kitchen view

view from side entry

If you Never use the formal LR, but due use a formal DR on occasion I would consider using the formal DR and Kitchen space as the new kitchen and placing the formal DR in the former LR. It would require a certain amount of reconfiguration of the both rooms including the powder room, but I would try it out and see, at least with sketches.

This post was edited by palimpsest on Mon, Jan 7, 13 at 16:15

I like the idea to steal the FDR space for part of the kitchen. YOu would need to open up the wall b/w FR and LR if the LR were to become the FDR.

If, in your area, a FDR is important for the house, then I would open b/w the FR and LR and turn LR into a casual LR (with TV). Lose the wall between KIT and FR, or most of it. With young kids, they will be playing and you need some island or peninsula with sink to be facing out.

That's a start. Is your 60K budget just to reconfigure the walls/space?

Thank you so far!

Um, *gulp* no, 60K is our entire budget, for kitchen remodel and any structural that goes with it. Is that completely unrealistic? Even if we had it, I don't think Id want to invest more than that, homes here are only going for about $340-380, and we have a lot of other work that needs to be done in the future...windows, siding, heater and AC are old, concrete work, etc...uggh! We should just move!

Hard to say if FDR is important. The neighborhood is still mostly original owners, we are one of the newer younger families. I think that as more young families move in, it wouldn't matter as much to them, as it dosent so much to us, but, yes, FDRs are probably in 95% of the homes in our area.

phylhl - I had a KD come who came up with almost that exact plan. She opened up all those walls, turned LR into FDR opening up to FR and kitchen opened up to existing FDR. It scares me for several reasons, most of all, the cost! Those are all main support walls with duct work in them.

It also seemed like our whole house was dining areas! It makes a huge(and awesome) FDR, and a large space for an eat in kichen, plus some possibilities for stools in the kitchen...just seemed like too large a ratio of rooms designated to eating!

And I really cant get happy with anything I've seen yet that merges our FDR with the kitchen, its awkward with the side door, the basement door and the box of the Powder Room which I really don't think we can go to the expense of moving...where would we even put it?!

This is why I was leaning towards keeping the support wall between KIT and FDR in tact, and just trying to move out into the other direction of the house and only knocking through one support wall...but as of yet I'm not getting much support for that idea! Other than my husband and the first contractor that came here who suggested it.

Anxious to hear from others, thanks for reading!!!

I think that's a realistic budget. You need to find a contractor you can work with. Get several estimates. We got three and the most outrageous one was from a dedicated kitchen remodel company. The two GC's had much better pricing.

Good luck!

Bumping...

feel so paralyzed with this project because we cant even call contractors until we know WHAT we want to ask them to do! Not ready to pay KDs design fees/retainers yet!

Any ideas are so appreciated!

Structural walls + rerouting ducts, plumbing (and electrical) add up way fast. Start with your ideal layout, get 3-5 estimates, and move forward or scale back from there. You can always go with IKEA cabinetry, which are way better cabinets than a lot of more expensive options, if you need another place to cut.

I had this idea and it only messes with one structural wall. It is very rough but it gives you an idea of how the space can be configured. The sink and DW are in the island, fridge and range on the wall, and I gave you a single french door instead of the sliders.

My smallllllll dining space is open to my FR in the same way the hearth room is open to the FR in this layout, so if you are having a really big dinner party you can always do what I do: I move the round table to another room (the DR?), scrunch the couches up to the left of the FR or move them to another room, and run a bunch of those rectangular folding tables end to end thru the hearth room and into the FR. Cover them with nice tablecloths and no one's the wiser. ;)

Good luck!

You said: I'd like to explore extending kitchen into family room, and using LR as our family room.

Well, why not try it without remodeling first? Move the formal LR furniture somewhere (basement?), put the family room stuff in there, and use it that way. Move the kitchen table to the family room. See if that layout works for you, life-wise. Then you'd know if you can simply use the current table-space for the kitchen or not.

