You sound like a very interesting person and cook! For one person that is one heck of a lot of food storage. 60" of fridge/freezer with another walk in freezer in the basement? A cheese room and a sausage room!?! Sounds like you cook for a small army, not just your self.

As far as the kitchen goes, I would probably get rid of the peninsula and make an island. If you're using multiple counters around your kitchen, it might seem like a ways to be walking back and forth. But you sound like you use your kitchen in ways I wouldn't, so some of that will come down to personal preference. You also seem to have a table right behind your peninsula and no stools drawn at your 42" counter so not sure if you even plan to use it as bar height seating or not.

I would also move the dishwasher to beside the sink because it looks like you'd have to take a step to load it from the sink in your current layout. That would bother me, but your reach may vary.

Hi Alex,

I can see that you've put a lot of thought into your design. I'm not a layout expert, but my suggestion would be to move the dishwaher closer to the sink. That way when you rinse the dishes, they can go right in - without having to walk across the room.

Do you have a space (maybe a garage?) where you could mark out the layout with butcher paper or something? Even if they are flat on the floor, you could stand in the space & pantomime how your new kitchen will work for you. I know if sounds a little crazy, but it can give you a feel for whether or not the main work areas are convenient to each other.

You didn't say whether or not you like to entertain. It looks like the room next to the kitchen is a dining room. Do you want to have a more open feeling between the two rooms? Do you want to be able to talk to guests while you're cooking? Just some things to think about. Good Luck!

I give away most of the cheeses and salamis I make. I like the variety but if I had to eat everything I made then I'd really have to cut down on the variety.

The freezer space is for the bounty that comes out of my garden and my greenhouse. I really don't like the experiece of shopping, so there is a large psychological benefit to stockpiling versus having to go out, park the car, walk around a supermarket, stand in line to pay, load the car, unload the car, etc. Secondly, I like fresh organic. Thirdly, I can can or freeze within an hour of harvest. I'm trying to design around my preferences and the way I want to live. Right now I have a 9 month or so supply of different foods stockpiled in my house. I want to add more variety to what I have and more volume. Hey, we all have our quirks. :)

I'm not saying that my way is the less expensive way to go about things, but I'm willing to pay for the infrastructure and operating costs as well as the labor in order to get the other benefits that suit me. Some people have private tennis courts when a public court is cheaper to use. Same principle.

The dishwasher suggestion makes sense. Also in another forum someone suggested moving the range because it is tucked in near the corner meaning that I could only access it from the left side. There is some logic to that. The option to access the range from both sides is nice to have but is accessing only from one side a real impediment? I don't really know. The design is not set in stone and my ego isn't dependent on having it be my way. I'm just wishy washy about the pros-cons on the stove. Any real life feedback from people who are dealing with a stove near a corner like in the plan? Would my kitchen experience be poorer by not having the option of accessing from both sides. I wonder about swapping the sink and the range. The range hood could go between the two windows. This preserves the work triangle. The dishwasher could be placed right next to the fridge. The range is presently on the North wall which is windowless. If you guys had your choice would you rather have the sink facing the windows or the range? I'm not sure what I really prefer because I can see benefits and drawbacks to both options. With the sink under the windows my prepping can be interuptted by looking at the pretty butterfly that is scooting about outside and the distraction doesn't really matter much, but if I'm cooking then I'm not so sure about the value of being distracted by looking out the window.

Entertaining isn't really a prime concern. What's driving the design is work efficiency and having counterspace for different projects on the go at the same time. It's not like the kitchen counter space will be fully used all the time, it won't. Most days I'll probably be restricted to a short period of time right in the work triangle. Occasionally I'll be making a batch of food, for instance, if I want pizza, I'll probably make more dough than I need and shape, package and freeze the excess so that next time I have a quick base upon which to make a pizza. That means I need space to work. Less frequently I'll be having multiple projects on the go - prepping, cooking, canning, washing, blanching, freezing, baking, and then I want to have the space to really spread out. What I'm doing is trading "more space" for "more speed and efficiency" for the times I find I need that space.

So the orientation of the kitchen in regards to my interacting with guests is really not an issue. If there are guests it's more likely than not that she will be in the kitchen with me rather than sitting outside the kitchen and as for multiple guests in a modest to large party, those happen too infrequently to have much impact on the layout of the kitchen - I'm happy to suffer through not being able to face my guests as I create the evening meal for us. I can manage to suffer 10 times a year in order to ease my experience the other 300-600 times per year that I'm going to be using that kitchen.

Taking your suggestions and here is a redesign. How does this look?

