Ah, the basement.

When we bought the old Methodist church, it was a mostly wide-open space with a semi-functional bathroom and a furnace room. With all the square footage and R2 zoning, we knew we wanted some sort of mother-in-law’s apartment here. There were enough windows to provide lots of natural light and three exterior exits, so we knew we could do it without making it dungeon-like. So we transformed the basement into a three-bedroom apartment.

I’ve been teasing a reveal on our basement makeover for what seems like forever. Shall we begin with the kitchen?

Here’s a reminder of what we were working with. The congregation’s basement kitchen offered the typical pass-through for baked goods and casseroles after the worship service. We (and by we, I mean Tyler and St. Johnny) tore this out in the very beginning when we were still renting 40-yard dumpsters by the week.

The congregation left behind a bunch of unmoored cabinets that were mostly empty. In the very back of the biggest ones, where apparently no one could reach, I found treasures like cutting boards, a vintage tomato sieve and a commercial-sized sheet pan. Even the sink was gone! All these beat-up cabinets also found their way to the dumpster.

Tyler knew he wanted to put the new kitchen in this space because we already had a drain.

Months later when You Can Call Me Al joined the team, he offered us used kitchen cabinets he was removing from another client’s house. For free! You betcha we accepted!

The high-end kitchen had beautiful white cabinets. The only problem with them was they were built for a room with 10-foot ceilings. After Tyler and Co. covered the mechanicals, we were working with and an 8-foot ceiling. So instead of leaving room for a backsplash, we just put the upper cabinets right on top of the lower cabinets, leaving a dummy space underneath so we didn’t lose all the counter space. Where we couldn’t use the uppers, Tyler built rustic shelves. Just like the cabinets in the main kitchen, we made what we had work in our space.

Here’s how the cabinets looked before they were anchored. (You can also see all the two-by-four walls in the background that would eventually encase the bedrooms. You can also see all the mechanicals we covered with a ceiling. Amazing the transformative power of dry wall!)

That pole on the far right? There were six of them throughout the basement holding up the main floor. Some of them were encased inside the bedroom walls, but this one in the kitchen would be turned into a decorative (but still functional) column.

Finally, in 2022, we had drywall, flooring, lighting, operational plumbing, cabinets with doors, countertops and appliances. I’m skipping over many steps, but finally, we had a kitchen!

Talk about a home improvement!

Here’s a look from the other direction. You can see there’s still a sort of pass-through over the sink. We even used some of the leftover cabinets for a desk in the corner. The whole space is bright and light and functional.