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smbstudiodesigns

Kitchen Layout Help - Modernizing 1935 Kitchen

smbstudiodesigns
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago

Hi everyone,

I'm remodeling my house later this year and looking for help with the first room I'm tackling design-wise - the kitchen!

The house is a 1935 Mediterranean style home. The kitchen is essentially 12'x12', mostly original, with tile counters and old wood cabinets. There isn't much useable counter space, the storage layout isn't optimal with a lot of open storage and shallow cabinets, and the flow is a bit awkward.

Before photos of the kitchen:











Right now, there are cabinets on the edges of the room, but it's a bit of a trek between the stove and the sink which are on opposite ends. Not ideal when carrying a huge pot of hot water. Also, people have to walk through the middle of the kitchen to get from the dining room to bedrooms/stairs/bathroom, which also isn't ideal when someone is cooking.

This is a before layout of the house:


The goal is to increase counter space, increase enclosed storage, re-route the flow out of the middle of the kitchen, and provide space for hanging out with the cook, but not be in the way of the cook.

The plan:

We have a lovely courtyard in the middle of the house which gives the kitchen a lot of natural light. We plan to increase that by removing the counters/sink that are currently on the bottom and breakfast nook walls and converting to all windows/glass, as well as shifting the courtyard wall over slightly to remove the awkward corners by the breakfast nook. We would then move the doorway that's on the top of the left wall, to the bottom of that wall, by the courtyard. This would allow people to flow along the edge of the kitchen rather than the middle.



I would like one wall to be full cabinets with pantry, wall oven/microwave, and concealed fridge, and the other with bottom cabinets only with a single shelf running the length. Ideally, I'd have an island of sorts, but I'm not sure if it fits. Here are a few layout options I'm exploring (been using IKEA builder for help, but most likely will not be using ikea cabinets). The top right corner of the plan is empty (currently it's a small pantry), but we may need the space to increase headroom for the stairs that run underneath it.

In Plan A, the bottom-only cabinets run along the top of the kitchen, and the full-length cabinets down the right. What I like about this plan is it allows for a peninsula with lots of counterspace for cooking/baking and entertaining, but we plan to have a seating area where the breakfast nook is and having the tall cabinet there cuts off the view line a bit. It also doesn't move the location of the kitchen vent which will probably save us some money.



In Plan B, the full-length cabinets run across the top of the kitchen, with the bottom cabinets only on the right. A peninsula felt a little awkward with this design, but it also doesn't allow for a large island, and I can't decide if the small island is similarly awkward. But I do like how the space is more open to the breakfast nook.


Design:

Design-wise we want wood cabinets with a modern, but warm feeling. We're debating between darker or lighter wood, and having more dramatic marble counters or more subtle quartz ones.



Any suggestions/comments/feedback would be amazing. I think I've hit a wall thinking about this and wondering if there's anything glaringly obvious that I'm missing. We're chatting with a kitchen designer tomorrow, but the feedback I've seen on these forums is so thoughtful I figured I'd reach out.

Thank you!

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