Does this redesign strike you as more efficient?

Original:

Redesign:

Do you use your DW to prepare and hold jars for canning? I ask because you have the DW separate from the sink which will catch the eye (and comment) of almost everybody here. I'm not a DW person so its placement doesn't bug me, but those who do use them almost always want them adjacent to the sink and trash can.

I, too, am a big canner/freezer- as are several others here in the forum so your planning issues will get review by other experienced workers.

In planning my own kitchen I worked with the preparation flow-paths for not only ordinary meals, but for all the other oddball things I make in my kitchen.

For instance, I drew diagrams of how the produce progressed through my kitchen. Take green beans as an example. They come in from my garden and are washed (swished around in a fair amount of water) at my big sink; then I need a damp-protected counter with cutting board on which to trim them. At the same time I have pots on the stove heating for blanching. The beans get blanched and them immediately shocked in near freezing water. That illuminated something: I needed to have two sinks in order that the blanched/ready to be shocked beans aren't crowding into the sink where I might be washing more fresh beans for successive batches. I freeze all my beans so after blanching I need counter space for a big salad spinner to dry them and then more space to lay out trays to quick freeze them, or a place to bag them up for freezing that way. I also wanted to have a clear path from the tray-filling point to my smaller freezer that I use for quick freezing loose produce as I am often carrying a couple of loaded trays at a time.

Now take canned peaches: I start with a large counter to lay out a half bushel or so out to sort for ripeness, bruises, etc. Then they are washed. Peaches are very fragile therefore I want to handle them carefully so afterward I need lots of space to set them out for draining/drying without piling them too high. Next I load 12-18 of them into perforated intra-pot colander (like a pasta pentola set-up) for the quick plunge in hot water to loosen the skins. The pot comes out dripping copiously (but speed is important here) so I want to have a sink immediately near by and a damp-proof counter in between without having to move it over an aisle to get there. In this case I use my prep sink (near my range) stove to do the initial washing, but I use a portable induction burner near the main sink for the blanching and quick cooling and processing to slip the skins off, slice in half and de-pit the fruit and plop into a bowl with acidulated water. At this stage I need room for a large compost collection bucket and large bowls for collecting the prepped peaches. Depending on the type and size of the peaches I can get the blanching/prepping intervals to match nearly perfectly so there is no waiting around.

Now the next step is the filling of the jars and processing. That happens on a counter that is next to the stove so that I have access to hot liquid for filling the jars, a place to accumulate the filled jars until I have enough large, stacked load's worth prepared. Plus there's all the preheated water, the lid-sterilizing pot and the other clabber associated with getting a batch together. This is where the placement of a DW comes in: if you clean and hold the jars in one you will want the DW nearby. I have had kitchens where this was v. convenient, but usually I just run another kettle with empty jars in it.

But that means I might have: one or more canners processing or hotting up (or if I am pressure canning, cooling down); a pot containing hot water that may be needed to top up a boiling water bath; a pot keeping syrup/liquid warm; a little pot for the lids and rings; a big pot with empty jars awaiting filling. And I want them organized where it makes sense for their intended use and I don't have to reach around them so much and can easily manage the heavy canners at the end.

Finally, I want some place near the stove where I can set the finished jars after processing which will not interfere with the next batches, isn't in a draft (I often car at night when it's cooler)and has a hot-jar-safe surface (i.e not stone or metal). Ideally this is one the opposite side of the range from where I am filling the jars. This means that I am processing on the left side of my stove(and then emptying the canners afterward on to a counter on the left), but the right side of the stove has the ancillary prep-stage pots handy to where I am filling the jars.

And I want a quiet, powerful fan that's high enough above the surface to accomodate really tall canners.

These are just a few examples of the detailed study I made before planning the layout.

I suggest that in thinking about your kitchen you mentally (or in drawings, as I did) work through the flow of the food path of all the various things you do in it. I will do my dairying (butter, cheese, pasteurization) over by the big sink on the induction burner because it's hot and needs water, and that surface will be stainless steel of zinc, so easy to "sterilize" with hot water. For sausage-making I need proper mounts (thickness of countertop, sturdyness and postion come into play here) for my meat grinder and casing-filler. The dehydrator needs to not be tucked away in a corner or pantry so the moisture it sheds doesn't get trapped. The grain mill needs to be in a place where the small amount of fugitive flour doesn't land on something else that will need dusting. (i.e. not near open shelves.)

Now, regarding your walk-in freezer. I considered this but decided that I preferred to have several separate freezers so I could adjust the electrical load by running more, or fewer of them, according the varying amount of food being stored over the course of a year. A walk-in freezer was also enormously expensive to build and run all the time.

