Help with kitchen/ dining room layout
Dream
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
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Dream
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Layout help for long narrow kitchen/dining room
Comments (13)consider this: Nothing goes on the wall where the garage is. 1 long counter along the long wall, and 1 long island parallel to it. For the counter and the island, go as far as you like ; whatever makes sense. Both the counter and the island are to be Narrow and Low. (e.g. 23" top and 21"d cabinets underneath); (e.g. 34"h) An all-drawer cabinet base makes sense in a narrow kitchen, because nobody ever has to get down on all fours. Ikea drawers fit in less than 21"depth. A 3/4" thickness quartz counter on top of a standard cabinet, on short feet, can make the height come in at less than 36"h. The two narrow coutners leave you with enough room to have aisles. One is the kitchen work aisle. The other is the passage from garage to hall to DR/LR. (b.t.w., is the hallway the only way over to the LR? Eliminating the pantry totally gives you a larger area of approach. Seeing your drawing, I cannot figure out how large the pantry is, btw.) . ((Leaving the pantry is ok, too. )) . The fridge could go in the corner where the long counter meets the garage wall. It would be accessible to non cooks if they use the passage aisle. Again, the cook or cooks get to operate in peace. Consider the idea, because it gives you a tight and highly functional galley, restricted to the operator. Nobody has to walk through it. The long island can be great for parties. At the end of the island can be a round, oval or square table. The lower the island counter is, the better it integrates with a table. Your kitchen like many others has a lot of constraints so the idea I've described just assumes that these constraints force the workspace to be a footprint about 7' by whatever length you choose to have. Many galleys are 7' wide, and are walled in everywhere. Yours is not walled in. This gives it a much more spacious feel. With some custom steel work for feet, you could have an island that has a kickspace on both sides, or is completely open underneath. The cover panel not going down to the floor makes the passage aisle more spacious. Hth...See MoreNeed help for my open kitchen, dining and living room layout design
Comments (5)It would be possible to put a play corner in the first two drawings but not in alternative 2. I would recommend a corner of storage furniture to corral the toys. I am usually a fan of built-ins but not in this case because eventually the kids will outgrow their toys and you won't need that storage there anymore. The built-in exception would be a window seat under one of those windows on the plans. Some of the storage could be cabinets or bookshelves for bins or toys underneath a window seat. I'm not a fan for toy box style storage because they either become a black hole or the kids throw everything out of them looking for what they want and then do't put the rest of it back. As for the kitchen placement, near to the deck would be best in you like to eat outdoors on the deck or entertain on the deck. We entertain a lot and the kitchen is on the other side of the house from the patio. It's a real pain and a big part of my design brief for the architect was for the kitchen to be next to the patio. I even wanted a pass-through window from the kitchen sink to the patio for ease of clean up but unfortunately I wasn't able to work that out....See MoreLayout help: kitchen & dining room combined
Comments (20)Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions. Sorry it took us a while to respond, it takes a weekend for us to have enough hands to work on this and take care of a very active kid. We’re long-time lurkers here, so the FAQs are familiar and we used them, and some of the other internet lists of dimensions, in our planning. Benjesbride – thanks for posting the layouts; I’d run out of space by the time I’d pasted in that huge description and gardenweb would only let me include links. I’m reposting the diagrams somewhere more useful, and will add a few more in a moment. Buehl – yeah, we agree that less than 12” next to the range is too tight, which is why we’re here :). I went back and relabeled the diagrams to ensure we had the right measurements. Turns out we had missed 2 extra inches in width (it’s 160 not 158 – which makes sense as it’s a rounder #) – doesn’t help the range situation, but will help in other ways. I’ve also labeled everything down to the other end of the room, as I hadn’t expected someone (sena01) actually trying to render the whole layout for us. It’s a big room, fitting 60” of range shouldn’t be this hard, but really what we want is 96” of range+counter (18+60+18), and that’s trickier. Debbie B. – we are having fun with the space, and hope to have fun in the space. I’m sure there’ll be another kid down the road, and they’ll be expected to participate in cooking. My wife was cooking early, so it’s family tradition. I suspect, however, we’ll have them help from outside the work aisle. Funkycamper – buffet/butlery is the area left of the fireplace, 15-24” depth with the extra sink in pictures 1 & 2. Sena01 – thank you for all your thoughts on our layouts, and your recommendations. We hadn’t thought of switching the pantry door and it may be worth doing. It’ll depend a lot on whether we put cabinets on that wall (12” or 15”, as you’ll see in a moment we think there’s enough room). The closet isn’t quite wide enough to walk into so if we put cabinets there it probably makes more sense to have 2 shallow storage spaces rather than one extra-deep one. If we don’t put cabinets there, flipping it around makes a lot of sense (though visually it creates a row of doors). I’d also tried for a while to figure out if I could use its space for the fridge. I like the idea of the corner-sink. My biggest concern is the proximity of the range to the windows on either side (3”). I’d read that there may be limits on how close a range can be – any ideas? I notice you have relatively wide aisles in the layout, and I think there’s actually more width to the room that we could play with in your design. We tried it out one night this week and are entirely comfortable with a 41” work aisle. The passthrough aisle seems OK at 41, provided there’s no fridge on that wall. Continued in next post......See MorePlease help me make this kitchen/dining room layout work!
Comments (10)Sena I absolutely love the pantry idea. Right now our pantries are actually two closets 20" deep (I couldn't show it correctly in the planner) so that aisle is only 38" which is fine most days but when we have people over and they stand around the island it feels very crowded. I actually was planning on doing a beverage/wine fridge under the counter where the coffee bar is. When we are entertaining I thought it'd be nice to have a spot for the kids especially to grab drinks. I'm hoping to get a counter depth fridge because I really don't like how our current one stinks 9 inches into the isle. We are going to purchase a second fridge for the garage to make up for the lost space. I shop often enough that I think we'd be fine with counter depth. Do you think 33" is deep enough of an island to accommodate a sink? I love the idea of the prep sink on that wall... I just wasn't sure I'd have enough cabinets if I kept it and the window....See MoreLavender Lass
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