Ha! It's going to be awesome!

We're not done with our fixer upper yet, but all of the ugly is gone and, well, your pictures are kind of making me feel nostalgic for the days when everyone thought we were nuts and all we saw was potential. Good (and stressful) times.

What about this?

Kitchen with a View · More Info

Coeur D’Alene Residence on Lake Coeur D’Alene · More Info

I see the potential. Your home will be quite nice when you're done.

How about this?

A wall of windows would give you more light than double french doors. I put in one french door for access to outside. The red area marked would be windows that open for helping to get food out to the deck. You could even do a a food service counter outside the window. You could have windows behind the hood as well or have wall there if you prefer. And, yes, I think you need a prep sink to give your kitchen more efficiency and convenience for prepping and clean-up.

Funky, you and I are on the same page. I was thinking switch it to a single swinging door in the corner or this, similar to your pics:

I am glad to hear the walls aren't load bearing. I want to see the bathroom!!

You guys that are thinking open windows to eating areas must not have bugs. Lucky you. Cluster flys, May flies, mistquitos.... only season I could do that would be winter.

I love it! Ohhh, I hope we can open up that window more! We live in south Florida, so we do have Mosquitos, but the house is about a mile from the beach so we get nice breezes from the east. (Window wall)

Here's a couple of the baths: the peach is the guest bath and the Aqua is the jack & Jill between the kids rooms. Master bath is the size of a postage stamp and will need to be redesigned ..... After the kitchen. I have to pace myself for my own sanity and $$$.

Wow, you sure do have your work cut out for you. I can see why you went for it though, has so much potential. I don't envy your position though. I've actually been there, homeschooling and renovating. It wasn't fun at all. We did live through it though. LOL I remember having my boys in the basement doing math for framing. At least it's a learning experience for them, even if I did get pretty tired pretty quickly of having to teach in chaos.
I do envy you all that don't have the bugs though. I have to live with fly strips in my house all summer long the bugs are that bad.

I read through a few of the suggestions but not all due to time. A few things that jump out to me that may or may not have been mentioned. If you keep the direct opening into the school room, you may want to consider adding a pocket door. I've been homeschooling for 12 years in a room directly off of our kitchen. Our school room very seldom looks like the organizational and educational pinnacle of perfection I see in online pictures. I have a pocket door to quickly close it off from view as needed ("Someone's outside knocking, close the school room!").

Where do you bring in your groceries? Think about that when you decide where you place your fridge and pantry. I have to carry groceries a longer distance through the house, through a busy kitchen, and next to the door to the school room where the pantry is located. It can get crazy, so I'm partially changing up food storage locations in the renovation to better enhance traffic flow.

Enjoy your new house!

We have few bugs here so that issue never occurred to me. Screens that slide open would help make that work, wouldn't it? You could open the window, visit with people on the deck, then just open the screen to pass food through. If it is really buggy, would you even eat on a deck? Would you need a screen porch?

Do you have the area to the right of the current dining/family ( the master) drawn up? Does the master open to the patio too? I'm wondering about door placement.

How wide is the kitchen sink window? How far is it from that wall to the left?

Questions! I always have so many questions.

Funky, it's one thing to tolerate bugs when you're outside - quite another to try to sleep with mosquitoes buzzing around the bedroom! Up here we joke that the mosquito is the state bird. Messing with a screen on a passthrough is far more trouble than it's worth.

The kitchen window is 51" wide. I have 44" from the left wall to the window. 48" on the right. The master door is seen on the far right, by the French doors. It has two smaller windows facing the south and one larger window facing east. No access to the patio. The patio actually ends just before the window.

What's size island is "standard"?

I know I might be crazy, but I like the shower in the blue bathroom. The tiles are awesome.

I'm not sure where the question is coming from regarding a "standard" island size...but there is no "standard" - it depends on the space you have to work with + what you want in the island.

• Standard base cabinets are 24" deep
• Standard counter overhang is 1.5"
• Decorative end panels or doors on the back of cabinets area around 1" thick when installed.
• Minimum recommended seating overhang is 15" of clear space (counter height seating)
• Minimum recommended linear space needed per seat is 24" (meaning 24" of space for each seat)
• Minimum recommended size of a prep sink is one that fits in an 18" cabinet
• Minimum recommended counterspace for prepping is 36" - but 42" is much better

So, depending on what you include in your island, your island can be almost any size!

Here's an example:

Island is 72" wide - so can accommodate 3 seats (24" per seat x 3 seats = 72")

This would be the minimum size of an island if you want seating for 3 on one side.

Ok, that's helpful.

