The basement hatch

This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out my kitchen remodel blog for an archive of previous posts. I posted recently about the backsplash, dining table and yet more decorating. Now I thought I'd dedicate a post to the hatch door created for access to the basement - a GENIUS idea.

I cannot express the magnitude of how genius of an idea it was to take out part of the wall that sectioned off the basement stairs, and have a hatch door created. I have talked about this in previous posts, but OMG it turned out so swimmingly that I had to dedicate a post to it. This is such a great idea for folks out there who have really limited space, as I do. This house is 12' 2" wide - so that is the width of the kitchen, and the section where the wall to the basement was made that about 9.5' wide. Let me show you some before photos. Now, this decision was made partway through the demolition phase so I did not specifically take before photos of the area. Below are some I happened to have already (and one I snuck during demo when I was deciding what to do).

Leaving that wall meant the pantry unit would have had to have been placed closer to the door to my office and with the fridge there, that would have made the doorway very tight. Then with the dining table down the middle of the space, you would have had to shimmy sideways to get by the table, or I would have had to use a small 4 person table instead. Here are a couple photos I took during the reno.
Below, my completed hatch. Genius I tell you - GENIUS!! Worth every penny. And I love that my house, that was previously lacking any architectural feature WHATSOEVER, now has something slightly quirky, and isn't just a straight boring wall.

For more photos, a video I made to show the hatch in action, and my new artwork, click HERE.