Please post a measured floor plan on graph paper and read the new to kitchens thread if you haven't done so yet. A b.s. is a lot of heat for that tiny spot between the wall and doorway. You are going to want more protection for that kind of firepower if you ever have more than 1 person in your home. It would be worth saving up longer and getting a better, safer layout for your kitchen. : )

Agree that I'd just live with it as is for a few years until you can afford a more extensive remodel, putting money into a half-measure right now will likely mess things up for a future more-efficient layout overhaul. The old saying of throwing good money after bad comes to mind.

How far from a wall does code require for a gas range? I don't think you have enough room there.

@laughablemoments

Thanks for your reply.

I will go measure the dimensions today and will post it later.

Where is the new to kitchen thread? Thanks in advance for getting me the link.

I will also include a sketch on the future layout of the kitchen I am planning later. The location of the stove pretty much remain unchange.

@Carrie B

Thanks for your reply. I do have that in mind and I will attach a sketch of my future plan as well. If my future plan is also a total failure then I really have to rethink the situaiton.

@raleighsharon

To my knowledge, ontario building code does not require distance from wall as long as it is lined with non-combustible materialcode

Am I understainding it correctly?

The "new to kitchens" thread is currently on the first page of threads, posted by buehl. Before investing in expensive appliances you really should come up with an overall plan. Post your current plan in a new thread. Refer to the "new to kitchens" thread on what you need to post to get the more helpful responses.

"Am I understanding it correctly?"

No. Placing a non-combustabe surface such as tile over a combustable wood stud wall does not make the wall non-combustable.

Furthermore, it's just bad design. Your pot handles need a place to go.

Preventing fires and following manufacturer's installation is where good design begins. It's heresy to say it here, but looks aren't everything.

@debrak_2008

Thanks, I will post a current plan and future plan after I do the measurement

@Joseph Corlett

Thanks for the clarification. I checked the range manufacturer page and they recommend a 6" clearance from the wall. I will put that in mind when placing the appliance.

Assuming that your floor is finished under the cabinets, what about moving the doorway to the dining room over towards the window, and the cabinets against the window to abut the other cabinets on that wall (flipping it so that the stove is between two base cabinets). The soffit could be extended so that it is continuous, if you don't want to remove the part near the window. I'd run the new hood duct through the ceiling so that you could remove the soffits in the future.

In general, you should have counter space on both sides of your range for you to work on and place things on as you use the range. It is VERY awkward to use a range with no counterspace around it. For safety, you also want your range in a relatively protected place inside your work zone that really only the cooks walk by, so this outlier location near seating and a doorway (where lots of non-cooks will be moving around) is terrible in that regard. And you also want your range to be just a few steps from a sink so you don't have to carry hot boiling water very far before you dump it in the sink. I can't see the sink, which makes me think it is probably on the other side of the room.

This location where your range is would be good for a pantry, but is among the worst locations for a range that I have seen in a long time. That is why rebunky (first commenter in this thread) responded the way she did. It is quite glaringly bad to those of us who do a lot of kitchen layouts.

You should definitely post a whole kitchen plan and a plan of the whole floor this kicthen is on (that puts the kitchen in context for us and helps us with traffic flow considerations in and out of the room). And in the meantime, brace yourself for having everybody here telling you that that range is in a truly terrible location and needs to be moved.

What a lovely window! I sure would like to see the layout of the kitchen - there simply has to be a better way.

AnnKH - you are awesome! That is all.

Thanks everyone for your awesome reply.

I will take the measurement and put a plan on this weekend. But at the mean time, here are the pictures for the rest of the kitchen

I think you might have a good opportunity to place this between the refrigerator and window and get the minimum clearances and vent fairly easily to the outside. The cabinets you remove over there could fill in temporarily where the old range was.

It's not the ideal layout, but it could work. I know the ideal is to wait until you have $50K to do a complete overhaul but who knows when that will be?

I don't think you have room in your proposed location even with a 24" Bluestar. You really want at least 9" of set-down space on the doorway side of the range, and you absolutely need the 6" clearance to the corner according to the specs. And that current cabinet looks to be 9" so even the 24" Bluestar would be a tight squeeze.

It looks to me like the range should be where the fridge is and the fridge should be where the range is. The kitchen is right next to the dining room; I wonder if someone along the line switched the appliances around to wedge an eat-in kitchen in there.

