We’ve been noodling on how to best tackle our kitchen for 2.5 years now, and we’ve landed on three potential floorplans (a week ago when I first took a stab at writing this post it was one, but alas, I’ve reopened a few of our previous ideas…). This is a good reminder that sometimes you have to live with your house for a while to see what makes the most sense, and sometimes you have to consult the masses because you’ve hit a wall, ha!
Backing up, let me introduce you to our kitchen in it’s current state:
And those wide-angle listing shots (we made a few changes):
A few things that I need to address before we proceed:
- Yes, our kitchen was renovated about a decade ago and for the most part, it’s a reasonably functional kitchen. The appliances have served us well, and while we don’t plan to reuse them, we will find them a good home.
- While this kitchen has been updated, it 100% does not align with the style of our house. It’s DARK in here. There’s no reference in the design to this being a 1940’s Colonial. It’s just a mid 2000’s bachelor kitchen.
- Before you tell me we ought to paint all the cabinetry… yes, I know it’s a possibility, but for two reasons we probably won’t. The first being that these cabinets are not good quality. They’re an unfortunate laminate/MDF situation. If they were wood, yes we would keep them, but they genuinely are not good quality. The second reason being that the amount of dirt that accumulates in those ridges in the front panel of the doors is next level. These doors are impossible to really clean, and it drives us insane.
We’re definitely opening up the wall between the kitchen and living room. Originally, I was thinking it would come out entirely and be just a beam going across the two spaces, but I’ve revised my thinking and have settled on a cased opening like the below. This slightly separates the spaces, allowing them to feel more historical and intentional.
For reference, this is the wall in our home that I’m talking about, where the current doorway to the kitchen is just to the right:
And now, on to the floor plans.
The Original Floorplan
And a closer view:
Original Floorplan Pros:
- Lots of storage (more than we need, to be honest)
- Keeping the same floorplan is way less expensive
Original Floorplan Cons:
- Choppy layout is awkward to maneuver
- Feels very closed off
- You can’t open the dishwasher and the trash at the same time
- Lots of corners and they are underutilized for storage
- Can only seat two comfortably at the peninsula
Option One
In this option, we’re maintaining the same layout, but are killing the peninsula and carrying the cabinetry across the rest of the exterior wall. We then add a narrow 28″ freestanding island to run down the center of the kitchen. And we take the cabinetry on the right wall to full height to create a pantry and appliance garage / coffee bar.
Here’s the view of the full main floor:
And then a closer look at the kitchen:
Option One Pros:
- The least costly option because we’re only taking down one wall
- We get full use of the wall on the right for pantry storage
- Maintain a good work triangle
Option One Cons:
- The island is very narrow and won’t allow for much seating, if at all
- The island is freestanding and won’t provide any additional storage
- Can’t center the island on the range (unless the range isn’t centered on that wall), so everything is feeling imbalanced
- Kitchen still feels a bit tight
For reference, these are some inspiration for the island:
Option Two
In this option, we’re keeping all the appliances in roughly the same location, but we’re pushing back the wall between the kitchen and the entryway to make space for an island down the center of the kitchen. Here, we have a vent stack to contend with, which makes the last set of cabinets on that wall quite shallow. We do think we could still make that space work for us, and do have access to a space just beyond the kitchen for a secondary pantry (our current setup is the 7’0 wall adjacent to the side entry has a coat closet in the left corner and a shallow pantry to the right.
And here’s some inspiration for the island:
And the view towards the stove (except that we would have uppers alongside the stove or some creative solution to hide the exhaust that needs to go outside.
Option Two Pros:
- Reclaim some space that’s being underutilized in the entryway to create a bigger kitchen footprint
- Gain a full sized island (40″ wide x 7 feet long)
- Gain four stools in the kitchen at the island
- Gain storage under half the island
- Cased opening to the kitchen becomes even wider (forgot to update in the floorplan) for better sightlines to the living room
Option Two Cons:
- Lose full-sized pantry space in the kitchen
- Added expense from taking down one more wall and adding another steel beam
- Can’t fully push the cabinetry back into the entry-way space because of the awkward vent stack placement
- Still can’t really center the island on the range
Option Three
This is a variation on Option Two that moves the range between the two windows, and moves the sink to the island.
Here, I like that the range has it’s own moment on the wall between the windows (except I’m not sure if it will bother me that the windows aren’t the same width?). It also gives the island more purpose, which I like as well. The one thing I can’t really figure out in this plan is what to do with the short wall now to turn it into a feature as you look through the cased opening?
Here’s some visuals on the range between two windows:
Option Three Pros:
- Range becomes a focal point between the windows
- Don’t have to worry about the island feeling off-center anymore
- The view from the entryway into the kitchen can become less obtrusive, depending on how we treat the short wall
- Reclaim some space that’s being underutilized in the entryway to create a bigger kitchen footprint
- Gain a full sized island (40″ wide x 7 feet long)
- Gain four stools in the kitchen at the island
- Gain storage under half the island
- Cased opening to the kitchen becomes even wider for better sightlines to the living room
Option Three Cons:
- The work triangle isn’t as quite as good
- Lose full-sized pantry space in the kitchen
- Added expense from taking down one more wall and adding another steel beam
- Can’t fully push the cabinetry back into the entry-way space because of the awkward vent stack placement
And I’m officially out of ideas! What do you think looking at the space with fresh eyes? If you’re a floorplan dork like me and want to take a shot at it, here’s a link to a full-sized version of the existing floorplan without any cabinetry.
One other note, one of Cory’s friends asked why we wouldn’t just leave the wall with the fridge open in Option 2 and 3 for a completely open floorplan. In case you were thinking the same thing and are wondering why we didn’t consider this, it’s because I like a balance in my ‘open concept’, where that layout feels like it would destroy the historical-ness of our 1940’s Colonial, where the front hallway becomes completely unnecessary. Also, having lived with a fully-open concept kitchen in previous homes, cooking can be really loud and smelly, so I want to keep some of that contained from the living room. How do you feel about truly open concept living?
P.S. I use Homestyler for all my floorplans, they also have 3D Renderings, which help to visualize scale too. We have aspirations to learn SketchUp this year, but haven’t quite gotten to it yet.
Update: I realize I didn’t explain the room beyond the kitchen AT ALL, here’s a photo of its current state, where it serves as our mudroom. There’s a closet I forgot to add into the floor plans and a built-in shallow pantry to the right of the closet. I’m going to take some better, more current photos, but this is what I currently have saved on Dropbox.
This is the view towards the bathroom – kitchen is on the left, where there’s a wall with a bench that divides the space. On the right is our coat closet and the shallow pantry.
A better, older shot from when we were painting the space:
Our hope for the pantry space here had been to repurpose it for cleaning supplies, since those don’t have a great home right now, but that could move to the laundry room. We’re also planning on adding a built in bench with drawers for storage where the current bench lives because we have a serious shoe organization problem in this corner of the house.