Kitchen,Work Kitchen,Laundry,Dining area Layout
mike_corp
7 years ago
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bpath
7 years agoBuehl
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoRelated Discussions
How can we make this kitchen work?
Comments (16)For an island that size, I would make it one level instead of two level. I LOVE the big open counter space I have on my peninsula which is a similar size as your island, although a bit longer. If you could make the island a tiny bit wider than 3 feet, you would just have room for 2 small size barstools on each side of your island. Ideally, you need 24-28" or even 30" of width for each seated person. At a minimum, this needs to be about 21". I would not do a dining table with personal space this narrow, but you could prob get away with it at your island because there will only be 2 people on each side of the island, so one side is open space for each person. If it was 3 people, the person in the middle would be bumping elbows, lol. You may not even be planning to have stools at the island. Some people don't when there is a table right next to it. I'm one that still wants stools at the island/peninsula bar. In fact, I just went the other night to see a house my friend just bought. Her island did not have overhang for stools and we BOTH remarked on wishing it had, even though it is an eat-in kitchen. For resale I wouldn't be happy if it didn't have island stool seating. Plus with kids your age, it prob won't be long before you have spouses and grandkids so you will need all the extra seating you can get !! With that plan your fridge definitely needs to be counter depth. They are quite a bit more expensive. If you can recess the fridge into the hallway behind it, you can have the look of counter depth without the expense. I am assuming that the microwave will be in the upper cabinets between the fridge and pantry, or either built in under the counter there. Unless you plan it to be over the stove ? Shhhhh ... don't say that out loud around here, hahaha. The GW folks talked me into a hood above my stove. I had always lived in houses with the MW built in above the stove. I don't think you can steal from the dining space. What you have now looks to be only about 9'7". Our house has a similar width, and we had to be sure to choose a dining table that was only 36" wide to allow room for the chairs and maneuvering behind the chairs. The size of the dining room on your plan leaves little room for barstools to be used at the counter at the same time as the table. Our dining does not back up to a bar. It's not ideal, but it works. Your dining area needs to steal some room from somewhere not vice versa !! Here are dining table clearance rules ... Allow 24" for a seated dinner with no obstruction (wall, furniture, etc) behind. Allow 32" from table edge to wall for a seated diner with no traffic passing behind diner. If traffic passes behind a seated diner between the table and an obstruction, allow minimum 36" to allow someone to slide behind / edge past a seated diner, or minimum 42-44" to allow traffic to walk behind a seated diner. And allow 60" for a wheelchair to pass. To allow for a dining table right next to an island with barstools, add approx 18", assuming a fairly modest sized barstool. So ... you would need minimum 42 + 18 = 60" between the edge of the dining table and the island counter edge to allow traffic in between. Understand, these are minimums, more would feel more spacious. Doing the math ... If your room is 9'7", you have 115" minus 60" on the island side minus 24" on the living room side (no obstruction behind) = your dining table can only be 31" wide. It may not be easy to find a table you like with this width. The length of your room is 14 ft, but it has a door opening on each end. Instead of the 42" minimum, you really should go with 48" minimum on each end. This would allow for a 6 foot long table....See Moreplease 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 MoreCalling All Layout Geniuses!! Need help with kitchen appliance layout!
Comments (6)1) I don't like the relation of the cooktop to the sink in option one. The island is starting to impede a straight walk between the two. 2) Your microwave should be closer to the fridge. Usually whatever you are microwaving is coming out of the fridge, so it makes sense to group the two. 3) Is there a specific reason why you want the ovens near the cooktop? Do you make a lot of dishes that start on the cooktop and finish in the oven? Unless you do, there isn't a functional reason to group the two, and it can actually be nice to have the ovens a little more out of the way. Takes a bit of pressure off the main work area -- can mean someone who is just baking can set up in a different area away from the cooktop action, etc. 4) You will get the best feedback if you post the floor plan for the entire floor this is on, not just the kitchen close-up. It is easier for us to consider traffic patterns in and out of the room if we can see all the surrounding rooms too. 5) There is a desk in the pantry? Is there a window in there too (which is not typically a good idea when it comes to keeping food fresh)? Because I cannot imagine wanting to sit and work in a dark closet when I could be out in the light and beauty and space of the dining room and using that big dining table instead. 6) This is quite a large kitchen, and you should be wary of creating a kitchen where the key components are too far away from each other to be convenient. You'll hear often people joking about needing roller skates to get around, and you are veering into that territory here. One thing that really would help cut down on that and also make it easier for multiple cooks to work at once would be a prep sink. If it is spread out from the clean-up sink, you won't ever be far from a water source while working, no matter where you are in thr kitchen, and that will be more convenient. 7) To the same point, having a lot of counter between the sink and cooktop is ideal, but you are almost verging on too much here. It's putting the cooktop and sink slightly too far apart to go back and forth between them easily (like to dump boiling pasta water). Definitely mock that distance up in real life and see if it feels comfortable for you. You might look more at having a deeper counter there (30-36" deep) rather than such a long counter. A deeper counter means you can line up your ingredients and appliances and still have room to work in front of them, yet you can reach everything without moving around as much, and the sink and cooktop could also then be a bit closer together. 8) The island is a barrier between your sink and your fridge in all of these. Imagine taking produce out of the fridge and wanting to prep it, which is almost always the start of any cooking process. The first thing you'd need to do is wash what you just took out of the fridge, so the first stop after you go to the fridge is almost always the sink. Currently, you will have to walk about 16 feet and around the island just to go from step 1 to step 2 in your normal cooking process. It's going to be annoying and feel a little ridiculous, especially if you forget one or two items from the fridge and start running back and forth. Ideally, we usually aim for kitchens where you might take, like, 3 steps or maybe one step and a pivot to go from the fridge to the sink to start prepping. For kitchens where the fridge gets a lot of action from non-cooks (snackers), it can be desirable to place the fridge a little farther away to keep those people out of the kitchen work zones, but we're talking maybe an 8 foot walk from the sink and still a straight line from the sink in such cases....See MoreDoes this kitchen layout work?
Comments (1)It follows ice-water-stone-fire and doesn’t have the dishwasher between the sink and stove, so it’s good. If the floorplan layout is what you are changing it from, then you are greatly increasing the function....See Morepractigal
7 years agomike_corp
7 years agomike_corp
7 years agomama goose_gw zn6OH
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agomike_corp
7 years ago
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