help with kitchen layout
Thoughts on this kitchen layout? What do you think of the "baking area" being behind the back of the fridge? Is there a different place to put the fridge? different layout for pantry that would help?
Big open line on the left side of the drawing as you are looking at it is french doors to the deck. Opening between cabinet/counter and that little tiny square mark leads down a hallway. Behind curve of island is the dining room.
Comments (16)
sheloveslayouts
9 years agoLeigh-Ann Draheim
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
please help on kitchen layout (and house layout)
Comments (35)I'm offering the following as a devil's advocate. Both positions for your kitchen are viable choices with nice reasons to go each way. That's why you need to draw up all possibilities to consider. If the middle is right for you guys, this will end up reinforcing that decision. Versatility and size? That 15x30 room is looking very, very nice as it is, but the far end is prize square footage with all those exterior walls (light/views in up to 3 directions), and right now you plan to actually dine there very little--pretty but underused. If you put the kitchen down there, that addition would be used as intensively as it deserves to be. The living area for furniture placement would be the same, but it would be more strongly defined. Nevertheless the whole should still appear very spacious because it would still be part of a 15x30 room with kitchen on end and still be open to the north, which would extend additional living activities that direction, instead of east. The dining room might well end up used more for various activities in the middle of the house. In considering this alternative layout, how about a pretty door to the outside from a middle/dining room, French perhaps? And for that matter, are you sure you wouldn't have a door directly out from the kitchen? You have an entry in that end that looks as if it would need some reconfiguring too. Would it enter the middle/dining room? Last night I also thought of one other -- possible -- advantage to switching the kitchen and dining room: the step down. This could be a design asset for a dining room, setting it off as special as viewed from the living room. Since you don't plan to eat there a lot, even with young children you could have a nice rug under the table if you wanted it. You'd take that step mostly on the way back to the children's rooms--longer journeys. For the kitchen, you guys'd be making all the many, many little daily journeys between the living room and kitchen on a level floor. Morning sun in kids' hallway? Have sunshine everywhere and you eliminate the pleasure of entering a sunny room. A dim hallway is often a design asset because it makes the rooms opening off it all the more inviting. I can't see what that cabinet in the hall is, but with a little attention to attractiveness and interest, the hall looks pretty good to me. The only way I could imagine to improve it would be to extend it to come back around on itself -- children love to run in circles. :) As it is now, though, the hall enters a sunny middle room in the mornings, setting that room off really nicely, however it's used....See MoreHelp with Kitchen layout - ARG design, appliance layout
Comments (31)Doug already knows my views about cooktops on islands. So, I didn't share it when critiquing the original design. My opinion only, but putting a cooking surface on the island is a decision of last resort. Both safety and efficiency are compromised by this type of arrangement. I think the Buehl's idea of using that beautiful front window area for dining is inspired. It would get you and additional 28 sq.ft. in the kitchen. That's not chump change. That front window would be a lovely spot to sit with a cup of coffee and watch the kids. The light would be glorious. Seriously consider moving the kitchen to the rear, moving the dining room to take advantage of the window and sew/craft in the now freed up space in the front of the house, The old dining room in front could be used for a flex room/library/study/extra bedroom for overflow guests/sewing room/home office. Like Doug will tell you, everything is a compromise. Every decision effects another decision. It's just a question of how many comprises you have to make....See MorePlease help with kitchen layout! Starting renovations and need help
Comments (2)Can you take some space from the living room? If the stub wall must be 30", you could put a full-height cabinet on the LR side, and extend a peninsula to the point where the door was. If you need a support post for a beam, it could be incorporated into the seating overhang (plan on left). However, if the stub wall can be eliminated, or if only a support post is necessary on the exterior wall, you could extend the peninsula farther into the LR, and make the remainder of the room a dining area. With seating at the peninsula, the nook could be converted to storage and serving. areas (plan on right). Another option (on right), would be to keep the sink under the window and put the fridge on the stair wall. The fridge would be a trek from the range, but adding a sink to the peninsula would give you a better prep space, and the fridge would be more convenient to the FR and new DR. NKBA guidelines New to Kitchens? Read me first....See MoreNeed help with kitchen layout
Comments (5)Points in order of priority to me (a home owner, not a designer): The sink and the cooktop are back to back making for choke points and risks of the person at the cooktop tripping over the open dishwasher. In the printed plan with the (presumed) fridge and freezer at the island, any time someone is raiding the fridge you have a choke point. It looks like you have no exterior walls on your kitchen. Getting good ventilation for your cooktop will be an important consideration, which is a challenge on an island because many homeowners don't want a big hood on their island. Also you have the concern about safety with the cooktop in the island and people seated across from it. I would love to have the cabinetry continue on to the table area, it provides extra storage and could act as a buffet. What about putting the microwave down by your snack station and getting the kitchen raiders out of your workspace?...See MoreLeigh-Ann Draheim
9 years agolavender_lass - the sink/dishwasher are there in the current layout. Space there is not big enough to have a cabinet in that back indent along with the sink, right now its just a wall to the left of the sink (if facing the sink).
