Kitchen dilemma! How to change design while keeping cabinets??
Trisha F
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
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M Miller
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoAFritzler
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Keep the kitchen floor or change?
Comments (21)Congrats on the new home! IMO, I would live with the floor as is until you are ready to redo the kitchen, particularly since you said that's planned for a year down the road. It sounds like you are asking if you should redo them now or a year down the road, not that you are asking about keeping them with the new kitchen. In just moving into a house, it seems like it's always a sound idea to "live with it" for a little bit first. You may find some unexpected issues that require attention/money. You may decide that with the kitchen reno, you want to move things around a good bit. You may want to consider if you'll have flooring go wall to wall...if you just place it around the existing cabinetry, you might get locked into a layout that you don't necessarily want and isn't necessarily the best overall for you. For now, what I would do is get some rather inexpensive throw rugs to cover up some of the floor - if you see the floor less, it'll be less bothersome. I wouldn't spend much on sprucing things up in there...no sense in tossing out the money for something that will only be used for a year or so. There's going to be a lot of mess in taking up the floor and re-doing it. And then in just a short period of time, you'll be getting the dust and dirt from remodeling again. Just not worth it, in my eyes. Also, if you wait to do the floor when you are doing the kitchen, you can decide what you want to be the "star" of the kitchen and design the rest of the things accordingly rather than trying to go with what matches the floor you just put down. Since you are a year down the road from the kitchen remodel, I would suggest starting to get your inspiration images together - see what really calls to you for the new kitchen and clip those things. Start looking into what you want for your layout and begin working on that. Start looking into the cabinetry that will work best for your wants/needs/budget. Start looking for the person(s) that are going to do the work. In other words, there's plenty for you to do in the next year or so....See MoreNew Build Kitchen Design Dilemma
Comments (30)You've received a lot of good, helpful advice already, here and at the Kitchen forum. "most of the new models in Florida now have 12 foot ceilings in the great room and kitchen with many vaulted to 16 feet. This is especially true when there are views to water and they are using 10 foot glass doors to take advantage of the views." I understand about the views but people have to live inside a house, and in order for that to be done comfortably and pleasantly, you need a reasonable, human scale and proportions. Not something outsize and overscaled. This is already creating problems for you. At the very least with this sort of scale, an architect should plan for the interior problems/challenges that arise. As they have arisen here. You have two problems. One is the scale and size of the general project, the other is the layout of the kitchen. If we had a built in coffee machine where would you put it? First figure out how you use your kitchen, what you want and need in it, and THEN plan your kitchen. Not the other way around. How big is your family? Do you like to cook? Do you cook often or reheat takeout? Do you bbq outside? Do you eat a lot of vegetables and fruit? Do you shop for groceries often or infrequently? However, you can't consider the kitchen in a vacuum....See MoreKitchen design dilemma...space for small table or pantry cabinets??
Comments (9)Thank you everyone for your time and great feedback. Let me try to answer some of your questions and clarify a few things… The kitchen and current dining space combined is 11’5” deep by 23’8” wide. Our budget is around 20K and we could and are willing to do some plumbing or move a gas line for our oven/stove. We recently replaced our dishwasher and oven/stove. Our fridge is still fine but could be replaced if necessary (but we don’t want to spend 6-10K on a new counterdepth fridge). So the budget would be primarily for cabinets, countertops, any plumbing or gas line work, etc. We are one of the largest houses in the neighborhood so we aren’t wanting to spend a ton on the kitchen and overprice the house for the area, but for the size of our house our current kitchen is not working (we only have one drawer for silverware and then a small 12” drawer for utensils…it’s just not very user friendly or functional) and needs redone. We tinkered with flipping the current kitchen and dining space but run into some problems. 1) The large 72” wide picture window in the dining space is only 29” up from the floor, so it would be below the cabinet and countertop. The smaller 36”x36” above the current sink would likely need to be altered to fit the space more appropriately. We have stucco so it is a lot more involved and costly to change window sizes or placement leaving us pretty much stuck with the present windows. 2) We have soffits above our current kitchen cabinets that we were hoping to be able to open up but we realized the one along the top wall over the sink is filled with plumbing from our 2nd floor main bathroom as well as HVAC. Too costly to move for our budget so it would have to stay and look out of place all alone over there without cabinets or something else to help camouflage it. The one along the shorter wall can be taken out and we plan to do so in order to have taller cabinets on that wall. There was a wall between the kitchen and current dining room that we took out (only a small 30” deep stud wall remains next to the fridge). We have a standard fridge and would like to try to decrease the amount of space it takes and projects from the wall. We realized there is a double wall on the right wall in-between the kitchen and bathroom. We have decided to move the fridge there because we can recess it back 3-4” making it appear closer to a counterdepth fridge. Our current “living room” acts more like a family room for us, but we also just refinished our basement in the last year and that area serves more as our present family room. Since it is a large room, it would be a bit awkward to put our kitchen table there and have some extra space in the living room that leaves us wondering how it would be used. Our current “family room” with the fireplace is a room we don’t use because our fireplace isn’t functioning. It is merely a room we walk through in order to access our backyard and why we thought taking some space from the room for a mudroom might be a good option. Our current kitchen table is large (40x72) with a bench and 4 tall/high back chairs. It takes up a lot of space in the current “dining room” space and why we were tinkering with a smaller table for the kitchen and moving the larger table to a new dining room in the back. However, it does make sense that we would likely no longer use that second table and would be a wasted space. @emilyam819 Yes, we will be removing the small stud wall by the current fridge to allow more freedom in the design. Please see note above about the wall removal and possible fridge relocation. @latifolia Our current dining area is the left part of the open space in front of the large picture window. We are considering putting a smaller table there so we can still have a place to eat yet have more room for cabinets and then moving our large kitchen table to the back room with the fireplace. It currently is an unused space as the fireplace is nonfunctional and why we are considering making a mudroom back there as well. But we understand dining rooms often go unused so maybe that area is better served as a den or office space like you suggested.Our laundry room is in the basement as we have a laundry chute and don’t have the room to put it on the 1st or 2nd floors. @Cherie “Too bad you can't remove the walls.”—I know, right!?! It’s so frustrating! But we have sulked about it too long and need to accept it and move on, but it is such a bummer in our books!...See Morekitchen cabinet design dilemma
Comments (19)@dan1888 I didn’t post the whole layout since it’s still being configured and rendered. Final measurements were taken yesterday, now that demo is completed. I was trying my best to center range with island. The new 33 inch sink now is centered with the big 70 inch window? To right of window is 12 inches then wall. Should I not center the sink there? The L-shape is about 225 1/8 by 119.5. There will be an island. But it begins with like a 25 by 25 big chimney (left side kinda in front of left of range) that was unable to be removed. Exact island measurements were taken today now that chimney is only thing standing in the room between kitchen and dining room Things needed: —coat closet even small one Previous one was 21 inches. But was in the wall that was removed. So to left of oven in pic above now is the coat closet and next to that the pantry. —need a pantry Appliances purchased: —36 thermador range — column thermador -24 inch fridge and 24 inch column freezer (counterdepth) —24 inch under cabinet fridge drawers —dishwasher thermador 24 inch —24 inch thermador micro drawer —33 inch Kohler whitehaven...See Morejamiegrl24
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