I have a large (naturally cooled) root cellar and find that I can accomodate almost anything in the way of temp and humidity variations simply by strategically moving the produce around in the space. (But my winter squash lives upstairs under a bed in a rarely-used guest room - that's the traditional space for Hubbard squash up here in northern NY.) I am not keeping things in my root cellar as cold as commercial cold storage might be (30-33F) but it works well for me. I live in a 175 year old house so my root cellar is in the basement.

And because my house (and more importantly my basement) are so old I can't keep dry goods down there, so I need a large amount of dry, cool, storage on the first floor. I do keep home-canned food in the basement, but the jars are stowed in closed plastic bins to keep them less affected by space's inherently high humidity. (I have a stream that is channeled through my cellar floor to provide year-round cooling for milk pails, so my basement is more humid than most.) My bulk food (grains, beans, dehydrated stuff)is stored in the pantry in plastic bins and large glass jars of varying size.)

(As a side note, I am trying to do more season extension in my garden and greenhouses this year with a view to reducing the amount of stored food I need to handle. I am planning to experiment with Eliott Coleman's notions of hoop houses, high tunnels, etc., to "move" my gardening south a zone or so. If you haven't encountered this notion, you might find it thought-provoking and worth a try.

Your plans sound like the ultimate fantasy kitchen/food storage set-up. I think your end results will be improved by carefully walking through all the steps of each of these tasks and noting what you need conveniently to hand for each one. That will get you more efficiency and working pleasure than simply supplying yourself with every possible food storage space and amenity.

HTH,

L.

I couldn't begin to match Houseful's expertise in canning and food storage. So this is a duffer review of your kitchen plan.

If you want stools in a working aisle, you need to allow at least 3 feet to access the cabinets behind the stools (not those in the island) PLUS enough room for the stools to be occupied (2 feet). So allow for 5 feet between the edge of the counter where stools will be placed and the cabinets against the wall.

Where you placed cleanup is kinda unique. I'm guessing you chose the cram-in over having two sinks. I'd move it - really, it's closer to d@mned-if-I'd-put-it-there with an entire empty wall full of cabinets.

I can understand people who don't want a prep sink in the island when its also used for seating. You have an alternate location in the corner. If our places were reversed, I might choose a full size kolher stages and put it in the island. It would work well for dealing with large volume veg on the prep side. I could always reset as an ice bath by simply using a large pot if I didn't want to fill the thing. Or do an ice bath in the other sink. It also makes a great beer cooler with a big bucket of shrimp in the shallow end. Hmmm, I think I would really do that...

Lastly, be careful about those windows and their trim. I have a 30" range in a 36" length of wall between two windows. I PLANNED to not have casings at the windows and I'm so glad I did. It ended up with a very small gap indeed at the hood.

Gotta run to start prepping for our super bowl party later today, so just a quick comment. It would be an absolute TRAVESTY to place your DW around the corner from sink!!! Keep your DW away from the corner. Put the DW directly next to the sink.

Your range too close to the corner base cabinets will limit your access. a small cabinet between corner cab and range will open it up enough to allow optimum access.

The angled base cabinets strike me as dated.

Bmore- That's a nice kitchen layout! :)

I second BmorePanic's - it's the same layout I worked up last night but did not finish...the only differences were (1) deeper counters on the left wall, (2) a 90o corner cabinet in the right corner, and (3) a 54" center "space" for the range + hood...a 42" hood over a 36" range + 6" on either side of the hood b/w it and the window to allow for trim + a bit of "breathing space" (or paint space).

If you want me to post it, let me know and I will finish it and post it...

It is not a "TRAVESTY" to have your DW around the corner from the sink. Both positions require bending. Mine is around the corner from the sink because it works best for the layout and I actually prefer it to having it by the sink. It is simply a pivot and bend forward motion instead of a bending sideways and stretching motion.

For all of us a working efficient triangle is necessary, but I also think that in your case, accessible and efficient counter space is also necessary. I think that an island will be much more efficient use of your space for your needs. The one thing that I can't figure out is which way do you enter the kitchen from the garden with your bounty of goodies. That to me would indicate where a large landing space should be and put a prep sink near there as well. So an island with a prep sink, pull-out trash and composter right in that spot.

I like bmorepanics plan if you enter from the right side. For some reason, if you enter from the left side I would flip the sink/DW side and the fridge. But I would also want to be right across from the clean-up sink and DW so as to stay on top of clean-up as I go. Just following liriodendron's plans (or trying to anyway) I think having the stove at the top works well for large jobs and small single ones.

