The 2-year old Cabinet Chronicle

I took this first photo in July of 2010....yes.....2010.  While the shot was intended to catch the headboard Terry put in to provide the necessary support over the French Doors, it also now has a second purpose because it's the only photo I could find as a "before" shot of the large cabinet.  We bought it (a LONG time ago) to help make our entire kitchen a bit more cohesive, not to mention provide us with some form of pantry space.  

And then it just turned into our unfinished wine cabinet for 2 years.  Ugh

Putting your house of the market is certainly a motivator to get things finished.  And our cabinet ranked high on the list.  This past weekend, yes, two years later, we finally get er' done.
Excuse the mess in the next photo.  It was a bit of a war zone for a while just juggling where things needed to go and, er, hide.
It was a free-standing unit that we bought from Home Depot.  Previously the space was just empty, and we felt like putting in a unit there and staining it as we did our cabinets would complete the look of the space.
So, we hauled it out of its 2-year happy nook and started finishing it up.

The sides were just material board, non finished, I guess just assuming it would be a piece in a large set of kitchen cabinets where it wouldn't matter that the sides weren't finished.
Terry bought some sort of wood finishing siding, and extra heavy duty glued it down.  That board isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  Once the glue was set, Terry trimmed off the excess, we stained and polyurethaned it over the course of almost a week, and then...

Voila!
We love it.  Woulda been nice to actually use it ourselves over the past 2 years with it looking like this, but ehhh, it served the same purpose I guess (just a lot more homely.....and that does not mean homey!)  Originally (as in the past week, not 2 years ago "originally") we decided on adding matching handles to the rest of the kitchen, but now we like it as it is.  No muss, no fuss. 

As a reference, here's our full kitchen from when Lara came over to take photos.  It wasn't finished for this shot, it was actually getting it's glue down on in the garage, but it's not perched in the far right side of this photo smiling with all it's new friends.