Where does this fall in the new floorplan? Above what elements in the kitchen?

I would certainly try to get the skylight effect from yours. We added an eyebrow window over our living room and had them box it out like a big skylight and it has added so much natural light and made the room feel bigger since lifting that portion of the ceiling up. I'd hate to have it be dead space!

pal - This is in the left side of the enlarged kitchen - the slope would start above the fridge and slope up to the northwest corner and that is where the window would be. It's the top of the staircase on the left side of the existing layout. BTW - the "new layout" is flexible. I've marked the wall between the house and garage now as it's structural so needs to be respected and the chimney can't move either.

dianalo - I really would hate to have dead space as well and light is sorely missing from this kitchen as it is. I would just love to figure out a way to make this slope a design element rather than an oddity!

I think it could be interesting. I would also light the shaft so it wasn't a dark hole at night.

Perhaps there could be a header or something that defines it slightly that is repeated the same distance from the wall on the other side (just without the slant up to the window.)--Like a shallow beam detail.

Hmm. This is going to be difficult to describe, but here goes. The big thing on the left wall is the fridge, right? Continue the ceiling height of the rest of the room over the fridge, but leave two open rectangles in the top and bottom corners. In the bottom corner, as you stand in front of the door, if you look back into the kitchen, you see the edge of the ceiling, and above you the ceiling gently rises. When you turn and look towards the fridge, set above the height of the rest of the ceiling is a mysterious cabinet door.

Walk to the other corner, the other side of the fridge, and above this corner over your head is a chute that goes up to a window on one side, opposite another larger door. You would need to stand on the counter, and then some, to get into this door.

The symmetry of the corners makes it look more intentional.

On second thought, can't you access the extra space from the floor above? Can you make it a balcony with the two rectangular openings?

HTH

pal - I like the idea of repeating something. There's quite a bit of that throughout the house (paired doors, repeating doorways), lots of symmetry and this room is really lacking that. Plus it's the only room on the first floor lacking plaster molding so I'd love to get some sort of architectural detail to the ceiling.

lyvia - if I understand what you're thinking, the ceiling height in the bottom corner is actually fixed at the rest of the room (9'). The top of this slope has a doorway off a landing where the main foyer stairs "turn", but it's lower than the 1st floor ceiling height - the window actually straddles the 1st and 2nd floor (so part of the window is below the ceiling height as well). I tried to diagram it out here - hope this makes sense.

I just noticed the powder room: If you put the door where the sink is, you could have the toilet on one end and a vanity that spanned the room on the other and the door would open between them. Better than squeezing past a wall mounted sink.

So, the exterior doorway Under the servants' stairwell will be removed?

I don't understand the window height of the left side of the house where the kitchen is. Those windows look like they should be up by the ceiling, since the tops appear to be even with the bottom of the servant window.

I like the idea of integrating it as a quirk of the original house (the window), but I bet it would also pass muster to parge in the window and close the shutter over it, keeping the frame in place. At least this has been accepted in my neighborhood by the historical commission.

the exterior doorway under the servants stairs was actually walled up by a p.o. the "door" is still there from the outside(and the storm door still works) but inside it's the powder room. There is another exterior door next to the old one that still works that we will keep. So if you're looking at the picture of the side by side exterior doors, the left one is under the servants stairs and that's the one that is already walled up.

The existing windows in the kitchen start just above the counter and extend up to the ceiling.

We actually have both the original plans and a set of plans from earlier in the planning stage - they scaled back but originally had a larger wing on the east end of the house. It looks like the servants stairs were originally intended to be a butler's pantry and I toyed with the idea of replicating that and isolating the sloped ceiling in there, but the chimney creates a pinch point in the flow of the kitchen and so I think it's best to "shift" the kitchen west and build the pantry into the existing garage area. Plus, I would like to lessen the isolation of the kitchen to the rest of the house, not create another room to pass through.

Thank you for the suggestion on the powder room - I felt that existing mudroom was going to be too door heavy and that's an elegant solution!

I personally think it will be hard to incorporate this awkward windon into the space and it would be better to eliminate it or at least close it off from the inside.

It does not seem like there is a good way of making the window a design element in the room, but rather it will just look awkward.

If you discuss with a good designer or architect then maybe they can come up something that flows but I just can't see it working well...

Can you draw a 2 story elevation looking at the stairwell from the island? It might get more ideas.

Are you keeping the servants stairs from 2nd to 3rd floor?

Such a house! It's a cool puzzle. and I love the wall color in the stairwell.

Could you also draw an elevation of the back wall of the kitchen ?

The thing that might make this work is that you are incorporating a small window from behind the old refrigerator, it appears, so you are dealing with an unusual window placement whether the one in the stairwell stays or goes.