Sometimes thinking outside of the "GW box" is necessary for peoples desires and requirements.

(P.S. And that attitude to "Other than acceptable-GW layouts" is why I won't post pics of my perfect-for-me kitchen)

Blfenton- I wish you would post pictures! I'd like to see your kitchen and you know most of my 'kitchen plans' are not always a huge success on GW, but I'm working with some limitations and most people have been very supportive.

I think Mamapaige just REALLY didn't like that dishwasher set up, which I believe she either has now, or recently had. We all know what we don't like about our own kitchens! :)

Lavender - you hit the nail on the head! I absolutely hate my current set up. I have a double bowl sink (neither big enough to do much with), then a lazy susan in the corner (so old and rickety and counter weighing down on it that i can barely turn it), then perpendicular to the sink, the DW. With the DW door down, there is barely enough room to stand in front of the sink to rinse. There is not enough room to stand between the DW and the cabinet that most of the stuff is going into so it is lots of extreme reaching. Really just terrible.

blfenton, I overreacted!! given what i just explained above it is obviously a hot point for me when I saw alex put his DW in what I consider a less than ideal location. I rarely make proclamations on GW because it isn't in my personality to get involved in controversary and also because I believe there is more than one way to skin a cat. Each of us has our own set of peculiaraties and circumstances (not to mention architectural impediments) that direct us to do things that others might not want to.

In Alexhouse's situation, I think there is enough room and flexibility to develop a really good plan without too many compromises so it seemed a travesty to put the DW in that location especially since it really doesn't seem to be necessary (can you imagine him trying to unload stuff into those uppers closest to the DW?) very similar to my situation - not easy!!!!

Mamapaige- I know how you feel. My 'grievance' is that I need a bigger baking area. I'd love to have a place to make bread and maybe a bigger sink, to wash out my grandmother's bread bowl. For now, it's at my mom's...but someday, I hope to have it in my kitchen, again :)

Lavender-- We all have our thing, don't we? When my kitchen is done I hope to try my hand at bread making. There are so many here on GW doing this, I feel inspired!

today we are hosting a superbowl party (being that our hometown team, the Patriots is in it!) - we are doing make your own panini's. DH went down to the most fantastic bread bakery (feels like you are in France) to pick up the bread for this. A couple that met while in cooking school (both bakers) fell in love, got married, opened a bakery (which has become an enormous success), had a baby, etc. Wonderful story and even better bread.

sorry for hijacking alexhouse. bmorepanic is very talented with layouts along with so many others here on GW, you are in good hands.

liriodendron, thanks for the treatise. Honestly. I admire the amount of detail that your described in analyzing your work flow. I haven't come anywhere close to that. I'm still at the nebulous "I just want space" stage.

As for the walk-in, one of my hobbies is refrigeration hacking. You'd be shaking your head if I told you about the modification plans so let me just say that the project and maintanence costs on that project are better detailed than your canning workflow study. Let me just say that this isn't the case of me shopping around for a freezer and having the company drop by to install it. Some of the "not-farfetched" refrigeration/freezing aspects are incorporated right into the building envelope - thermal mass stores cold, insulation diminishes heat intrusion, hydronic tubing prevents frost heaves below the freezer and the cold is dispersed into adjacent rooms, compressor heat is piped out, fresh air is piped in, the root cellar is thermally isolated away from the basement. Then there's the crazy stuff :)

bmorepanic, thank you for the redesign. You're right, that does make more sense. As for the window issue, when the plans become finalized I'll adjust the window sizing appropriately. That redesign I posted was a quick and dirty atttempt to work an island into the space - I spent all of my time redesigning the island and gave little thought to appliance placement.

Blfenton - The one thing that I can't figure out is which way do you enter the kitchen from the garden with your bounty of goodies. That to me would indicate where a large landing space should be and put a prep sink near there as well.

I enter the kitchen from the little hall on the bottom left of the image. Notice in the original g-layout that there was a landing zone and sink on the g-section.

For some reason, if you enter from the left side I would flip the sink/DW side and the fridge.

