''Eat-In'' Kitchens - Reasons, Importance, Trade-Offs?
John Liu
14 years ago
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youngdeb
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Small eat-in space in kitchen - need inspiration please!
Comments (29)This is almost my kitchen and family room setup! We currently have the "U" . You have one extra foot in depth which allows the island, Also less doors along the inside wall. I am envious;. With the banquette opposite the outside wall, you could still have a slim bookcase or hutch next to the sliding doors in the eating area.. Your traffic may go through your main work area, however. That idea by lavenderlass to move the island into a peninsula is super-creative but again you have to assess traffic patterns. What about reducing your eating area door size to 32" from 60""? That would allow your 60 inch hutch against the outside wall. I also have an eating are 8" wide with a 38" x 54" table and surrounding chairs (with a window where your door is) alongside my eating area window (where your door is) and could not see getting around that to a door. I think that the second banquette drawing (spartan99) is much more realistic in scale and shows how the chairs could block the entrance if closer to the outside wall. We have only a single entrance to the patio through the Family room sliders. Our family room is in the same location as your. While not ideal, it is a very common setup and works well only if the sliders work well (ours do not, that is a situation to be remedied this year). Best wishes....See MoreLayout for Eat-In Kitchen - Many questions!!
Comments (12)I sure agree that you need more than 2 ft between the sink and cooktop. I'm not a huge fan of open shelving, but visually, I like the shelves going to the wall, as shown. 3 or 4 shelves, either one, would be fine. If you have things you want to display that won't fit in 9", go with 3. I don't know why you'd want the 2 sink nearer each other. Potential problems of people interfering with each other, and especially a problem if the dw is open. I am worried about the new fridge location and having to go around the island to get to it from the stove area (again, especially if the dw is open). I would like it better in its current location so you can keep the prep area at that end and cleanup zone separate, rather than in the middle of the work triangle for fridge-prep-stove. I would try to do something to work the column into things, rather than having it stand separate like that....See More12 tips for a great eat-in kitchen
Comments (11)Now we all know that the last thing I need to look at is a kitchen! But reading your comments sent me to open the link and see what you were talking about. Kitchens 3 and 7 were interesting for me. Kitchen 3 showed me that I could remove the desk that is in my kitchen now and replace it with a bench and a narrow table (maybe even drop-down or fold-out from the side of the pantry cab) and I could add a table-height sitting space to the kitchen that way. DH currently uses the desk quite often. Whenever he brings work home, he perches in there and can see into the family room, see the ballgame on TV, talk to me, whatever. But maybe someday, a bench and table there might be more important than a desk. In photo 3, the banquette seating is RIGHT behind the counter sitting area, as it would be if I changed out the desk for a bench in my house. Photo 7 reminds me of my previous house. No, there is little in common except the windows and a long, skinny space. In that house, there was a room just below the back right side of the kitchen. The floor was about 30" lower in height than the kitchen floor. The room might have served as a dining room, but no matter where I placed the stairs, the 10 x 10 room with a door to the backyard smack in the center of the side wall, was unusable as a dining room with the new stairs. New stairs were needed because there were only three stair steps down into this room, three very high and out of code, and lethal to my hips and knees stair steps! Because my husband is a vegetarian, and because there was only one real "health food" grocery store in the area, we belonged to a food co-op. We bought in bulk. We needed narrow cupboard storage for cans and boxed foods. So I essentially divided this 10 x 10 room into three sections. The back section became a gallery about 45" wide. Its floor was as high as the kitchen floor, and it held 1 ft deep pantry cabs. At the end was an also very necessary item for that house, a utility cabinet. I could store cleaning supplies, mops, vacuum, etc. there. The center third was about 36" wide. It was the new staircase. Because that part of the lower room was ruined by having the stairs there anyhow, I moved the stairs out a good three feet, making the floor in the kitchen wider there at the top of the stairs. This allowed the first three feet of the pantry cabinet third of the space to become a tall work station with a 40" high counter space and four needed drawers for household tools and tray storage and the like. The space at the top of the stairs became the standing area for this workstation. We left just enough space at the bottom of the stairs to come in, shut the door, and turn around. That space at the bottom of the stairs also became the place through which to enter the storage area under the platform that brought the pantry gallery up to the level of the kitchen floor. Jim put carpet on the concrete floor under there to make crawling under there easier. The last third of the 10 x 10 room became a tiled dog-washing station and a storage window seat. When I had this house up for sale, I kept hearing that people wanted an eat-in kitchen. I considered removing the pantry cabinets and the utility cabinet and just putting up a narrow tabletop either facing the wall (boring!) or the backyard. The biggest reason I did not do this is that there was no flooring under the pantry cabs and I could not get enough to do the job. It was no longer made in that color. The platform of the pantry gallery is about 44" deep, including the railing itself. So you could not really have a table where people faced each other. You would have to line up as at a bar, side by side. But at least the windows give a view of the back yard. Picture #7 in ML's link made me think that maybe such an arrangement might work. Serious landscaping would be needed, though! Here is a link that might be useful: Chippewa kitchen...See MoreMy eat-in kitchen layout
Comments (28)That is probably the only space where the family keeps coats and even shoes. This is a small house and every closet counts in situations like this. If the closet was removed, are you willing to live with the coats hanging on the living room wall or taking them into the bedrooms every single time you go in and out of the house? You need to make the entire house functional, not just the kitchen. Bedroom does not look big enough to lose the space for a closet that opens next to the front door. I don't think losing the closet is a good idea for the house....See Morewestchestermom
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