If the a150K expense won’t price you out of the neighborhood, the mess and pain of such an extensive redo should make you look at what else is for sale.

Have you priced this out with a contractor? Your description of “closed in old porch” raises the issue of the foundation, siding, insulation, etc. If that space was not part of the original home, it could be expensive to bring it up to today’s code as part of your kitchen. Tearing apart an old house can reveal all sorts of nasty surprises.

i completely understand the poor aesthetic of your neighbor’s house. It‘s unfortunate that type of thing is allowed in an area of historic homes. Have you explored options that would bring in more light while obscuring the view? What if that house sells and someone lovingly restores it?

As to the cabinets, 12” drawers seem too narrow, but that space could be great for trays and baking sheets. Which raises the question, have you consulted a certified kitchen designer? Architects are not always the best at coming up with functIonal kitchens.

Listen to your architect as far as layout and visual flow. Forget the feng shiui concerns. Window placement and visual sight lines make a major impact on design, much more so than the width of cabinets. Cabinet width is a minor fiddle that can be adjusted after you have finally settled on the basic placement of windows.

Your struggle is the classic struggle between for and function. IMO your architect is trying to help you achieve a house that has good design and also functions well.

You're one who will be cooking in it. Listen to your own instincts -- unless you plan to sell soon, and want what's in style; or you don't cook much and just want to stand in your kitchen and admire its beauty. I went through the same thing and insisted on what I wanted. Cabinets to the ceiling? My husband and I are short, and I don't want storage that I can't even reach on a step stool. Plus, the cats like to sit up there. Granite or quartz counters? Not my style. I wanted Corian, in spite of the kitchen designers who turned up their nose at "plastic." Trendy tile floor? I'm the one standing there and I wanted a cork floor. BTW, my kitchen is very tiny, and I did have a 12" space next to the stove. I use that little set of drawers for spices and they are a joy to have when I'm cooking.

Please show the whole house floor plan, as proposed by the architect.

Will you be using stock cabinets or custom cabinets?

Photos of the view out the proposed new kitchen window locations would be helpful. Take them from outside while standing in the proposed locations (you can mark their locations with blue painter tape their locations inside and outside) since there are no windows there now.

apple_pie_order

I am not understanding the photo request? Stand where and shoot what?

So where will the new dining room go?

And it's all well and good to open up the house to sight lines but understand by doing that, you're actually lowering the value of the house for anyone who prefers an old bungalow.

won't the 12" cab to the left of the sink be a perfect place for a pull out trash?

a sketch from overhead of what exists now...and proposed configuration might help. A second sketch of driveway/lot line/yard spaces /entry/ exits etc. is important, too , due to your compact space. You want to do the correct thing for the property as a whole. It can be challenging . I see people going vertical /bump outs/ all kinds of things around here....a neighbor did a small cantilever and reaped great value for not that much extra expenditure.

If you stand where the windows will go, you can judge if you want to move them slightly to one side or the other. Sometimes moving a window a few inches can give you a much better view out the window.

View out window ought not be driver of any plan .living hedge w tall occlusive plantings ..: stockade fence w vines. Awning / hopper windows . The property may get a new owner and transformative construction commence. there are 3 rooms on the side: kitchen /dining /and living . Joining 2 together : kitchen and living or kitchen and dining or living and dining seems like you’d have tons more options and a roomier overall place. The bungalow aspect doesn’t get destroyed by reworking some things .

@mama goose_gw zn6OH

Just finished up a very productive appointment with the cabinet maker. Your suggestions really influenced the plan we came up with. Hallelujah! He came to see the wisdom in putting the dishwasher on the left of the sink, which does make putting away dishes in the cabinets to the left of it a breeze. It will involve moving the windows a bit to the south, but they are already considered new windows so shouldn't change the energy calculations that are required in this part of California. Thanks so much for your very practical advice.

@jupidupi

How do you like the cork floors? My friends out of state love theirs. I am also looking at Corian. Some of it is pretty nice. I live in a coastal area that tends to cool and damp versus hot and dry. So tile and stone can be quite cold to the touch, especially in the morning.

I am going for the tall cabinets for storage. Great out of the way spot for our emergency/power black out supplies. We received 12-48h warnings this year., who knows what next year will bring. We have to keep 5-7 days of food stuffs that do not require refrigeration... plus drinking water, batteries, lanterns, etc. for the power outages/earthquakes/tsunamis. I am short too, but have multiple step stools. Thanks for your comment.

@apple_pie_order

It is not a full house remodel. Can't afford that but it would be fun! The kitchen is the only sticking point to moving through to permitting. The meeting with the custom cabinet guy was very productive and I think that will drive the window placement for that one wall.

