A weekend with Allen

Nope, not that Alan.

I'm going to be spending this weekend with a handy little Allen key. This just arrived from Ikea.

Thank goodness for the staging area in the living room. I put a couple of sheets of masonite that the contractors had to protect the kitchen floor down, and I've been using it to work on so I don't have to worry about scratching the new hardwood. It served it's purpose well this afternoon with the delivery guys dragging the stuff across the soggy boulevard and tromping into the house with their muddy boots.

These are kitchen cabinets that are going in the basement in the play area. We have our extra fridge and deep freeze down there now, but have been using the small back room for storage. I want to use that room for my work room (you know, so I can actually buy living room furniture and have someplace to put it), so I needed to gain some storage somewhere else.

I ordered cabinets to go above the fridge and freezer, and then two deep pantries to go alongside them. Here's a shot of the current set up - the stairs coming down into the basement are behind the wall, and the door you can see off to the left is the bathroom. The bulkhead along the ceiling holds the main trunk from the furnace that distributes the heat to most of the house.

We planned this part out well - there are actually separate circuits for the fridge and freezer so we don't have any flickering lights when they cycle on and off!

And here's a shot from the other direction. 

The floors in this part of the basement are still just bare concrete. I'm not sure when (if) we'll finish them. We hadn't actually planned to finish this area of the basement at all, but then figured we may as well do it while the drywall dust was still flying.

In the end, I'm happy we decided to do it. We insulated the walls and ceiling, so there's decent noise blocking when the kids are playing downstairs. We also moved the big TV and the Wii down to allow us to enjoy a quieter main floor.

Anyway, I better get back to my real job so I can finish it up and then get started on assembling the cabinets. I hope by the end of the weekend I'll have some great after shots!