As far as I understand it, this servant stair only goes to the landing of the family stairs, where it connects to the family stairs. Then above that there is only one staircase?
Essentially it was a shortcut that kept servants out of the public part of the house but not a complete parallel circulation pattern.

Pal - you're spot on - they're just a parallel set of stairs that join with the main staircase about 3/4 up the 1st floor so kitchen / other help weren't walking through the public areas. After that it is just one staircase the rest of the way to the 2nd floor and then there is another staircase to the 3rd floor that is directly above the existing servants stairs which is why the ceiling height in that one spot is higher. Those are the only stairs to the 3rd floor and we're keeping those.

Here's the elevation of the north wall. There's also a "window" that is part of that walled up door but it will be below counter height. We could probably also keep the transom of the back door that is being incorporated into the space which I've shown here - I think the "window" in that door ends up below counter height as well so it will have to go.

Lyvia - we just had repaired all the walls and ceilings and painted the downstairs (except for the kitchen) and I'm really pleased at how it came out but I will fully admit to having to have a decorator help me pick colors / furnishings / light fixtures. If I was picking things on my own, everything would probably end up grey and all the windows would be naked... We've spent most of our time until recently on un-fun parts of getting the house in shape (fixing the boiler, removing the asbestos wrapping on the basement pipes, rewiring) but I really love this house and all her quirks...

I would close up the transom over the door.

I know you would have trouble removing windows in the main body of the house, but could you Add one?

I am thinking out loud, but what about mirroring that small existing window on the other side of the large paired windows? It would mean tweaking the layout a bit and ending up with a (fixed) window behind the cooktop but it could add something to the overall appearance.

If not maybe it is mirrored as a niche in the backsplash.

As for the stairwell window I would pop up some kind of reverse dormer and end it with some breathing room over the window and probably hang a pendant light in the window, and bury some of the height above that.

Perhaps you could build a niche in the stairwell in some of the leftover space as a neo-colonial-revival element, and as an acknowledgement that there was something there.

I had to go back and find the earlier thread, and I'm not sure what happened between here and there, but I don't think it was an improvement. Before you worry about what to do with windows, I would reconsider the layout. For me, this is a prime example of more is not better. Have you considered the traffic patterns or what it would be like to live with that layout day in and day out? I'm afraid you would spend a lot of money on something that would be just as hard if not harder to live with. Look at your traffic patterns and distances -- 33 feet between pantry shelves and fridge shelves (I've looked at that several times to make sure I'm looking at that right, but 27 feet plus another 4 feet)? And a barrier island plus 3 overlapping work zones in between?

You are on the right track in terms of taking the time and thinking of all possibilities, playing with them on paper before you get started, but keep working. I feel really bad saying this, but I'd feel worse if I didn't. I hope you understand.

lascatx - thanks for your thoughts. I'm pretty sure anything will be an improvement over the fridge stuck in a cubby where the doors don't open all the way and the major thoroughfare pinches to 27"! We actually have put blue painters tape around the kitchen to try out the pathways and see if it works. The big flow issue I think this solves is pushing the traffic when we come into the house to the south end of the island to get to the main foyer and connecting the mudrooms so there can be one common spot for coats etc (currently there are 2 coats in my dining room b/c DH leaves them there after taking the dogs out the back). I also thought it was ok to split the storage zones, particularly since the way I cook I tend to collect all the dry ingredients first and there is a landing zone just outside the pantry. I don't think of the fridge to pantry as a frequent traffic pattern. I could move the fridge over by the pantry, but like having it closer to the entrance to the foyer (and living room) because the most frequent trips into the kitchen are to grab a beverage and having it in the triangle but at the edge also keeps DH out of my way when cooking. What I like about this plan is that dirty dishes clean up can be to the right of the sink, prep between the sink and range (and probably also on the island if the way I prep now is a good indicator). I have toyed with the idea of adding a prep sink near the fridge (maybe on the island?) but honestly I'm not sure we'd use it and I prefer the island be an expansive work surface. Plus by getting rid of the servants stairs, the kitchen is better integrated into the rest of the house (right now to get to the kitchen from the living room / foyer / rest of the house you have to walk through the tight servants stairwell). I also thought about putting the pantry where the bathroom is but then the bathroom is going to be harder to get to from the rest of the house and you're setting yourself to cross into the major thoroughfare for that area of the house to get to the kitchen... I like having the "kitchen" part of the room being separated from the "passing though" part. I hope that makes sense?

pal - I like the idea of a backsplash that mirrors the small window or putting a window there - I really think it brings some much needed symmetry to the space and helps it feel like a cohesive room rather than this cobbled together mess it is today.

You are going from a small kitchen to an awfully long kitchen...in a kitchen this size I would want a prep sink, probably at the corner of the island near the range.

You have a lot of space to the right of the island: thats ok but you are going to do some walking.

I don't see the island as a barrier here: all the working area is to the north of the island so even though its long, you are not walking around it to work there.