Its been three days and I'm still going through all the recaps about BlogPodium. Its been so awesome to see what people took away from the event. Thanks again to everyone who helped out, attended, or supported this little big idea Lindsay and I had.

***

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming :)

It's almost crunch time, folks. Our awesome contractor Basement Spaces has been working these last few weeks to take us to what the design trade calls "base building" - from demolition, through installing studs, electrical and plumbing, to primed drywall - and we're almost there! That is a little scary to me because everything beyond this point... painting, installing cabinetry in the craft area and laundry room, installing flooring, all tilework, installing all bathroom fixtures, building the cutest littlest playhouse ever, and all trimwork... is up to us!

Getting close!

We've done the pre-work already, planning the layout and basically deciding where everything will go. And great news, we're working with a fabulous sponsor, The Home Depot, to help bring these plans to life. Home Depot has always been our go-to place for renovation supplies. We used them when we were building the deck bench seat, for Chloe's play kitchen, the Bloggers Give Back garden, and many more house projects so you can imagine how excited we are to work with them on the basement renovation.

First up, figuring out the cabinetry for the craft area. Of all the items going into the basement, cabinetry has the longest lead time (about 4-6 weeks) so it was one of the things we needed to decide first. Since we would be using kitchen cabinetry for the craft area, the banquette seat, and general storage, it made sense to meet with a kitchen designer. Meet Amber, Kitchen Designer at The Home Depot Yorkdale location.


I've met with a kitchen designer before, in fact, three of them, when we were researching options for our main kitchen. While you can plan a kitchen yourself, a professional kitchen designer knows all the tips and tricks to make your kitchen uber-functional AND stylish. They know things that we laypeople may not, like the minimum distance between an island and other cabinetry, and how to mix closed and open storage attractively, but most importantly they save you time planning and help prevent costly mistakes. Maybe she would have caught that our stove wasn't going to fit down our hallway.
We started with the easy part, selecting a door style. I say easy because I've had a major crush on Martha Stewart cabinetry which I blogged about here and here. I knew I wanted to keep the look similar to the rest of the house so I selected the Ox Hill line.


For the colour, I was immediately drawn to Sharkey Grey. Its just so "Martha", isn't it? Then it was on to finding a countertop. Since the countertop would be subjected to everything from crafts paints to hot glue, exacto knives and paper punches, it had to be durable and resistant to staining. Corian fit the bill. Here are a few colours that caught my eye. Can you guess which one made the cut?



Amber also helped me pick the basement flooring but I'll save the How's and Why's of that for another post. It is good idea to pick all your main finishes together though so that you establish the colour palette and set a direction for the rest of your decor decisions.

A few other decisions we tackled: cabinetry hardware...

How gorgeous are those brass handles? And they're affordable too!

and countertop profile. Amber suggested we go with this reversed bevel profile. Why? It makes it easy to wipe spilled glitter or crafty embellishments off the countertop into your hand. Smart thinking!



Now that we had the "look" identified, it was time to move on to figuring out the actual cabinet configuration. More on that coming up next!

Have you ever worked with a kitchen designer? Any kitchen design tips you want to pass on?