We were starting off with a blank space so we had the rare opportunity to transform this room into anything we wanted. After assessing what did and didn't work with our last craft room, I decided on a few must-have elements for the cabinetry:
- a long bench seat for group activities
- storage in the bench seat to hold longer supplies like gift wrap
- a mix of narrow and taller drawers
- more pull out drawers than cabinets
- open shelving
- shelving where I could store larger items like baskets and a sewing machine

Concept #1:

Here's the first design I came up with. This would be the long wall facing the entry door:
The other side of the room would look like this, with a bench seat beside the door and a tall cabinet in the far corner. The tall cabinet might be a good place to store the vacuum and brooms, much like our old but pretty broom closet (how I miss that!). A patterned tile on the floor and black accents would ground the space.

While I liked this design, it felt off. Would I really use that desk space when I had a perfectly good desk space upstairs? Likely not. There also didn't seem to be sufficient cabinetry.

Concept #2:


That lead to this design. Not enough cabinetry? Why not fill the whole wall with it! I took out the desk area and added wall to wall base cabinets. The open shelves were replaced with more cabinets but to keep the uppers from feeling too bulky, we could replace some of the cabinet doors with glass doors. The bench and tall tower would remain on the opposite wall. A table would float in the middle of the room, still allowing for foot traffic to travel into the cold storage room on the left and the laundry room on the right.

I was feeling pretty good about this design. It was time to meet with The Home Depot Canada, our partner on this project, and get this idea on paper.

Concept #3:

It was great to meet with The Home Depot Canada kitchen specialist and translate my rough designs into a true workable plan. After hearing about the features of the different brands of cabinetry that The Home Depot Canada carries, we decided on the Thomasville Nouveau line. Thomasville is a brand I've long admired for their beautiful, high-quality products. I'll share more about the cabinet style, door design, and colour we selected (you might be surprised!) in my next post.

The kitchen specialist input my design into the virtual planner. There were so many things I hadn't considered (like would the bench be flush with the towers or set back, or would I need pull outs in the towers) so it was great to have her expertise.

The problem with having all that cabinetry in the design is that things can get pretty pricey. Uh, yeah, I never considered that. I was just living out my craft room dreams, people! So very quickly we had to find a way to cut costs without sacrificing style and storage. Mission impossible?

The almost 12' of base cabinets was killing our budget so we had to resolve that problem first. A very simple solution presented itself: flip the plan!






Moving the bank of cabinets to the shorter wall did bring the cost down but we were still beyond our budget. We made some design changes and sacrificed a few elements, but finally, we came to a layout and cost we were happy with.

In case you're planning a cabinetry project of your own, here's a few ways to save on the cost of cabinetry:

• opt for white cabinets. Selecting a darker cabinet may incur a colour charge
• use cabinets instead of pull out drawers
• consider Thermofoil, Melamine or MDF instead of wood doors
• eliminate extras like glass doors and pull-out shelves
• select a cabinet design with fewer drawers. More drawers = more cost
• reduce the number of cabinets overall. For example, consider one 30" wide cabinet instead of two 15" wide cabinets to fill a space