Help! My kitchen is awkwardly shaped!

10 years ago

Hi! Our kitchen cabinets and appliances and flooring are out of date, so dear wife and I are ready for a complete kitchen redo. We are having trouble settling on a new layout for our kitchen. Dear wife wants a rectangular island with bar stools on one side. I just want the kitchen to be more open and welcoming, instead of squirreled away down an awkward hallway.

First pic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-oyaVpZ-Xj6b2dVUV85LTNSNzQ/edit?usp=sharing

Second pic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-oyaVpZ-Xj6aEZXNnFfT2FPczQ/edit?usp=sharing

This pic is the current layout. The big black thing on the left is a fireplace, which dear wife loves. The small room in the bottom-right corner of the pic is a pantry. When you walk in our front door (to the left of the pic, not shown), you stare straight down the hallway (along the bottom of the pic) at our pantry doors. Not the best thing ever to showcase, IMO. We do not use the space between the exterior door (right side of the pic) and the peninsula for anything. People tell us that it could be used for a breakfast nook, but we have a nice dining table one room over, and we just eat there, so that kitchen space is just wasted. If need be, any of the interior walls of the kitchen can be removed; there's nothing in them that can't be re-routed, and it isn't load-bearing.

The second pic shows a layout we've been playing with. A door to the garage has been added in the top-left corner, but if the jury votes that it hurts the kitchen layout too much, we won't do that. The island has been added, and a wall has been removed. Ignore the hexagon tiles on the floor. I think I'll be able to talk dear wife into just putting wood through the whole thing. We're still not happy with this layout, though. While it has opened the space and given dear wife the island she wants, it still just looks awkward.

So, I turn to you, the brilliant minds of Garden Web. What should I do with my kitchen? Should the wall stay? Should more walls go? Should the pantry be removed or repurposed? Where should I put the fridge? Is adding a door to my garage, which is currently only accessible if I go out the back door then into a side garage door, a good or bad idea? Thank you all!

This post was edited by bendezium on Thu, Jan 2, 14 at 20:05

Comments (4)

GauchoGordo1993
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Best to post a layout of the kitchen and surrounding rooms, with measurements.
bmorepanic
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
That's hard to say without more measurements.

I would move the pantry to where you show the new garage door and turn it into a cornered pantry, tearing down the other pantry. Then I could extend the island a foot, maybe 18" and still not feel congested.

I might see if I could nip back or remove the wall-let on the other side of the fireplace. That interior window thing will be mostly blocked off from being seen by people in the kitchen, so I might try to get more pantry, cleaning closet or put the ref into it or build a tiny, little bar. The former window opening could make a recessed art niche or display on the pit side.

I would check and see if the exterior door on the right side was a big deal to move. Try a drawing where a large door and possibly a side panel was the vista from the front door. In some senses, it would be sweet to wrap that corner with clean up/dish storage and maybe squish in another window or place cleanup sink and dishwasher on that wall under a new window and upper storage on the longer back wall.

Putting a cooktop with seating so close is a little hazardous - people having spits from pans at their eye level and suchlike things. I know from experience that a raised counter behind the cooktop with bar height seating doesn't really help with that.

So, I'd also draw ones that had a clean island with a prep sink, main cleanup in front of the window and a range closer to the new pantry.

=======================
Technical stuff about the new drawing you did. First piece of bad news - you can't put the smeg there. A smeg needs an absolute minimum of about 13" clear on the hinge side just to get the door open enough to use the refrigerator. Doors on most refrigerators "store" beside the refrigerator when open.

A lot of refrigerators need to have the door open more than 90 degrees to be able to access interior drawers or doors - something to check for if you're thinking of a different refrigerator. It's possible to place a refrigerator next to a wall, but the wall needs to be no longer than the body of the ref.

Because a smeg is a single door unit, you could operate it "backwards" with the hinges not on the wall side, but on the cabinet side. Since a smeg doesn't have reversible doors, I'd give it about a week before you are both driven crazy. That's part of what I'd look at that second empty thing near the fireplace.

Second piece of maybe bad news is that the building code police might require you to remove those walls around the fireplace if they are framed and/or might require that you keep the cabinets at least 5 feet from the fireplace. Ours would, but your code guys would have their own opinion. Ours would make us bring to code any existing feature that they think didn't meet code - including a big black hanging fireplace up against a drywall wall that didn't have UL approvals plastered on it..

Just reminding you that you are removing more storage than you currently have. Be sure you're ok with losing about 20 running feet of uppers and some lowers.
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Jillius
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Can you post a picture of the fireplace as it looks when you're standing in the kitchen looking at it? It's so hard to picture what those little walls around it are doing -- I've never seen anything like that before.
Jillius
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Can you post a picture of the fireplace as it looks when you're standing in the kitchen looking at it? It's so hard to picture what those little walls around it are doing -- I've never seen anything like that before.

Anyway, without measurements, I took a shot anyway. Here 'tis: