Can you post some exact or close to exact dimensions of all of these walls?

You're cooktop looks even further from the sink than in the original kitchen. Not important anymore?

What do you mean making it interesting? What are we trying to refine in this thread? :)

OH NO! I was afraid of this!

honeysucklevine: the cooktop is "straddling" the two cabinets, which is just one of davidro1's suggestions. I just did this for symmetry (looks) and it is not literal. It likely voids the cabinet warranty, too.

I will post dimensions next photo... but I'm not sure if it's going to just "stir the hornet's nest." Kitchen is 118" W x 106.5" H.

palimpsest: You are always spot on. It was poor wording on my part. I think this thread is just for davidro1's ideas, so when he gets back to us, maybe there will be more material to confuse the point. ;)

I think he is focusing on integrating the kitchen with the rest of the condo... like what you did, but on a MUCH more basic/modest level. Perhaps he will do something with the laundry area.

Definition of PALIMPSEST
1 : writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2 : something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface

:)

Actually looking at photos is the best part:)

Archictectural palimpsest (Image from Design Milk)

Hey, where did you get all those cool icons??? Did you get the new and improved Sweet home or something? I have to make my own hoods with misc "boxes". So glad you're on your way - really really glad :)

Hi cluelessincolorado! :)

They are on the SweetHome website; click on "3D Models".

Here is a link that might be useful: Sweet Home Extra Items: 3D Import Models

Ah, the student has become the master... Now I can REALLY waste my time previously reserved for rejuvenation and sleep!

Deep Counters

* I've been reading up on this, and I'm concerned that I am too short (5' 2"). :(

* And having a refrigerator on the same run as a 30" counter will be awkward. Even a standard depth one has to have its doors further out than the counter/fridge panel, so this would be WAY out!

* I think if I get the deep counters, it will only be on the stove side.

* Posted by flatcoat2004 (My Page) on
Mon, Aug 3, 09 at 18:29

"... I would think more carefully about 30" deep counters if you are short. I am 5'7", and reaching the back of the deep counters is a bit of a stretch. My 5' tall friend can't reach well at all. "

Here is a link that might be useful: 30 inch counter depth/base cabinets - advantages/disadvantages

SugarCookie, how nice to hear you are considering at least one deeper counter. It looks like you're coming along fantastically.

Regarding creating a deeper workspace, how fortunate you are to have the room for it. It's a particularly precious gift for compact kitchens (a need some posting on that thread don't have), but others with big kitchens love it for the gift of generous space right in place without having to shift back and forth sideways.

So, I'm 5'2" also and...is there a better way to say I'd "less than not hesitate" about doing this? At least on the cook's (stove) side you're showing above. How about getting a tape measure and doing some pretend work on a table? As you'll see, you can reach the back to wipe it down fine, but you will otherwise seldom need to. You will only need to reach what you pushed back a bit for your convenience--your big salad bowl of lettuces waiting for the goodies you're slicing, the cheese and grater you took out in preparation for the final touches, etc. The blender you're mixing coolers in.

You could also, if you wished, put sliding doors, side or vertical, back there to hide such things as blender, food processor, oils and vinegars, etc. Whatever you use a lot and like to keep right there. Some people raise it as a low shelf stretching across the back.

BTW, the depth can always be adjusted as you choose. If your practice cooking suggests 28" or 29, go for it. 3 or 4" more than the standard 25" counter depth may not sound like much, but it really is when space is precious. Also, being short, I put my counters at 35". Nobody has any idea they're not the conventional 36", though, there not being one around to compare to, and the lower height makes the back that much easier to reach.

1/. Think of an unfitted kitchen first. On another day you can think of a fitted kitchen.

Unfitted is composed of tables. Allows you to move things around. Right now it's just an imaginary kitchen. You could build an unfitted kitchen too. You may or may not sell or stay, get a DW, or not, get an oven, or not, get a range or not. ETc. So for now you need the flexibility. If you start by building something unfitted, it has other advantages:
1/.b/ lets you try things out while you and your husband discover what you like and don't like.
1/.c/ meets your lifestyle, so a good time can be had by all. No harm is done by starting with an unfitted kitchen.
1/.d/ costs less to keep it unfitted, for now.

Unfitted means having pieces of furniture that one can move around, instead of having everything be part of a system and all bolted together. Fitted means decisions are made, finalized, permanent. That is not you today.

--

2/. do everything rosie said to do, in the post above. Keep in mind everything she wrote. We can come back to it later. Meanwhile, go lean over your dining room table and see how easy it is to reach 28". Way more than 28".