My opinion is large formal spaces that you never use are a total waste of time/space/money. Sure, fine if you have a 3000 sqft house, I suppose, or if you do that kind of entertaining (well, then you're using it!), but it just doesn't fit my life.

Very nice, Tracie!

Wow, thank you Tracie! That's exactly what I was hoping someone could do...how do you do that by the way? I mean, take my picture and edit it? I'm new to this!

Ive never considered a pantry like that. Is that a walk in pantry with a regular door? Or is it a large cabinetry piece?

Would there be room for stools at that sized island? Id hope to fit a larger table in hearth area than what you show, but it appears I could pretty easily put an oval or rectangular one that would fit at least 6, then hopefully it could have leaves and go into FR for larger gatherings.

Do you have any pictures of your hearth area/dining area?

Thanks Megan, I agree, we hate that we have a nice large room that we never use. I really want to find a way to use it and make the whole house work better. Im just a little afraid of so much change! In general bc its scarey, and also bc Im afraid of what it might end up costing.

Since you are concerned with cost, Are you willing to do any of the work yourself?

Demo, clean up? Painting, installing cabinets, plumbing? Anything?

You are only going to do what you propose on 60K if you do a lot of the work yourself and downgrade the quality of the components some. Otherwise, double the budget. You've got a second floor that will need to be supported, a lot of HVAC that will need to be redone, electrical to reroute and bring up to code, plumbing to reroute and bring up to code.

Personally, for versatility's sake, I'd leave the LR and DR alone. The wall between the kitchen and family room, yes, I'd look at taking that down. And when you do open the kitchen up to the family room and all of it's noise, you may find that you use the LR a lot more as a getaway from all of that noise. And if you find that you still don't use it, make it your office, or library or SOMETHING that WILL get used. But you lose all ability to have that quiet away space if the walls come down.

Is there a step down from the kitchen into the FR? Your FR and kitchen is exactly like ours, I mean exactly! The only difference between the 2 kitchens is that ours has a peninsula. Unfortunately we had to leave our soffits up as there were too many vents/wires/plumbing to demolish them with our budget/timeframe.

be sure and get a quote for just bumping out the back wall of kitchen. a lot of the issues are coming from that area. Relocate side door to a new back area and people using back entry will diverge into various directions-not ALWAYS passing thru kitchen....what is the walking from garage to the house like? how big is the back yard? if you actually look at the powder room as an expansion opportunity for a hall/vestibule across the back with entry/storage/maybe laundry.... then close up the side door-you'd get the side area currently with door to use in kitchen redesign[recessing fridge/pantry or something]..Holly's points are good-dismantling the living room might come back and bite you. A large french door linking current family room with liv room and interior designers help will make different use options of the 2 spaces: close,open them as needed. A bump of back kitchen wall and expanding that way will allow the family room to expand without removal of liv room wall...must say-the nice brick and fireplace wall would be something I'd want to keep as a family room. The kitchen looks small/lacking wallspace and traffic flow issues...that's what needs attention I think.

Keep in mind, once the kids are older they will want to be in their own space with doors closed. I like herbflavors idea of the french doors.

Hi homebuyer23, I just saved your picture and edited it in MS Paint. I did a lot of squares and lines with the pencil tool, as well as selecting and dragging a section around to move it, or selecting and copy/pasting the section. It's not perfect as the grid lines don't match up, but it works.

The pantry is not cabinetry, it's a walk in with a door on the angled corner. Breezygirl has one like this next to her fridge. This layout does not have a ton of cabinetry so the pantry makes up for that. Bonus, the pantry can be on the messy side - just shut the door :) I put the pantry there because I wanted to get the actual kitchen closer to your FR. It's size was also dictated by the placement of the window, which I was trying not to move.

Getting stools at the island is a bit tough. You need a minimum of 15" overhang to allow for a person to scoot up to the counter. Skimping doesn't work, as that person will still take up space in the aisle - AND now they are uncomfortable since the counter is too far away for them to comfortably rest their elbows on it.