Here is another lay out they came up with after addressing my concern with the "wall" behind the fridge. This one takes out a window though, however, there will be big french doors where there is a window now, and a window (above sink in this new layout), that used to be sliding doors.
szruns
9 years agoHow about put the one and only sink in the island and the DW there, too. Add a trash pull out, and your clean up zone is all set. That allows you to put the range back on the wall behind the island (where the DW is now, and the fridge over where the range is now. I don't think two sinks make sense in this small a kitchen, and putting the sink/DW at the island really frees up your cabinet and counter space.
Leigh-Ann Draheim
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoJillius
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoHow about this?
This requires the addition of a new door to the deck and possibly an extension of the deck if it doesn't currently wrap all the way around to that location. That won't be cheap.
I've also swapped the french doors for a large window of the same width, and I narrowed another window. I'm not sure how much you know about construction, but if you are unfamiliar, I promise you that neither of those are drastic (read: expensive) changes. It is expensive and sometimes difficult to enlarge a window, but both of those changes involve making the opening in your wall smaller. Making a window or door smaller is a relatively cheap enterprise with basically no possibility of surprises. You won't have to reframe the header (the large beam that carries the load above the window/door) or worry about what you might find in the wall (surprise electrical or HVAC that requires expensive relocation). The hole in your wall (either a doorway or a window) that you need is already open and supported. You'll just be adding a few pieces of wood to the existing framing and then installing the new windows.
If you can stomach all that, you gain:
1) Three long, uninterrupted stretches of counter. One of those stretches is between your sink and your cooktop, which is the most convenient prep location in a kitchen. It allows you to set down all your food on that counter, wash/chop/mix it, and cook it without moving (this is more efficient and limits how much other people using the kitchen can get in your way).
2) Great flow. Ideally, you want the kitchen to flow from the fridge (get the food) to the sink with a big adjacent counter (wash/chop/mix the food) to the range (cook the food). In what I'm suggesting, you have that ideal flow in two ways. You can go fridge--> main clean-up sink --> big counter between sink & range --> range. Or you can go fridge --> prep sink --> big counter on the island --> range.
Compare that to your original design where you also have two routes to follow while cooking. In one route, you'd start at the fridge, then walk to the right to wash your food at the clean-up sink and prep on a tiny stretch of counter there, then back track (crossing in front of the fridge again, which is inefficient and a potential road block if someone has the fridge open) to walk to the range and work on a tiny stretch of counter there.
In the other route, you'd start at the fridge, then walk to the prep sink where you have only tiny stretches of counter to work on, then walk to the range where you have only tiny stretches of counter to work on. The flow is better in this route (no back-tracking), but you consistently have no good long stretches of counter anywhere.
3) In mine, you also have the fridge convenient, but out of the way. Snack-seekers can poke through the fridge without entering the main work zones. You can also have the fridge door open without being a huge impediment to normal kitchen activity. In your proposal, the fridge is in the middle of everything and therefore blocks everything when open.
4) Similarly, in mine the dishwasher will not be opening directly into the middle of everything.
5) In mine, you still could have a baking area in that little nook. The counter there is now longer, the oven would be even closer, and the space where you are working would not be so cramped. However, I really wonder why you wouldn't want to mix up/roll out baked goods on the island or between the sink and stove. Won't you want to have a sink handy? I bake a lot, and I would not choose to work in the nook in either my design or yours. For me, the nook counter would just be used as a real work space when the other two work areas are already in use.
6) Views! In mine, all your counter spaces either face a window or face the island seating (where people will be, presumably). No staring at walls or cabinets! It is my dream to own a kitchen with this feature.
7) You get a longer stretch of pantry cabinets in my design as well.
Buehl
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoNOTE: Since we do not have actual dimensions, all suggested ideas are just guesses - we won't know if any of these are viable until we know what the space actually is. Please read the "Layout Help" topic in the Kitchens FAQs (How do I ask for Layout Help and what information should I include?)
So, here are two additional ideas (to give you more options). Yes, I put cabinet sizes in based on guesses at the dimensions - as mentioned above, they may or may not work. Also, the aisle widths are what I recommend be the minimum aisles.
Of these two, my preference is #1 - assuming you can have a range in front of a window. If not, split the window to have one on each side of the range.
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Layout #1:.
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Layout 2:
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Leigh-Ann Draheim
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoLeigh-Ann Draheim
9 years agoBuehl
9 years agoI suggest you redraw the diagram and label it with the measurements. We need additional measurements, however. See the example below (taken from the Layout Help topic in the Kitchens FAQs).
In addition, a sketch of the entire first floor will help us to understand how the kitchen relates to the rest of the house and the traffic flows in/out of the room.
The more information you give us the better we can help and the more effective our help is.
nosoccermom
9 years ago
Lavender Lass
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoBuehl
9 years agoLavender Lass
9 years ago
funkycamper
9 years ago
Lavender Lass