3/. draw a kitchen, just to humor me, showing a narrow aisle between two very deep counters. The narrowest aisle imaginable. The deepest counters imaginable.
3/.a/ Draw the counters at 35" high.
3/.b/ Draw the counters far far deeper than you need, so that your various new small appliances (which you will buy after you get a surprise budget given to you just for being a good sport) can sit on the counter, at the back against the wall. Bread maker, rice cooker, waffle iron, toaster oven, roaster, microwave, coffee maker, tea kettle, samovar, mixer, blender, slicer, dicer, chopper, cutting board, you get the picture, food processor, plugin wok, plugin tagine, plugin portable induction hob, plugin frying pan, plugin deep fryer, you name it.
3/.c/ The wall with the shoji screen windowlet goes on the corner nearest to the LR, BR and bathroom. This shoji screen is what blocks the eyesight. Otherwise you always see the kitchen sink; not good. Draw a wall at least 60"; since your space is 118", make the wall about 1/2 your space, for now, in this vague preliminary expression of general concept.
3/.d/ Draw nothing under the deep counters for now. Not even drawers. More about this later.
3/.e/ The wall of your DR that currently has mirrors thereby now runs directly into your kitchen, unobstructedly, and casting more indirect daylight into the kitchen than otherwise.
3/.f/ The shoji screen lets light come into the kitchen too, so if your software permits, make it be a simple window in the software simulation model.

4/. we'll discuss cabinet warrantees later. Drop it for now and trust that it will come up later. First things first. Imagine first; get into detail a few days later.

5/. the fridge wants to be invisiblized as much as possible, so it goes behind the shoji-screen wall. So what if it blocks some of the incoming light. It's not a big deal. It's not a deal breaker. For now it's not something to worry about.

6/. No the fridge door doesn't need to be protruding more than the deep deep counters. Besides, the door hinge is on the shoji-screen wall side, not on the counter side. One pulls open the fridge and the counter is right there next to the open fridge. Great. What could be better than that?

7/. Leaving it all unfitted, you leave the fridge surrounded by open space instead of "fitting" it. With an inch or two or three next to the hinges. For now. This is just a perceptual mega-fit exercise, not even a first draft, and of course not a perfect first draft. The goal is to get the kitchen to make sense in a condo where everyone can see or hear what is going on at all times, in the other rooms. Some peekaboo structure has to be invented, designed, thought of, or imagined. Viewbreaks and views. Eyedraws and trompe-l'oeil.

8/. After the 106.5", how many more inches up to the back wall of the laundry area? Thirty more inches? Sixty more inches?

Just to get a visual on what unfitted means, go to Ikea and look at all the images in their catalog of kitchens made with pieces of furniture that can be moved around. Or, start by searching in their site. Offhand I would use the words "kitchen cart" to get started : http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=kitchen+cart and from there I would click on those names of products to see larger thingies of the same product family name. E.g Utby. My saying this is not a recommendation to consider Utby. It is an illustration of a concept.

Hth.

I once paid a professional landscape architect for his plan he had drawn up for my property. He had come once to see me, see the land, interview me and hear me express my general wishes. Then he came back with an assistant and measured everything. Then he drew up plans.

His drawing put my property limits at the edge of the paper. No information about the neighbors' trees. Not even an arrow.

A long time later I realized that I had made a beginner's mistake. I had paid for it. His plan did not take into consideration all the various neighboring trees that would shadow or ruin some of his plan. An example: a Norway maple a few feet from my property line HAS to be taken into consideration, because of the intense shade it creates and also the chemical aversions many plants have to Norway maples. MAny other examples can be provided.

Your kitchen has to be drawn as part of a slightly larger space that has windows and "views".

Zoom out a bit.

Hth.

palimpsest: okay, I was going to take a photo of my highly-piled dish drying rack, and give it the caption "Drainboard Palimpsest". But then you would think I'm goofy... and you'd be correct. :)

cluelessincolorado: Nah, I'm just nerd. Did you ever play The Sims, or maybe you have kids that do? Downloading furniture really reminds me of that, lol. Not that I would know from actual experience. BTW, you probably already know this, but just in case, you can import any sample photos of flooring, countertop, paint, etc., and use them too. :)

rosie: Thank you so much for posting. :) DH had brought some foam core board for me to do mock-ups, and being sort of tired (lazy?), I just turned it in the 36" direction (without cutting it to 30") and set it on the counter. It was easy for me to reach the back wall just rising up a bit on my toes!

