Basement - Design work and more demo

Hello there!

Lots to share since I have been bad about keeping the blog up to date with where things are on the project. Last I shared, we had just finished the tile. I have now moved on to getting the rest of the bar area planned.

First, let me share my mood board with the items I have chosen for the cabinets and countertop.

Cabinets: HomeCrest Cabinets - Cambridge, Sorrel Stain with Ebony glaze
Tile: Ivory Honed and Filled Travertine, The Tile Shop
Sink Base - Moen, 16" x 16" x 8"
Faucet - Moen, Brantford Bar Faucet in ORB
Countertop - Cambria (Quartz), Newhaven

The layout for the cabinets is below (Just took a picture from my phone, sorry for quality). The sink base is 24" wide. The left base cabinet is 15" wide. All three top cabinets are 18" wide. A big thank you to Cabinet Discounters for their help with designing everything (and helping me make decisions).

While designing what we wanted for the cabinets, I realized a pretty big problem. The header of the closet (aka the part that hangs down) is too low for the wall cabinets. After much study (mostly involving figuring out where the studs and support structures were), I figured out I could take down the header. It would make the area look much more professional.

First, I took off the trim pieces around where the closet doors were.

Writing to mark the pieces of drywall.

There are a lot of pictures missing here. Mostly because I was working at all sorts of weird angles and it got frustrating. I took off the back drywall first. I marked where I wanted the drywall to be taken out and then scored the drywall in those places. This involves using a very sharp utility knife. Once the area has been scored, a few good whacks will take down the drywall.

I enlisted J's help.

After the drywall was removed, I was left with the wood used to hold the header. None of this was structurally important. It was attached via a few nails. Some nails, we were able to pry out (J helped). One we had to cut. The other way I got it down was that once the 2 vertical pieces were out, I cut the horizontal piece in half. I then had a lot of leverage to get the remaining nails out.

There were then some misalignment of the underlying structure that I had to fix. I used a 1 x 4 for the ceiling. There was some slight sloping, so I had to use a few pieces of 1 x 4 to get it right. I used screws to attach.

I also had to use a 1 x 4 on the left hand side. Since then, I had to do a bit more work over there, but I'll cover that next post.

There is still a lot of drywall work to do before the cabinets are installed. Luckily I have a few weeks to wait for the cabinets anyway, which gives me time to work on it. Ideally, you would put in the drywall in large sheets, but I am just not going to do that.

It's been kind of fun to see how everything is put together. Drywall is not my favorite, so I hope it turns out okay. I'll cover this next time, but I had to get a little creative with how to make it work. I also have yet to figure out what I will do about lighting. One step at a time.

And last but not least, before I started all this demo work, I did seal the tile.

It was not hard and took very little time. It's a matter of spreading on the sealer, waiting 10 minutes, and wiping off the excess. I did 2 coats of sealer since the travertine was so porous.

I also tucked in the carpet, but I don't have a final picture to share of that. I guess you'll have to wait until the mess is cleaned up. I used plastic and plywood to protect the tile during header demo.

Until next time...