If you’re here for the basement tour, you’ve come to the right place.
While progress in the basement has slowed down over the past month, Northern Stone and Clearwater Custom Cabinets recently hooked us up with some impact pieces — quartz counters and one-of-a-kind cabinets.
Now that the cabinets and countertops are in we expect things to start progressing quickly. Our contractor, Carpenter Homes, says we should be able to indulge in a family movie night by Christmas! That is, as long as we don’t make any last minute changes and pull our weight on the DIY stuff! Uffda, here’s to hoping!
Let’s start with the bar.
If you need a refresher on the look we are shooting for click here.
At this point, it’s pretty obvious we are into the marble look, so why man-made quartz? One word – MAINTENANCE. The day wine or something acidic spills on marble, that thing is done. No thank you, I like wine too much!
However, if you are one of those people who enjoys patina, carry on with that kitchen marble install.
Disclosure – Don’t take me too seriously because two of our bathrooms are almost completely marble. I love them, there is some slight patina, and I’d be lying if I said I’ve never brought wine into them.
In our defense, when we built our home a few years ago the options for quartz counters were not this realistic, Quartz counters are getting more natural looking every year.
For our bar we went with Dupont’s Zodiaq® London Sky. We liked that it didn’t have a repeating pattern, has big natural looking veining, and was the most affordable of our final options. We also considered Daltile’s White Statuary and Cambria’s Torquay.
The notch above is for a rustic beam picked up at ICSS Supply Company.
To tie the entertainment room to the bar, we used remnant pieces from our counters for the fireplace surround. In many ways the two rooms, which are open to each other, are opposites. The repeated detail should bring some consistency to the spaces.
As you can see in the pictures, the quartz surround sticks out about 1/2 in. from the mantel since it is counter depth, not tile depth. We will be hiding this lip with molding. Visually we don’t want the mantel to look like a shelf, so we are simply going to trim it out. We are going to DIY this part and it will probably looks something like this.
Quartz counters were also installed in the guest bathroom.
To save money we bought a remnant piece from Northern Stone’s yard for the bathroom. It is Viatera’s Cirrus. It is very similar to the stone we picked for the bar, but is a little whiter and has less veining. We also used it for the shower curb.
For a refresher on the bathroom design, visit here.
What do you think of our counter selections? Sound off below.
Missed some basement progress posts? See them all here.
Then don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter here.