It really brought home the limitations of just lurking; one can be mired in all the details and lose perspective. So thanks for addressing my concerns, because now I am SO excited about that big, deep counter! :) Your personal experience compared to that of the other poster also reminded me that not all petite people are created equal; I have really long arms, lol!

davidro1: *sigh* It's obvious you have put a lot of time and creative thought into your posts. I have read the first post several times, and have had Sunday night to sleep on it.

I don't even know how to say this exactly. I keep deleting this paragraph over and over. While I appreciate your ideas, it seems like we really are not on the same page. And this has been very frustrating for me, even at times in the other thread, too.

As I mentioned in the other thread, we are staying in this condo 8 more years before deciding if it is our retirement condo. So we are renovating the kitchen with that in mind, primarily for us, but keeping it flexible enough if we decide to sell. I'm not sure how this devolved into unfitted kitchens and your related comments, though.

And I do know what those are, but that's not where we are. In fact, we have our cabinets, flooring, and countertop chosen. And those decisions took a lot of time, research and soul-searching... okay, agony! ;) If you'd like me share your vision, tell me about it. But please don't make me jump through any more hoops!

I think it comes down to two things: 1) your creative intention and 2) who your audience is.

By creative intention, I mean are you trying to demonstrate what can be done with this space, or are you designing with us in mind, our actual needs/wants (and all the limitations that imposes!)?

By audience, I mean that sometimes your posts seem to be addressing someone totally different, in a totally different stage of life, in a totally different part of the remodel process, with a totally different amount of preparation, etc. Are you trying to assist forum readers in general, or are you trying to assist one specific couple in the specific place they are today?

Perhaps you'll want to answer, "both", but I will have to respectfully disagree. Either way, I just don't have the energy to be a creative guinea pig. And anyway, what a limitation real people can be to creative vision, eh? ;)

I hope you don't feel attacked or that I am being ungrateful. I just want to love my little kitchen, not have the coolest one. As it stands now, I am very happy with it. And I have you and rosie to thank for the big counter. :)

You are still learning a lot about the larger contextual concerns. In the previous thread you told everyone that you do not want to see the kitchen sink when you are in the living room. That came about after I asked for it. Until then nobody had asked about views. Many people are so concerned about being courteous and respectful that they won't broach a topic which may be important. Duh. If you are willing to put on hold everything you think you know and you think you've decided, you can look at these subjects that I call "bigger" concerns.

Your aisle is too wide. No matter how big or slender you may be, the aisle is too wide. People with long legs find an aisle as wide as yours to be too wide. As an aisle it's too much. It's a bad use of space in a kitchen. It's wasted space in a condo. In a condo storage is key. Your decision to buy from a specific cabinet company may be wise or unwise: it has to be put on hold, put on the back burner, kept lukewarm for a while, during which time you simulate some ideas. Later if you get a sense for some new advantage, you could go back to that cabinet company and see what they would make for that need. Or for one piece of the "cabinetry" you might elect to buy something NOT made by your decided-upon cabinet company. Go figure, you might end up with one piece not from your chosen supplier.

Overall your answer is a good answer. Glad to have been of help. As to what I wrote earlier in this thread and in the previous one, Now, if I told you to implement the parts you are willing to, would this elicit cooperation or rebellion? "Implement" means to draw in the simulation, not to make decisions. One key point I have made previously is to look first at the floor plan, in the big-picture sense, and not look at finer-grained detail such as the placement of appliances under the counter. Not yet; wait until...

Your design subject is the floor plan of the half of the condo from the front door to the back corner where the laundry is. The space inside the kitchen footprint is where new stuff will be bought and installed, but "subject under review" = Whole Floor Plan, from front door (view) to the back corner. In the image posted at the top of this thread your kitchen sink and faucet would be visible from your front door, but nobody reading this thread will ever know it until you display the entire floor plan. My asking to see the whole-house floor plan is a good step (not a hoop). You did post it in the previous thread, but your not posting it here is not good, because the contextual information that it provides is missing. Yeah, we all know that "everybody" will read the previous thread.

The simulation you drew at the top of the thread does not include my ideas from the previous thread, so I wrote out some of those ideas and a few more, more clearly than ever before. Saying something more than once helps to ensure people catch it. Previously you had not caught some of what I was saying. Overexplaining is being ultraclear.

Take the pieces you like and use them.

