The Pantry make-over

If you will remember my initial post about the pantry, you will remember that I said it was one hot mess!!! Good thing it has a door on it, right?  All those cabinets to the left of the white door (the pantry), at one time held a hodge podge of dishes, coffee and tea fixings, mugs, bowls, etc.  But there were also dishes over to the other side of the kitchen as well.  It just was disorganized.  And my pantry was totally disorganized and way too full, especially since we only have three people in our household.  I've been used to cooking for five for so long, that I've got to learn to buy less, accumulate less, and also needed to get rid of excess stuff I'd held onto for far too long......um, hummm.........needed a do-over!  Please disregard the extra stuff on the countertop......I was working, not cleaning!    So I pulled everything out of my pantry, and everything out of the dish cabinets.....and began a major transformation that has turned out to be fantastic!  But it wasn't until today that I actually finished the project.....because I needed to replace the shelf covering...it was old contact paper that looked like this:

Old and dirty and out-dated, this needs a make-over , too!!!  So I picked up some more contact paper, after deciding that it would work the best.  The padded grid covering doesn't allow the dishes to slide in, which is what is helpful for me to put dishes away quickly.  Here's a picture of putting back together to put the food away.  My husband and I had taken a trip to WalMart to pick up tiered shelving for cans and white plastic baskets for holding chips, crackers and the like.
So today, I started putting the shelf paper in the pantry.......can you tell when I bought it, I was ready for spring and flowers??? No more drab skies for me!  I think it will look great in my pantry.

And now it's springy and organized and pretty!  The only dilemma is this next picture.  The picture below is the top shelf in the pantry.  It's nice because it holds all my tall things like the SLaHOME Savannah Beverage Server and my Astoria Carafe, and a few bottles of wine and liquor.  The PROBLEM with it is, that top shelf, which is not yet populated with said items, goes up about three feet!!!  Talk about wasted space!  It's difficult to even get anything up there (of course I have to use a stool anyway since I'm only 5'2".   The only solution I've been able to imagine is to get someone to frame out an open shelf above the pantry door, and use it as a display area........anyone else have any ideas???  If you go back to the top picture, you can imagine a framed- out indention where the wrought iron piece is above the door.  It might even be cool to have a fold down glass front.  What do you think could otherwise be done?  I hate to waste that space!!!

So this is the result of my pantry transformation.....maybe I'll link it up next Monday to Susan's party or Amanda's design dilemma next month.  Thanks for any ideas you have to offer.....sorry to have waited so darned long to post this!!