Kelly, I love my front facing kitchen, and if we ever remodel (which we probably won't) I'd open it to the FR behind with its big picture window to the back yard. But it's a small FR with dining, mudroom, laundry, and enclosed porch all opening off it, so not really a "great room", it would probably become our "morning room".

Instead, I'll show you a relative's house. My dimensions are of course not true, but it shows how the kitchen faces front, casual dining in back, all part of the sunroom which they really used as a family room, TV, etc. It was great, worked well for entertaining, too. It seems to me they had an angled garage to the left of the playroom, too.

I know the dining room looks odd, enclosed like that, but the sunroom used to be a porch that they enclosed. The dining room kept its glass sliders for years after that! But you know, it worked, because the DR still had great views out the back, and it made circulation easy, especially after the sliders were gone!

Laura...but I haven't seen her here for a while. Nice plan :)

the one or 2 people I know that have moved into existing homes with front kitchens have mixed feelings, the primary one being that they are self conscious if there are any dirty dishes in the sink as it's the first room you see so therefore if it's untidy, they feel they don't make their best first impression. I never thought of it that way, but my old sitter that was her perspective.

Fortunately, Kelly's kitchen requires effort (not to mention a sideways periscope!) to see from the entry.

Below is a link to a floor plan with a kitchen in the front.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Chesnee

Had a rental with a kitchen that looked onto the street and the tenants loved it.

My mom's house is kitchen at the front, and she loves the layout. We're planning a kitchen at the front now. There will be a wall between the foyer and the kitchen to.block the direct view into the kitchen

Thanks to all of you for your input and ideas. Everyone is so helpful! I'm curious as to whether anyone has photos of a front kitchen that transitions to a dinette with the GR to the side? Amoore - I like the Chesanee plan that you posted. Does anyone have interior photos of that?

Thanks!

Kelly
go to the Donald Gardner website and look under hillside walkout plans. Most of these have the kitchens at the front with the main floor plans as you describe. You can compare the floorplans and the pictures for each plan or on their home page go to the kitchen pictures

Thanks, Dave! I'll check it out!

Yes, we do! I designed our house (it took me years, since I'm not an architect or designer), but if you'll look at the Chesnee linked above by amoore, the middle part of it is very close to ours, and the only one I've ever seen like this--and I looked at a LOT of plans several years ago. If you print the Chesnee and re-lable the rooms as I've called ours, you should be able to follow my lengthy description below and see if any of it is helpful to you. Sorry I can't post a picture.

If you cut off everything to the left of the Great Room & BR/Study of the Chesnee, put a patio behind their Dining, only the Master BR/WIC/Bath behind the Garage, move the Garage back and to the right several feet (ours measures 25' x 31' finished inside but I think their measurements would be better), and put the Pantry, Laundry, Mudroom hall with bench & cabinets, up/down Stairs, door to back Patio, Powder Room, and 3 scattered Closets between the 3-car garage and Kitchen/Dining, you've got our basic house with different measurements. Their BR/Study is our Dining Room/Study (used for lots of projects) and has one set of centered 54" pocket doors to the foyer and another not centered set to the GR (so I could fit the credenza on the longer side of this wall).

We have a wall between the GR/F and K/EA (Eating Area), with doors on each side of the Chesnee long island--which makes ours a peninsula (although shortened to the same length as the right side of the center island--our island is 4' x 3'--so it's easy to get to our EA). We have a 2-way gas fireplace in the wall between the GR & EA. We have a single 24" sink where they have a double (we put cold canned drinks in ice here when entertaining), a double sink under the window, and an L instead of a U. The cooktop & warming drawer are in the part of the L to the left of where they have the fridge, we have a door to the pantry to the left of the long end of the L (where they have cabinets & ovens on the right), and the oven/MW is just outside the pantry at the long end of the L. Our fridge is recessed into the Pantry.

The flow is excellent for all of the main rooms, since the K, EA, & GR can all be accessed from 3 different doorways, and the DR/Study by 2, without traffic jams and with minimal interference, if any, with what's going on in the rooms. On our plan the Porch area is included in our Foyer--which has a closet and bench, Kitchen, Pantry, & Laundry. Our porch is in front of the foyer & kitchen.

Our house has an open feel, but the walls block some of the noise, and the doors allow us to close off most areas, which can happen more than you'd think. I also like having walls for pictures! This is a VERY energy-efficient house, so I had to talk DH into even doing 9' ceilings on the 1st floor. With hardwood floors, large windows to get the sun, floor to ceiling slate on both sides of the fireplace, and the 9' ceilings, it's still noisier than I'd like (in spite of rugs & drapery panels) when the whole family gets together.

From the kitchen I can easily see and hear what's going on in the GR if I want to, but I need to concentrate when I'm cooking. Otherwise I lose track of what ingredients I've put in, what temperature something should be on the cooktop or in the oven, etc., since I'm preparing a lot of different dishes at the same time. So I need some separation from loud voices in the GR.

My #1 requirement was to have a view from the kitchen through what I call the eating area to the back (it's as large as a dining room, but we have another DR, since I do a lot of indoor seated potlucks), with the kitchen on the front. We have an acre treed lot much longer than it is wide and it's angled half-way back, with the house set at the angle and great views to the E, NW & SW.

