Hello All,

I am currently working on renovating our 1930's home kitchen. Currently its a galley kitchen with two entrances, one from the dining and one that then leads to a landing to either a small closet bathroom and the basement. These two entrances make it difficult for us to really make many changes. We are looking at doing an Ikea kitchen to maximize storage as much as possible and also save money (we will be doing this ourselves for probably 99% of it). Unfortunately the wall between the dining room and kitchen is a support wall so that rules out making kitchen/dining room one big room, could maybe cut back a little bit to make a bigger entrance to the kitchen however. Trying to decide if it makes sense to move kitchen to dining room (have family that can move pipes etc and basement is unfinished).

Here is current kitchen:

Current Kitchen:

Built in between the studs spice cabinet that could be kept

Hoping to replace current kitchen cart here with a narrow cabinet (15 inch) and do an ikea hack to add a 5 inch cabinet to the other side of the stove (at the end) for a small landing/storage (see example pic below) and also to do toe kick drawers at the bottom of some of the cabinets. Additionally would pan to add a fold out shelf from the window (we have a kitchen cart there now) that could be used for more counter space but folded down for if we ever need to move big things into the basement.

Ikea Galley Kitchen in Existing Space Plan:

In this plan, the appliances would stay in the same places and I would have a 36 inch sink cabinet under the window to accommodate for slide out trash/recycling under the sink (no other good place to put it that I can see). For this plan I also did not include a tall cabinet for pantry as I would add something like this in the dining room but maybe it would make sense to have a small one (15 inches) if keep current kitchen location? I would like to have more counter space. We currently have a sideboard in the dining room that I use as a coffee/tea station that works nicely. Additionally would plan for an OTR microwave under the cabinet above the free range stove (under cabinet #12).

Other option would be to switch rooms, move the kitchen to the dining room and make the current kitchen the dining room. However this room also has a lot of doorways as well (to living room and deck) and windows. Windows could be removed/modified however even with doing that it would be awkward. I am very reluctant to give up the french doors to the deck as it gives a nice view from the living room.

Current Dining Room:

Pic of Dining room with Coffee/Tea station outside of kitchen entrance

Other side of dining room, could make window shorter to fit a counter there or remove..

Possible Dining Room Turned to Kitchen Plan:

This has fridge and free range on the far wall with an island that includes a sink and dishwasher. I am worried that there may not really be that much space to be gained by doing this and may be a pain then to get to the deck..

Any thoughts or insights on this dilemma are appreciated. Additionally if you see anyway to improve either of these possible design options. Thank you in advance!