Funky, it's one thing to tolerate bugs when you're outside - quite another to try to sleep with mosquitoes buzzing around the bedroom! Up here we joke that the mosquito is the state bird. Messing with a screen on a passthrough is far more trouble than it's worth.

OK, aankh_nd, I believe you. I didn't think many would swarm inside if you just briefly slid a screen open to put food out and then closed it again. You must go in/out doors really fast where you live. I think I'd have one of those bug-zapper-things, whatever they're called, at all entrances if it was that bad. I was going to suggest that someone could put one by the pass-through window until I realized that might mean cooked bug or their parts getting into the food. Ewwww!

Well, the window pass-through bar is still a great idea, imho, if you live where flying bugs aren't a big issue.

Do people actually live in places where there aren't bugs? My oh my, but I would love to live in such a place!!

I've seen staged photos of houses with lovely large doors left open to the outside and I've always had a bit of an internal laughter looking at them.

I LOVE to open the windows and get a fresh breeze through the house but I've got screens on all my windows.

I do, in fact, have a 3 ft wide window that opens onto our 12x15 ft covered porch that is a slider with a screen.

When we put it in, I envisaged using said window to pass food and dishes out onto the back porch when we were grilling.

That hasn't happened yet but we haven't gotten into proper grilling season yet either.

I have no problems opening a screen long enough to pass a dish through but I can't imagine living anywhere that a window would be left open, unscreened and NOT result in a house full of bugs.

Texas_Gem I was thinking the same thing! I was in awe that so many people don't have to deal with bugs.
I do think a sliding screen could work since it would keep bugs down in the day time, nighttime there would be moths flocking to it though.
I think it does also depend on if you live in the city or rural. I know we really didn't get that many bugs in the city but when we move out to the country I cannot live without fly strips. I just can't. Every time you open the door a few get in here.
With all that said, the patio doors are so close to the kitchen work area that you probably don't need a passthrough. It is super cute, but no more functional than the patio door.

I live in a town of 8000 and on the edge of it. Thousands of acres of my town's watershed starts about 200 feet from my house. Sure we have bugs but not flying swarms. I can have my doors and windows open all day and maybe have one or two bugs flying around in the house. Probably partially because we live in bird/hummingbird heaven. Our climate is temperate enough where we have both year round so we have lots of bird houses and keep the feeders full plus lots of containers full of water for them in the drier months.

funkycamper then you definitely don't get cluster flies where you are. Google image search them. Every spring the all come out in masses from the ground and cover all the sides of the house, if they get in they will lay their eggs in crevices and then you have lovely hatches the next spring. So gross. Cluster flies, may flies, Black flies, brown manuer flies (can't remmber the name of them), then there are fruit flies and misquitos. March through late October, no reprieve. I saw the first misquito of the year in the barn last night.

smouse77 I do like the idea of making the kitchen just a kitchen space and not having a sofa. Then you can do a big island and not feel like you're trying to get too much into that space. Not sure how much depth you have on the right wall where you have the sideboard, but you could also do a whole bank of pantries there if you wanted and have work workable counter space in the kitchen.

No, we don't. Thank goodness. That sounds horrible. We have mosquitoes in wetlands which, luckily, aren't near our house.

Funky, one of the best things about winter in North Dakota - no bugs!

This thread is so far off track now. LOL Sorry totally my fault for mention bugs in the first place.

Lol, you know what's funny to me is since we were talking about bugs, I was only thinking flying insects and not all the other things that have found there way into my house through an open door.

Mice, tarantulas, a toad (that one was funny actually) a bull snake, grass snakes, black widows, scorpions, camel spiders, centipedes. I have a screen door but I won't even leave the front door open with just the screen door closed anymore because most of those things have come in through the crack at the bottom of the screen door.

I live in the country by the way, when I lived in town this wasn't an issue.

I think I would die if a toad got in my house. I HATE frogs. That's one thing I will not miss in our old house. We live right by the Everglades, frogs and gators everywhere. We saw an 8 ft gator walking down the sidewalk last year. On.. The.. Sidwalk. Crazy! I will be much happier closer to the ocean.

I will gladly take cluster flies over gators.

Lol, the toad was the only one that DIDN'T freak me out. The bull snake gets the medal though, I was in labor and running in and out of the house loading the car when he "rattled" at me (bull snakes mimic and are easily mistaken for rattlesnakes, which we also have around here)

I'm surprised my daughter didn't pop out right that second!!

But gators? No way!!!!

