First things first. The Door!
Look at how much space is wasted by the original basement door being where it is. Sure we could have just put like a cart there and moved it every time we went down in the basement but who wants to live like that.
Our solution was to put the door in the hallway so we could build a wall where it use to be and push the fridge right up against it freeing up a lot of space. I knew this was going to be quite tricky because of the basement stairs. The last thing we wanted was to open a door and have to jump down onto two different level steps. This was sort of a good thing because we need a new staircase in the basement as well as we needed to reinforce our main staircase. So we had multiple contractors come through to quote us on the job.
We ended up hiring a gentleman who did a good job on the basement steps and door but was the worlds messy person EVER. This guy never cleaned up any mess and He also went throw my fridge snacking on left overs. This was very apparent from all the drywall mud finger prints on everything which was pretty hilarious.
Pro Tip! if you are ever going to build an Ikea kitchen make sure you wait for a Kitchen Event. You get a percentages back in gift cards based on how many appliance you buy. We bought a double oven, dishwasher, a gas range and microwave hood fan and got about $1700 back in gift cards. So dope!
Also get them to deliver it. Look at how many boxes and items there are. No way i was lugging all of this home by myself.
If you have a toddler they will help prep your old kitchen for demos and colour in the instructions for the new cabinets so it’s not super ugly, plain drawings.
note: zero things in my house are straight or level. The house is over 100 years old and very noticeable from the bottom of the door to the floor.