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 the archive in the sidebar for 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.


I am so excited about this new entry to my basement that I even made a little video to demonstrate how it works, and it even features moi (and Felix). I love it THAT MUCH.

The photo below was included in my last post, but I thought I'd show it again because this is what makes the hatch so effortless. We used shocks for the tonneau cover of a pickup truck. They were $50 a piece, but they are exactly what I wanted. It allows the door to almost spring open and closed (I keep a grasp on it so it doesn't do it too quickly) and this also means I don't need a latch like we initially thought. It just needs a little tug to open and slight pressure to close tightly. FABULOUS!!


And on a side note, I finally found time to find a frame and get the new artwork I decided on for the kitchen printed. A couple weeks ago a Flickr contact of mine, Maura Paoletti, posted a totally adorable photo of her cat, Dom Fuas, curled up in a cachepot. I fell in love with it and she agreed that I could print it and hang it in my kitchen. It's perfect - it's the right colours, it's got a bowl-like vessel so it looks kitchen-y, and a cat. I am so pleased with how it turned out (FYI: try Staples for printing in the exact size you need while you wait). Thank you Maura!!! (For Maura on Flickr see here and for her online portfolio see here, and to see a closer shot of the photo, click here).