The fridge has to stay in that location. I need easy access to space behind the fridge (see that gap behind the fridge?) and easy access to the outdoors (shaded porch with deep recesses meaning little sun gets in that deep) due to the aforementionaed refrigeration hacking (Hey, we all have our weird little hobbies). The other side is facing due South and is going to be soaking up a lot of solar heat which means that it's about the worst place for my personal fridge placement requirements. The entire kitchen can be redesigned but the fridge location has to be the pivot point around which the redesign centers.

mamadadapaige - I appreciate your feedback, especially the reasons WHY you offered your view. If you notice in the original layout there was plenty of space between where I would stand at the sink and the open dishwasher. No impediment. After I did the quick and dirty redesign with the island and the dishwasher once again near the corner I lost that space between the sink and DW and would run into the problem you mentioned. Just goes to show that if you take your eye off the whole picture and give too much focus to one issue, problems that you had solved reemerge.

buehl - I'd love to see what you developed. I'm especially intrigued by why you specified a deeper counter and why you advise the other features.

Thanks everyone for the time you put into helping make my kitchen that much better.

for all the technical nuances you refer to in your needs/wants, I would think about 2 kitchens in your home. Get some of the needs met having to do with ingredient gathering/prepping and storing in one, the 2nd for your actual day to day cooking and which also allows for flow with other activities that take place in a home. Your kitchen is sounding like a laboratory.

Love how Lavender can see the whole picture
Alex - priorities are important - love the exercise bike!
I will defer to others on the plans other than getting the DW closer to the sink.
Sometimes you can't, but in your case, you can - so go for it!
PS - Can I buy some of your canned peaches - just kidding but have to have some fun during SBS (super bowl sunday)
Wait another commericial....

I'm not good at layout, but the one thing that glares at me is that you can't access your deck from your kitchen. I would consider adding a door to the deck, especially if you barbeque there.

That deck is for storing firewood under the roof. The main deck is accessible off of the dining room, which is to the bottom right of the image. I don't actually want a door in the kitchen because I want each entry door to go through a vestibule of sorts (front entry = vestibule, rear deck/garage entry = mudroom, main deck entry = solarium.)

Nice to see a G-shaped kitchen on the GW. It's not the most common layout and it's one that may be helpful to people with certain needs. Thanks for posting! I remember when I first read about this kitchen style in a BH&G kitchens publication. It really captured my attention.

Ours is also a working kitchen. We're gardeners and DH is a hunter and forager.

Our G area has 12 x 16+ but the closet and nook are outside this. No island. Although one goal was for two cooks to work nicely together, the space is a glory for a single cook as well. We do not do quite the same kind of prep & storage & cooking as you but it sounds like you give your kitchen a workout as we do.

We put the range at the bottom of the G, the double sink on the long side and the large prep sink on the short side alongside the plunk space from refrig, walkpath to garden and walkpath to dining room. Refrig on the tip of the top of G is close to the dining area and across from the end of the peninsula's plunk space adjacent to prep sink.

I'm the one with all the pull-out boards to add work surfaces. One is in "cockpit" chopping station where I do much of my prep, seated on a stool (see photo) and where there is a temp compost receiver adjacent to the cutting board plus the trash pullout below that. Fabulous cutting situation!

Another pullout board is wide and serves the baking area but also serves as receiver/launcher of items going to and from oven. This is especially helpful if the entire countertop area between mixer and oven is full of the detritis of battle.

Another pullout board serves the microwave area at upperleft corner of G and has a good view of flower garden for morale. One pullout is next to refrig and serves as sandwich, coldcuts, toast, etc. prep area. It is also receiver for items going into and out of refrig. We pile all the returning refrig items onto it after meal, then open the refrig door only once.

We have butcherblock either side of range--allows cooling of hot items, knives in a slit on one side of range and 3 canisters of utensils countersunk (pun intended) into area at back of the other butcherblock piece. We don't have to open drawers for knives or common utensils while working nor during put-away.

Our entrance from garden is same as yours--lower left in your photo. Our G is flipped from yours but windows appear to be in same place. You might want to cruise our Flickr stuff--after looking at blueprint, go to the newest and ignore the in-process stuff. Not sure if I can give any more ideas but you never know.

We also had a door in the hallway alongside the peninsula to deal with. We turned it into a pocket door so that it wouldn't interfere with the walkpath.

Our major sink is a Kohler "Brookfield" double sink and our prep sink is a Kohler "Mayfield." Be sure not to stint on the size of your prep sink--a gardener can use it. Plus, if you find it to be too big, just use a dishpan or pot inside it. We've enjoyed splure on wire unit for bottom of prep sink--holds things like lettuces above the sand you wash off of them. Requires bother of removing and stashing it sometimes also, though. This prep sink is big enough for our regular pressure cooker to be wrestled with and definitely holds the blancher. Not sure if it would take the big canner.

Here is a link that might be useful: G-shaped gardener's kitchen blueprint--flip upside down to compare