@cpartist

The dining room and the living room will stay where they are. Hoping the eating space at the island will substitute for the eat in kitchen table. The house is a mish mash of influences. There is Art Nouveau influenced window/door trim with very Victorian layouts and other finish details. There is a built-in in the dining room but it is not at all Mission, more Victorian. All of the original doors were taken out of the house at some point. Trying to piece together a plan that marries all the different styles the original owners chose. There are plenty of DIY projects in the front of the house and the yard besides the kitchen and bath remodel. Have spent many hours in the yard trying to correct 20 years of what? I agree on keeping some of the original charm. Thanks

@just_janni

Love trash pull outs! I am hoping for one large enough to have a trash and a recycle bucket. Looks like it will have to be closer to 18". Thanks

@herbflavor

Good points. Another goal is to engage the back yard in the flow of the living space. I live on. a street that has traffic at commuter hours and lots of pedestrians (some homeless) throughout the day. Where aren't there homeless in California? No where with moderate weather.

That said, I am working to build a side and back yard that are useable outdoor space. The house backs up to an alley that is used too. It is a neighborhood that has more people remodeling and improving the homes, which is good for me. The houses are VERYclose on each side. I could reach out my dining room window and touch the north neighbors privacy fence. On the south side I have about 12 feet between my 1920 and their 1890. City planning is new to this old town.

So what will the old kitchen become?

In our old condo, we installed two 12 inch wide lower cabinets on either side of our range so it could be centered on the back wall. The left side was standard cabinet with one drawer and a door below with shelves. The right side was all drawers and cost about $150 more. We found the left 12 inch cabinet (standard) unusable as non of our pot/pans fit in the cabinet shelves and wished we had made both all drawers.

S.D., I LOVE my cork floor. It's beautiful, warm underfoot, comfortable for lots of standing, and best of all, things don't break when dropped. The only drawback to our particular floor, which is just natural cork pattern, is that it never shows dirt. If something has spilled, I find it with my foot (We're a shoes off household.) I have to remember to sweep because it never looks like it needs it. Also, we did have some fading by a very sunny southern window. There may be other more sun-resistant brands, but I wanted to use Global Cork because they are here in NYC and I visited the factory. (They couldn't have been nicer about having me show up and giving me samples, even though my floor was less than 100 sq ft.) My" Corian" is actually HiMacs brand, same difference, chosen because I loved their solid cream color.

@cpartist

The old kitchen was awkward. It had a wall with 3 windows to the north, doors to a bedroom and a bathroom on the east wall, a door to the porch on the south wall, and a doorway and access to the back of the built-in in the dining room on the west wall.

This plan shows a change for a bedroom access in the lower right corner. The dining room was also overburdened with doors, windows and doorways. In the dining room there is a door coming in from the entry/vestibule on the west wall and almost a full wall encased opening into the living room. There is a door into the 2nd bedroom on the south wall. The east wall is filled with a doorway into the kitchen, a Victorian arched brick mantled fireplace (which someone blocked off and put in a freestanding woodstove in front of), and the built in cabinet. Finally, the north wall of the dining room is a bay shaped bump out that is over half of the wall. Definitely a room that was only intended to have a table placed in the middle of it and lots of circulation options.

In the plans for the bathroom we close off the former kitchen access to the built-in but (of course) keep it for the dining room, It will go from over 20" deep to a still very usable 14" plus. There will have to be some changes to the drawers that pull out from either room and shelving reworking. The two windows above the sink are replaced with a single awning style window over the toilet - still thinking about what sort of glass that obstructs the view I might chose. I was considering a pedestal tub, but hate squeezing my arm and cleaning tools between my current clawfoot tub and the wall to wipe everything down. So am going with a built in tub with shower. It is not the spa bathroom of my dreams, but I really wanted a laundry room.

So to the east of the bath is the water heater closet and a laundry room with a bit of storage for brooms, vacuums, my folding kayak. (I don't have a garage.)

The 3rd bedroom looses a little sq. ft. and the closet moves to the west wall. The 2nd bedroom is in the lower right corner of the plans. The original closet of this bedroom was made into a 1/2 bath that was accessed by the 1st and 2nd bedrooms, a Jack and Jill 1/2 bath. I am moving the access to this bedroom from the dining room to the new hallway. We will also wall off the access to the 1/2 bath from this bedroom. The closet that replaced the original that became the bath is a DIY plywood monstrosity on the north wall and will be moved to the east wall and will take space from the old porch. Hoping to improve the bed placement choices.

There is a short hallway between the kitchen and the dining room, which is not what most people do. We looked at making a galley kitchen along the north wall and stretching that all the way to the back to access the backyard that way. But that involved moving 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. That was way out of my budget and would have been an over investment. This way there is the small sacrifice to maintain the original character of the more formal front rooms of the house that have coved ceilings and an abundance of 6" Art Deco influenced window/door/casement trim. The vestibule/entry, the living and dining rooms are the only rooms with coved ceilings. Very Victorian in having such formal rooms for guests. The previous owners went very Victorian in decorating the front rooms with flocked wallpaper, anaglypta wall paper (painted Marilyn Monroe lipstick red), very dark staining on the trim. The bedrooms all have the same trim but none of the other Victorian touches. The kitchen and bath are very plain in the trimmings with just ~ 3-4" wide, simple wood trim.

I am trying to modernize the decor of front rooms with a more subtle nod to the past that blends the boundary between old and new. Thanks for asking!