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momof2princesses

Please critique my floor plan before we finalize it!!

momof2princesses
8 years ago

I'm so excited because it's taken several iterations, but we are finally getting close to finalizing the floorplan, so I wanted to get input from all of the amazingly helpful people here before everything is final.

Our family is made up of 2 working adults, 2 kids (ages 5 and 2), and 1 dog. I love to cook and make dinner 5-6 nights/week, usually with 2 little helpers, and my DH does the dishes. We entertain frequently, from a couple people to 50 people, and when I do I make pretty much all of the food myself. We have my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law over for dinner every Wed, my dad stays for a 3 day weekend with us about once/month, we have friends over for dinner about 2x/month (8-20 people), and we have larger parties (about 30-50 people) 3-4 times/year.

What doesn't work for us with the space right now:

1) The clean-up zone is on top of the prep-zone. My DH isn't very good about getting the dishes done, so he is frequently in the kitchen doing the remaining dishes from the last meal while I am prepping/cooking the current meal. This is a huge problem in our current space due to the placement of the main sink/dishwasher. Our isles are also not very wide so when the dishwasher is open nobody can get by (except Buddy, the dog).

2) The doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. It's narrow so only 1 person can get through at a time, and the refrigerator blocks the opening so when we have people over and I'm trying to get food out of the fridge I have to ask people to move and then nobody can get through until I'm done. It's super annoying.

3) I can't see my kids when they are outside. We have a beautiful patio and backyard, so when the weather is nice the kids are outside. I have 1 small window in the kitchen that is close to the corner so basically all I can see out of it is my DH at the grill.

4) When we have parties everyone is always getting in my way while trying to access the trash can, sink, etc. I need to have better zone layout so that they aren't crossing the cooking/prep zones.

5) We have mail and papers from school everywhere. Everything comes into the kitchen and there is no place to put it, so it just ends up on the kitchen island and the kitchen table. I'm a little OCD so this makes me crazy!


I've attached pics of the downstairs floor plan with current kitchen layout, and the proposed new kitchen layout with the modifications I've made scribbled on in pen (sorry about that). I would really appreciate any feedback I can get! (It's hard to tell in the picture of the proposed new layout, but there is going to be a pass through from the kitchen to the dining room at the sink, with open shelving for my cookbooks at the top.) I was thinking I might want to swap the trash can base in the island for the 24" drawer base, thoughts?

Also hard to tell in the new floor plan is the fact that the B18 I scribbled on there is going to be a second set of double trash cans for when we have parties, so people aren't coming over into my space. On the side of this will be a folder/organizational area that I've attached my inspiration picture.



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