Monday, January 2, 2012

The Basement Bar

The basement has been our long work in progress... and we always planned to eventually put in a bar/kitchenette once it was finished to make the main living room a true "entertainment room". Well, we were finally at a place where we could get started on the bar (basement was painted, carpeted, most of the molding done, and other projects).... so it was time to look at cabinets.

Since it is our basement and not our main kitchen, we didn't want to spend a ton of money (goal for the whole Kitchenette was to keep it under about $1,200 - $1,500). After looking at quite a few options we ended up back at our good old Ikea and picked out base cabinets, a counter-top and sink. All the cabinets are white which we knew we from the beginning (they should "pop" nicely against the dark grey wall). Once the bottom cabinets & counter-top are done we'll go back in the next month or two and get the upper cabinets... we couldn't decide which size we wanted and thought this could just wait until the main part was done.

The whole process was pretty easy to get everything at Ikea (they had friendly folks on hand to help us get a list of all the pieces needed - and since we had everything measured ahead of time it went much quicker). Then we just had to go to the warehouse and pick everything up.

We can't wait for it to finally be finished and invite friends over to hang out, watch football games, have some drinks, and have plenty of space!

Here are the first pictures of it in progress....

Lots of boxes (this is actually less than half of them)

In progress, making sure things are level. 
The Ikea cabinets come with black legs that are adjustable to help level things... which was super nice for this do-it-yourself project since our basement floor can be a "bit" uneven in places. 

Cabinets put together, and the white back & side panels on. Oak counter-top on. 

 A view from the other side. We still need to install the metal handles on the drawers and cabinet doors. 

The sink. We still need to hook up the plumbing and caulk it. (you can see it is currently a storage space for all our extra cabinet hardware). 

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