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aurelle23

Critique my layout

autonomous
9 years ago

Hi there,

We're remodeling a 1920s house and are getting to tackle the kitchen a little earlier than expected after finding lead paint on the walls--whee! The space is 11'3 x 13'10, with 4 doorways and one small window. There is a small room off the kitchen which will be our laundry and pantry. The doorway to the back porch will probably be the most used entrance to the house. The kitchen right now is pretty dark, but expanding the window is not in the budget, and I'm hoping that taking down the faux wood paneling vinyl wallpaper will help lighten it up. We are planning to expand the doorway to the dining room somewhat, which should bring in some more light.

A little bit about us:
We have two young kids, possibly a third in the future. They're going to end up in the kitchen, so I need somewhere for them to be--thus the seating. I know it's less space than recommended for three stools, but it's the best I can figure out, and these will only be used by the kids.

I'm the main cook, with occasional help from the kids, and this kitchen is going to be used heavily. So a practical layout is slightly more important than aesthetics.

The sink on the peninsula is so that I can watch the kids play in the dining room while doing dishes or doing meal prep. The sink in the original kitchen was on this wall (between the pantry and back porch doors), so it's appealing in that way too. I am a little worried about the dishwasher getting in the way of the stove, though.

I /think/ I want a super susan in the corner, but can't decide between an angled or bifold door. The bifold seems like it would drive me up the wall, what with having to line up the susan cutout every time you close the door...but I don't know if the angled door would make the corner less useable. I'm planning on keeping the coffeemaker, toaster and mixer on the counter in that corner and to the left of the chimney. It seems like angled doors are sort of disliked around here--why is that?

I also keep going back and forth on what to do about the upper cabinets in the corner. The layout here has an easy reach cabinet in the corner, but I've also considered just having a couple cabinets on the chimney wall and leaving the window wall upper-free. Any thoughts? The cabinet above the peninsula will be for our everyday dishes.

Any feedback is welcome--as much fun as it is trying to figure this out, I'm a little nervous since this is my first kitchen renovation and since I've never gotten a chance to cook in this kitchen yet (see lead paint and young kids :-) Thanks so much!

Comments (10)

  • sena01
    9 years ago

    The pantry/laundry area, can you add that area to the kitchen, or move fridge there? If fridge can go in that area, you can consider a shallow pantry cab (as deep as the chimney perhaps) in its place and add a narrow cab next to the sink. Or, if the porch door allows, you can move the peninsula to the chimney wall, have a corner cab/or a cab+filler to give you some elbow and counter space next to the chimney, then sink and DW.

  • autonomous
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Thanks! I wish the fridge could stay in the pantry--it's actually there now, but it's being exiled to make room for the washer and dryer. There's just barely enough room in there for the w/d and some shelves. The wall between the pantry and the kitchen needs to stay too--it's the original back wall of the house, and it's not in our budget right now to mess with any load bearing walls.

  • sena01
    9 years ago

    The 24" drawers at the back wall, a pullout cutting board may be useful there. Also, you can consider a counter extension next to sink. Maybe a short one that you can keep open while getting something from the fridge.

  • Buehl
    9 years ago

    Could you show us the size of the small room off the kitchen that you intend to make the Laundry/Pantry? Could the door to it be changed?

    One note about combining a Laundry Room and Pantry - Pantries need to be cool and dry while Laundry Rooms are often warm and moist - so are you sure you want to combine them into one room?

    It would be really helpful if you could draw up the entire first floor so we can see how not only the rooms relate to each other but see where the walls are and what might be possible with regards to moving doors/doorways.

  • autonomous
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Okay, hopefully this is legible. The house has three small additions on the back. So this is a rough layout of the first floor, with the additions laid out the way we've been planning, and then the layout of the additions the way they are now. I don't really want to move any walls around in the original part of the house, both due to budget and because the original rooms are so beautifully proportioned. So we tried to mostly move stuff around between the additions, trying to find room for a tiny office for my husband since he works from home.

    I do have concerns about the laundry and pantry sharing a room, mostly from stuff I've read online--but at the same time I don't remember any of our laundry rooms being overly moist. Maybe I just didn't notice it because we don't usually store food there? There are a few shelves along the stairs to the basement that I've thought about using for potatoes, etc.

    The landing zone and bookshelf in the kitchen could pretty easily be turned into a tall pantry--but then I don't know where to put a landing zone for people coming in the back door of the house. Don't want to end up with coats all over the counters :-)

  • laughablemoments
    9 years ago

    Do you have enough space upstairs to put the laundry room up there? We've had upstairs laundry rooms in a few different places we've lived, and liked it very much that way. It's nice to have the machines right by the bedrooms where we store our clothes and get dressed. Then there's no need to haul baskets of laundry up and down stairs all day long (nor through your main kitchen work area, tripping over an open dw or oven with a basket of laundry in tow-gah!)

    Getting the laundry out of the pantry would help your kitchen enormously. : )

  • lavender_lass
    9 years ago

    I like everything but the dishwasher placement. I am concerned it will turn your prep space into a dish landing area.

    Could you move the dishwasher under the window and add a sink in the corner for clean up? This would give you prep space on the island (with smaller prep sink) and secondary prep space under the window.

    From Kitchen plans

  • sena01
    9 years ago

    Can you do this?

  • funkycamper
    9 years ago

    Just want to support laughable's suggestion about moving laundry upstairs. We did that in our old house and it was the best change we made. I wish we had done it years sooner when the kids were smaller. It was far easier to carry a few kitchen items up/down than all the family's laundry.

    Our current home has pantry and laundry in the same room. I suppose things like climate, general airflow in the home, how open vs. how closed the laundry area is, etc., could impact whether it's OK to combine these two functions in the same space. Our area is fairly large and open so this might mitigate moisture and heat issues. That said, we've never had any problems with food items going bad because of the close proximity. In our old home, the pantry was actually an enclosed back porch that wasn't heated. I notice no difference between longevity in items between the two spaces. i suppose if you were to buy 50-100# of potatoes, it would make a difference but not for a 10-20# bag. At least in my experience. YMMV.

  • marcolo
    9 years ago

    Moving the laundry entrance to the mud room lets you eliminate a doorway.