Please do post a floor plan of the entire floor this is on, not just the kitchen. You have doorways chopping up this space, and it would be great to get a full lay of the land to see if those doorways might be better positioned elsewhere.

1) Would you be open to widening the doorway to the dining room and using that as your primary eating area, rather than having seating in the kitchen?

2) Would you be open to making that big kitchen window a bit shorter so that a kitchen counter could go beneath it? You actually have a fairly long stretch of uninterrupted walls there -- the fridge wall plus the window wall. That is usually where you want to be running your main stretch of cabinets/counters, rather than breaking them up on a bunch of little bits of wall as you have now.

You'd be able to do something like this:

As promised, this is the proper scale plan of the kitchen.

I have to agree with those who say wait until you can redesign. I would think about combining the DR and Kitchen.

I think you could do this: easily, by removing the table, putting the existing base cabinet and new range in the table location and moving the fridge to the old range location.

You could probably get a way with putting the new range and old cabinet where the table currently are, leaving the rest as is and putting a storage piece or small table where the range was. It could be sort of cobbled for the time being until you have the funds for a complete redo and would put any range in a more protected positions

I completely agree that it's the table that's causing all the problems!

I'm not a kitchen designer, but that table is ALL wrong. Get rid of it, and move your range to the other side where you'll have more room.

I really like palimpsest's idea. It's a good, functional plan that can be done for minimal cost until you can do a more extensive remodel. Your kitchen isn't big enough for a big table like that in the way of everything.

Thanks everyone for the input.

after taking everyone's opinion into account, can I do the remodel in these two steps?

Intermediate kitchen involves rotating the range and base cabinet by the range by 90 degree.

and later when I have the money to do the complete reno I will change it into something like this. This way the vent exhaust and gas line can remain at the same position.

What do you think? do you think it is now safe enough to have a B.S. range installed even for the intermediate plan?

Just start by putting it on the wall where the fridge is with the ultimate plan to do something like what Jillius said Yesterday at 1:14PM:

If you put the range on the window wall, you unnecessarily lose at least 3 feet of window smack in the middle of the room.

The guiding principle you'll find here is that the space between range and sink is sacred ground, the primary prep space. Your proposal above has no space for prep between sink and range.

Too add on to benjesbride's comment, your proposal above has virtually no prep space anyway. Just one stretch right in the clean-up zone so you're effectively planning a kitchen that will only be good for one person working in the kitchen at a time.

In the iteration I did, which is for the lowest impact intervention until the kitchen can be reworked, the prep would be done on the 24" over the DW.

Unfortunately in a small kitchen especially one with three doorways, the idea of "zones" can fly right out the window. That's the spot most convenient to the new stove location between the sink and stove. I've had to put the prep zone over the DW area in more than one small kitchen, because the reality that's often one of the few counter runs that's 27" or more (24 for DW and a bit of room around the sink).

The reality is that this is a one-person kitchen until a major renovation is done, and one person can't get in the way of themselves. You'd be foolish in any case to leave a DW open like some do, in a kitchen with pass through doorways in it, anyway.

Multi Level Kitchen Design · More Info

Thank everyone again for your input.

The importance of prep space is definitely a key point i missed in the layout.

The reason I am trying hard to not move range across the room for the intermediate setup is because I really want to minimize the amount of work required for the first step. So I am trying to explore all options with that intermediate setup and unless everything fails, i would start considering moving it to where the fridge is.

Just a point to add as well is that it will be a one man kitchen as I am the only person that would cook 99% of the time.

So in order to add more prep space between sink and range, i decide to borrow this recessed corner sink idea and put in a 30" apron sink at the corner.

The intermediate step still looks like last iteration.

but the final lay out I am visioning something like this, to get more counter space while sacrificing a bit of storage.

Is this kitchen more workable now?

What is all this?

1) Is where I put the red question mark the front door?

2) Where the purple question mark is -- what is a stair corner?

3) Where I put the yellow question marks looks like a hallway? Is it a hallway? It is such an odd place for a hallway -- it runs between the powder room and whatever a stair corner is?

4) Where I put the green question mark, what is that?

5) Where I put the blue question mark, is that the back door, or maybe the door to the garage? If it's the back door, what is out there? Is there a deck?

6) As you have it drawn, it looks impossible to walk between the fridge and the dishwasher. Surely that's not accurate?

@jillius

1. Yes it is front door

2.3. Left of front door is stair to upstairs. So the stair corner is the landing. And right next to the side door is the stair to basement. Sorry I got a bit lazy there to do it properly. Cannot sort it right in vision.

4. It is actually solid wall there.

5. It is the side entrance. The sliding door in dining room leads to patio.

"4) Where I put the green question mark, what is that?

4. It is actually solid wall there."

where I see the green ? looks like maybe a closet... not a solid wall. Is that area all walled in?

what's in the cubical area above the entryway - looks to have sliding doors on it?

@desertsteph

Yea it is all walled in at the green mark.

The sliding door cubical is a coat closet

I would think it's the same amount of work to put the range on that exterior corner as it would be to put it on the fridge wall. What makes the fridge wall more work?

@benjesbride

Cause I only need to take down one set of cabinet and reinstall it plus patching the wall instead of doing it for two sets of cabinets and redoing a countertop. The table is not at countertop height so it would be awkward if I don't raise the top beside the ranger after moving it to the fridge.

Since you want to get the new range now, I think it would be worth it to live with cobbled and patched for a few years, instead of transitioning into a layout that is not optimal for the next twenty years. (But this is from someone who lived with no kitchen at all for four years rather than compromise)

What about shifting the door opening to the dining room to the right by taking out that small "L" by the sink. Take what you gained there and put it on the range section to have counter, range, counter. That could remain in a remodel if you have enough room to the left to wrap around the window wall eventually. Personally I think the range should go where table is, but this could be another option depending on what's in the soffits and what's on the other side of the dining room wall.

I think the table has to go, no matter what, as soon as you can manage it. In the latest intermediate step, it looks like there's only a foot of clearance between the table and the range, so seems very difficult to use the far side of the table (dangerous if the range were being used).

What's the distance between the refrigerator and the dishwasher now? In the layout it looks like only about 15" but in the picture it seems like there's more space.

Are you having gas installed or is it existing in the current range location?

May be I should describe my use of the kitchen.

I cook for breakfast and dinner, for a family of 3.

Breakfast is simple, may be some eggs or just toast.

Dinner is 95% stir fry, with some stew or soup or roast at times.

I am the only person cooking 99% of the time.

@palimpsest

Thanks I absolutely agree with your thought. But may be because I am new to this(first timer), I am still not getting why a range on the current fridge side is better? I would really appreciate if someone can explain.

@cluelessincolorado

Thanks for the suggestion. That is definitely something I can consider. It is just more involved as wall demolition and build is involved. I would definitely consider this if I cannot find a way to not move the wall at this point.

@caligirl5

Yes I do agree that table is not doing us much good here. If I do not remove the table in the intermediate stage, i plan on using it as a counter top when I'm cooking so the narrow gap is not really my concern.

and yes, there is more room between the current fridge and dishwasher. The reason it looks narrow on the plan is because i took measurement in the interior of the whole floor but it seems the visio dimensions are exterior. And because i make other rooms before kitchen, i shrink some walk space width to accommodate other items. SO between the fridge and dishwasher there is at least another 8 inches in space.

@benjesbride

It will be a new gas line installed for the range.

What is the measurement from the floor to the window...it looks like the bottom of the window is lower than what counter height is. If that is the case, are you planning to replace the window when you do your "for real" remodel? From experience...widening a doorway and rehanging a few cabinets is cheaper and less work then putting in a smaller window.

Actually, making a window smaller is nearly always less work than widening a doorway. When you make an opening (a window or door) bigger, you have to reframe the header and move any electrical or HVAC that is currently running through either your new, wider opening or where the new framing has to go.

When you make an opening smaller, like putting in a smaller window, nothing existing in the wall or framing has to change. There is no chance electrical or HVAC could ever be in your way because the hole in the wall you want already exists and then some.

So you just add some extra framing inside the existing opening to make the opening smaller and then put in the new window. Voila. The only potentially tricky part is patching the siding to fit around the new window. Sometimes whatever kind of siding you have existing is hard to match.

So widening a doorway would only be easier than making a window smaller if your exterior siding is especially tricky and your interior doorway isn't in a load-bearing wall and has no electrical or HVAC in the way.