Sounds about like my experience, although mine is on a much shorter timeline. Started with fermenting in a bucket with ice bottles, found a deal on a smallish chest freezer and a controller for fermentation, bought an abandoned side by side from one of our storage facilities, and finally got most of my hops out of the upright freezer in the garage. We have a small beverage fridge upstairs for beer, soda, and occasionally wine. The side by side is in basement with fridge side full of home brew while the freezer side is packed with hops. There are still a couple pounds of hops in the garage freezer. If any of these crap out on me, it will be a priority to replace, as i have become too accustomed to having this much space. Having a DBF is great, even though there is usually some soda in there. Cheers to having yours back MDixon.