Going back to the previous thread, you will see that someone other than rosie told you to draw a deep counter, and you resisted. If you are distributing thanks, that person needs to be thanked. I think you did do this. Many others posted for you to consider options, and you resisted a great deal until you relented. Very normal. Stop resisting, and you will adopt more ideas more easily, the very same ideas that you will accept after a lot of resistance. You choose whether to receive ideas easily or with pain. You may also adopt them temporarily for consideration during an interval of a few days when people are interacting bout these ideas. Instead, you post back to say you resist. A futile exercise. They are just ideas and these posts are just simulations. There are many ways in which you could have leaned over anything 30" or 36". Other pieces of furniture. Any open space of that dimension; no need for furniture. Some people resist so much, that they need to have a 36" piece of flat brought home by their spouse so that they can simulate With This New Toy, instead of seeing for themselves first. For some resistive personalities, the learning curve is long, slow, hard, painful and necessarily means rejecting certain people's suggestions. Glad to play this necessary role. Now, in the future, let ideas be dealt with for a few days or a week, publicly.

In the image simulation, implement the portions you wish to implement, instead of writing out paragraphs of resistance.

For the purpose of simulation in the next version I thought unfittedness as a concept would help a lot. It may be the case that you don't know how to read me. That is fine. The style is direct and supposedly knows what you will want, but is not to be taken as though I have any proof or evidence of knowing who you are. It helps to get past the confusion, and to elicit a useful response. Resisting my "set of ideas" helps you be assertive. If that is a necessary stage, fine, you'll go through this stage. Others will help; it's not going to be me at all times, and I won't play majordomo coordinator or run interference.

Instead of deeming it to be hoops, you could deem it not a big deal to draw something. You have the software, you know how to implement something, label it, post it to the web and link to it. Yes, it is a big deal when one feels ready to move on to a subsequent stage...

Explaining why you must resist could be seen as a good exercise if it helps reveal more of your personal situation that will be relevant information for the design process. For whoever else helps you, for you too, for me too, etc. I think you can be assertive without being resistive.

Hth

One comment that I would make about designing a kitchen that has some conceptual architecture or some contextual architecture in a condo setting comes from personal experience.

My unit is on the third and fourth floors, and the large room was used for sleeping, and when I demolished the old kitchen, I found evidence of an archway--and through research found that it was probably a sleeping alcove at one time.

So, I "suppressed" the kitchen by reconstructing the archway and designing incomplete "pocket doors" that can "screen" the kitchen if desired. This archway bisects the kitchen: the refrigerator and island are "outside' the kitchen. The counter sink, DW, range, W/D bulk of the storage are "in" the reconstructed sleeping alcove.

The kitchen occupies the same footprint as the original, it has more counterspace and double the storage. It works bigger because there is no wall. It Looks smaller, which is the intent.

I am on the market and the single negative comment about the apartment is that the kitchen is so small. It Is small in general, but it is one of the bigger kitchens in the complex--but people have a hard time perceiving this because part of it is "outside" the archway.

I didn't think what I was doing was that high concept, and I certainly didn't do it with resale in mind, but a number of lookers just don't get it, which reduces their interest. I think sometimes in a condo, particularly if you see a moving date in your future, "typical" might be the way to go.

Hi Everyone,

I hope some of you from the first thread come across this post. I just want to say that if it seemed like I disregarded your suggestion at first, or made you feel ignored when I accepted it later from someone else, I am very sorry. I appreciate everyone who participated, truly.

I can be slow, or dense, and maybe someone else framed it a way that finally clicked in my brain. It helped a lot after I could see it in 3D. That was my limitation, not intended to be dismissive of anyone.

It guess it's bad form to single anyone out, but I just want to tell honeysucklevine and palimpsest how much I appreciate that you hung out from beginning to end. :)

Here's a quote I came across from buehl: "Almost three years later I still get a thrill when I walk into my kitchen...I like how it functions and looks so much!!!

That's what I wish for everyone here, for many years to come.

-- SugarCookie (still a silly name)

SugarCookie,

how exciting! We have the same kitchen layout!

I am definitely going with the 30" countertops and 15" uppers. I simulated them with cardboard and I can reach the back, plug appliances and open the windows. Reaching the back of the second shelf in the uppers will require a stool. But, I am so frustrated by the lack of countertops when cooking that I think this will work for us. We are going with a standard depth 30" wide bottom freezer refrigerator. It will be in the exact same location as yours. It will save us money over the counterdepth one. This later are also wider (36"). We are going with over the range microwave. Not sure that I will like the ORT MW, but it is a compromise.

Good luck with your remodeling! What is the name of your original thread that you are referring to? Did you price any cabinets or is it too soon for that?

Posting exact dimensions of the walls allows other people to know what they could simulate. Exact (or close to exact) wall lengths helps people know what to suggest.

The mental work now is simulation. It's easy when dimensions are known. Sometimes a six inch space is critical. Hope this helps.