I love our kitchen on the front! The view through the trees in front is great, I can always see when company is pulling up the driveway, if the FedEx, UPS guy, or mailman is coming, I can see down the street to where the school bus picks up and lets off the young grandkids who live with us. I also love being able to look through to the backyard, especially in the fall and winter when I can see through the trees down to the river.

When might this kitchen setup not work? If you have small children who will be playing in the back yard and you'd want to watch them while inside prepping meals--but they grow up quickly. If you grill a lot and want the kitchen closer to the back grilling patio. One thing I didn't want was having people coming and going from the outside through the GR or DR, since it can make the indoor seating difficult, but more importantly this causes more wear, dirt, and tear on the hardwood floors and area rugs. So we're happy to have them go from the kitchen through the tiled mudroom hall and out the back door, or through the eating area which has a door to the back hall/back door about where the Chesnee has the wall for the up stairs.

I love having the SW breeze blow across the front porch when I'm sitting there--a reason not to have a room block the porch if this matters to you. We also get the SW breeze on the back patio. There are tall oak trees on all sides of the house to block the summer sun. The front porch is 10' x 20'. It would have been 8' deep, but you have to walk across the length of it from the right side to get to the front door, since the lot slopes down to the DR/Study in this area.

For us it's better this way with the porch furniture under the kitchen window, but makes the kitchen darker at certain times of the day, although we put 2 SunTunnels in the kitchen that make it fine some of the time. I did medium cherry cabinets which have darkened some--wish I'd done the lighter maple with a glaze that I'd had in my previous place. We had to put our walkout patio and doors on the FRONT of the house in front of the DR/Study which works well due to the way we angled the house on the lot, all of the trees, a pond, and how the neighbor's house/lot are.

Our lot shape and contours, wetlands/ponds/river on 3 sides which also forced where the driveway could go, limited septic field location, and neighbors' houses determined a lot of my design. The orientation is less than ideal for energy efficiency due to the back view facing the NW. However, we see the sunrise from the kitchen, the DR/Study gets SE & SW sun year round but is blocked by trees when the leaves are out, the GR gets the sunset, as does the eating area, and the MBR doesn't get much sun, which is fine with DH who prefers to sleep in a room with blackout shades. The front porch entry for guests does not get the stronger winds that can cone from the NW. We love our house. It's not perfect, but we were able to design most of what we wanted into it.

This is way more than you wanted to know, but I thought some of it might give you some ideas about thinking of how you will use/live in your house, since you are still in the initial stages of design. Also, we originally angled our house relative to the garage, but then decided to keep the T-shape that we had to cut costs, and turned the entire house & garage to get the views. I'd originally staggered the rooms in the back like you did, but it didn't get us our best views.

All of your corners will increase costs, if that matters. You have a couple dozen; we have 8 with our T. Also, you've indicated that you're in zone 5, but I don't see a coat closet by the front door, and not much storage elsewhere, although I realize this is a preliminary sketch. I LOVE our area between the garage and K/EA mentioned above. The 3 closets are for back patio & grill stuff/EA table leaves/DH's many short jackets; cleaning supplies & central vac 30' hose; coats & boots, etc.; and we also have 4 hooks on the wall behind the door to the garage and 6 on the wall above the 5' bench below the upper cabinets in the mudroom/hall.

Hope this all makes sense, since I've moved some paragraphs around, and it's getting late. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Anne

Me, too, Anne! Thank you so much for the detailed message and explanation - it was incredibly helpful. Especially in hearing about how you use your spaces. I agree with lethargo - any chance you have a floor plan of your home that you could share? I'd love to see it! Thanks!

Here is our front facing kitchen layout.

we are doing a front facing kitchen as well. I pulled different aspects from different plans and designed it myself (with 4+ years of input from this board and many many revisions). We're hoping to break ground in the spring :)

good luck!

Kelly, do you own a lot? If not, nothing I can say further will be helpful, since that determines everything. If so, post a copy or an accurate sketch of it with dimensions, show where the views, sun (N & S), trees, and neighbors' houses are, and anything else we'd need to know to orient the house to its best advantage, and we can all contribute our ideas to the plan.

lethargo, where in Oakland County is your lot? I'm a mile from its border. Since you do have a lot, if you'll follow what I've said to Kelly above, we can all help you design a house for YOUR lot. Because of all of the restrictions we had that I mentioned in my other post, my house plan would not be right for you. Why don't you try drawing out what I mentioned in my long post to best suit your lot, and go back and add it to your Oct 27 post where we can make suggestions?

Anne

Anne, I don't want to hijack Kelly's thread, but thank you for the reply! We're working on our design often, and would love your input. Thank you!

Lethargo - hijack away! :-) If Anne's input can benefit us both then it's perfect! Anne - I will get that information about the lot posted soon.

We just finished our house with a front-facing kitchen. Our dining area is "behind" it (the "nook" that's a bit cut off in the attached picture), facing our back yard, and the living area is next to the kitchen with a wall in between. The wall only goes halfway across the room, so the space still feels quite open. The only thing I would do differently is to elevate the side of the island that faces the dining area - and that was a point of compromise between me and my husband.

Our house is on a north-facing treed lot that slopes up. Our entry is on the lower level, but the main area is up a flight. So the kitchen that faces the front is actually one story up from people looking in as they walk by our house.

I love it that the kitchen faces north. That way, our dining and living areas (and our master bedroom) all face the more private areas in back (though the living area has views both front and back).

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