I was going to say it would be a bit of a squeeze to keep all your cabinetry as well as have stools all along the South side of the island, but I've just rechecked the NKBA guidelines and apparently you can do it. Yay! Here is my math:
153.25 total depth of kitchen (North to South)
-25.5 range wall (24" cabinetry + 1.5" standard counter overhang)
-43.25" North aisle (48" would be better for two cooks, but you do what you can)
-40.5" island (24" cabinetry + 1.5" standard counter overhang + 15" seating overhang)
=44" South aisle (minimum NKBA for traffic aisle)

Now, I would mock it up and see if you are OK with the 43.25" work aisle. If not, I would consider getting seating a different way: get rid of some or all of the cabinetry on the "West" (non-DW) side of the island - just have that part be a countertop on legs. Then you can get some stools on the South and West sides of the island. This will make storage in the kitchen somewhat tight. Or, you can get 12" deep cabinetry for the West side of the island, which will leave an 18" or so overhang on the South side and allow stools. This will allow for a full 48" North/work aisle and a larger South/traffic aisle.

I do also like the idea of bumping out the kitchen and family room so you can keep the FR in the fireplace area. If I have time tonight I will try to mock that up for you. I'll also try to post my before/after layouts and some pictures.

Here is a link that might be useful: NKBA Guidelines

This post was edited by tracie.erin on Wed, Jan 9, 13 at 20:41

THanks for the honest feedback about cost. I cant believe this could cost $120K, but I guess I better be prepared to get blown away when I get these figures. And then get used to our existing floor plan, or move.
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And unfortunately, no, theres really minimal work we can do ourselves. We have 3 little kids and my husband is not very handy and works really long hours.

I still want to come up with an ideal solution and work backwards if its way out of our price range. THe original contractor who suggested a similar layout to above, I believe was implying that such a project might run about 60-70. I believe he said though that opening the structural wall up with about a 5-6' archway opening was more realistic than removing the majority of the wall entirely. Does that sound accurate?

We are lucky to have a large finished basement where the kids mostly play now and I imagine when they,re older, that will be their getaway with the door closed, so we honestly do not have too much use for that formal LR. Although, I do occasionally sit in there and enjoy the quiet and the tidiness, since it�s the only room that stays clean!
We moved furniture around last night! We put the kitchen table extended in front of the fireplace lengthwise. We pulled chairs up to the wall facing into the kitchen, as if we had a peninsula there. Ill attach a picture of 2 rooms I've seen online that made me think we could do this layout.

We liked it and I really think we could do something similar. I agree Id miss the Fireplace in the FR, a lot. But I do think it'd be really pretty to have it in the kitchen/dining area and something that would make our cookie cutter house feel kind of unique!

But we can,t figure out a good furniture arrangement for the 'new' Family Room. I feel like it could only work if we switched where the coat closet is, moving it down closer to the Entry Door, so we'd have wall down that end of the LR to put the TV on. If we cant make the new Family room feel comfortable, all this will not be an option.

I'd love to see what you mean about bumping out the back wall of the kitchen. I've always thought that would be easiest rather than messing with the rest of the house! All I need is a little more kitchen space to make me happy!! Just a counter to work on is all I ask! But I have been told that will be way more expensive to add on to the house than it would be to reconfigure the existing layout. Might be a question for another thread on another board?

But, if you have ideas I'd love to see it! Although, we don't have much room along the back wall of the house, especially on the kitchen side. Id only be comfortable bumping out 4-6 feet. After that, it would encroach on the back yard too much and behind the powder room, any larger would block our entrance into our backyard. We could add on adjacent to the family room out the back, but I don�t even see how that would help much. I don't need a larger FR, I need a larger kitchen. Plus I'd prefer to not lose backyard space, but I would consider it.

How hard is it to move a powder room to the complete opposite end of your house?!

I am overwhelmed :(

Here is a link that might be useful: [Similar layout I think we could do[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/tiburon-home-remodel-traditional-kitchen-san-francisco-phvw-vp~46400)

This post was edited by homebuyer23 on Thu, Jan 10, 13 at 16:08