more fun. Marshall created the stencil, and then we painted it on the sides of the crates

 Then we stacked them...

 And put in our stuff! We love how they turned out! I'm thinking of getting burlap sacks to put the potatoes and the pancake mix and stuff in to make it look better.

 Also, I have to figure out what to do with this random shelf and the stuff on top!