I live near the ocean in california, so not too many flying bugs and the
kitchen door gets left open a lot. We do have black AND
brown widows all over but they don't seem to come in the
house. Also way more than our fair share of urban wildlife. I let the
dog out at 4AM once and left the door open. 3 hours later I'm in the
shower and he starts barking his head off because he's cornered a possum
in the fireplace. Getting that thing out of the house was a fun way to
start the morning but I was so thankful it wasn't a skunk or raccoon.

Gators are just a whole nother level though.

Nah. Gators usually swim the other way. Unless, they are really hungry, then you have to watch your small pets. I'd take a gator any day over snakes and frogs.

Oh, my! My part of the country is downright boring compared to snakes, gators, and toads. We have only had a few birds and hummingbirds in the house. We do have possums, chipmunks, raccoon, deer and the occasional sighting of a cougar or bobcat but none of them have gotten in the house!

Sorry for the continued threadjack, smouse77. I checked up-thread and I don't think I've seen you give much feedback on the last few plans. It's possible I missed it. Do you have any comments about any of the ideas for your kitchen? Are there some you like parts of but not others? Maybe several plans can be mooshed together somehow? Let's help you get back to kitchen planning. :)

Ha, yes, back to work. So the last couple days have been demo days and have gotten some more exact measurements. I'm thinking of reducing the 8 ft French door down to a 6ft giving me more room to the right of the stove. I'm loving the idea of using that whole space as kitchen instead of dividing it into dining/ kitchen. I mean how many living rooms do I really need? So, this is the latest: decisions regarding the wall to the right of the island.

Full wall of pantrys? (Not really cute, but storage galore)

Lowers and uppers? (Some storage and some more counter top)

Lowers and open shelves? ( leaving me with almost no uppers but looks cute)

Also.... Our roofer is starting soon and I have the option of two skylights. I'm nervous in the south Florida sun that I will need sunscreen just washing dishes. I know they have shades but is it worth it then? Here's a picture of the ceiling now. I would do two, evenly spaced on either side of the sink. The dark hole is where an old skylight once was. Skylights would face the east, but it's a gently sloped roof. The soffits are all going to be taken down.

This is the latest drawing:

Here are my first, super quick thoughts and what I might do:

1) I would not do skylights. There's probably a good reason they were covered up. I'd save my $$$ for the unforeseen expenses coming your way. If you feel like that space is too dark when it's opened up, I'd take down the patio cover and opt for sail shades that you can put up and take down as needed.

2) You need more space between your sink and your range. At least 3 feet, I think. To achieve that you need to a) reduce your french door down to a single swinging door on the master bedroom end; this would be my choice b) put the range on the hallway wall (where the fridge is) and close up the opening between the kitchen and homeschool room so you can have continuous counter between range and sink. The dishwasher and fridge would then go to the right of the sink.

3) If you want a dining table for 6, you'll need a table at least 3'x6'. A 3x6' table needs a 9x12' area. I'm not sure if that leaves room for a loveseat.

4) I'm not sure what I'd do on that master bedroom wall. I think it just depends on the final plan for the rest of the kitchen.

Can you vault the ceiling? Our ceilings were low, like 7'6" low. It wasn't in our original plan, but our GC offered and bid raising our ceiling and it was some of the best money we spent in our whole house renovation. If you do ceiling fans, I would think it would be preferred to have them up high in the peak.

Yes, I agree with benjesbride about the skylights. If they were facing north, you'd be fine because you wouldn't have to worry about direct sun, but if they are East, it could be really glaring in the morning.

Can you please post a floor plan of the whole house as it currently is?

Ok, I'll rework the plan. My husband is adamant about keeping the double doors. I had to fight to get rid of the extra 2 ft of windows on either side of the door. So I have to stick with a 6 ft opening for French doors.

You all confirmed my hesitation regarding the skylights, I was so afraid of glaring sun coming in. Regarding raising the ceilings, if we do the kitchen, I believe we will be stuck doing the entire room (which is not a bad thing if we had a lot of extra $$$.) but we don't. like I said, the soffits and fan are going bye bye, raising it to 8 1/2 ft like the rest of the room.

I don't have a floor plan on the current state. We are literally tearing down walls to start from scratch. I'll try to do a rough outline of the walls that are staying. Happy Sunday everyone!

This is really lovely!! For the backsplash, I think piece of acrylic/galss under the range hood only would be lovely, and would leave things feeling open and airy.

Do you recall where your pulls are from?

I remember your project--thanks for coming back to show the (almost) final result. It looks great! Fresh, clean, easy to use and fashionable.

Beautiful job. Light and airy now.

From one south Florida fixer upper owner to another, your kitchen is amazing!

Lovely! I was so busy admiring everything I didn't even notice that there's no backsplash. Congrats!!

Really gorgeous! It was great that you kept your vision through all of the changes that had to be made.