Hello and thank you all in advance for your help. I have been gleaning as much as possible while lurking, lurking, and lurking some more. I'm excited, and a bit nervous, to be asking you for some insight into what kind of kitchen will best fit our family's needs. Here is our floorplan (you can ignore the writing off to the left. It's my cheat sheet of all the things that need to be stored.)
We are living in a DIY fixer upper house. There are 8 of us so far, my DH, myself, DD 10, DD 8, DD 6, DS 5, DD 3 and DD 1. Phew! : ) We've gotten the kitchen started on our own. (Wish we'd known about GW 2 years ago.) But, we'll just have to jump in from here.
I'm wondering where to go from what we have now. The windows and exterior doors are set. (Groan, I know, I know, we should have consulted earlier. Please forgive us.) The heat runs are not movable. There are posts (1840's post and beam house) that must be left alone. We have two sinks already installed, which works pretty well for us. We often use both sinks at once, for prep, hand-washing, cleanup, you name it.
I originally planned to set up a baking center under the big window between the stove and sink. Here's set back #1. While I somewhat like this spot to work, I usually have little helpers. Wonderful! Except. . . they want to sit on the counter to see what's going on (grrrr, not to mention safety issues), or, they are carrying stools over to help. The stools block the drawers and cupboards, land on my feet (ouch!), or gouge the cupboards on the way to the floor (bad, very bad.) Also, when I work here, my back is to everyone in the house. It's good in the summer when all my little ones are playing in the back yard, not so good in the winter.
I've set up a peninsula with a folding table to give that a whirl. I think I like it. Now my helpers can be directed to work across from me (YAY!) rather than next to me. They can see what's going on without being in the way. Over the long haul, will I regret the peninsula pinching the front room into a tighter space? I'd love an island, but I can't figure out how to land one peacefully in my kitchen.
Also, after reading about zones here, I'm thinking we could use more delineated work areas, as well as more counter top space and storage. What do y'all think? How much storage will we need as this crew grows up? Are we going to need a second stove, oven, fridge???? How do we fit it all in, kitchen stuff, office and computer stuff, school supplies, books, mudroom stuff, sewing stuff? It's a lot of stuff!!!
Here's a description of our goings on: We homeschool, so we're here more days than not. We cook most things from scratch, including all meals, breads (I have K Tec mixers to help with this), desserts, yogurt, meusli, maybe cheese someday. We raise our own chickens, beef cows, and egg layers. We garden. We have access to fruit trees. So, there are occasional bouts of canning and butchering, dehydrating, and freezing. We entertain some, but not as much as we'd like to. We've been 2 years trying to whip this place into shape. When it's more done, I think we'll feel much more freed up to have people in regularly. Even so, we're fixing 168+ helpings of food per week for our family.
We definitely don't operate a 1 person kitchen. So, how do we make it work for our good-sized group of helpers? Even though my DD is only 10, she already bakes up a storm, and the other girls will soon be doing likewise : ) No, we don't mind that a bit. Everyone helps clean up, as well.
I want the children to play and work nearby. This lead me to swap the dining area from the front room to the middle room about a month ago. We were reluctant to do this, because we really like all the windows in the front room. But, I think we can resolve the dark middle room by cutting a pass through style window in the wall between the middle room and living room. Anyway, the kids seem to be enjoying having more of a play area off the kitchen, and I think I like it this way. It is a lot farther for carrying dishes and food though.
The front room gets chilly in the winter. This tends to chase the kids to the wood stove in the living room. (and me too!) I'd rather not have them so far from me when I'm in the kitchen. It's too hard to monitor what's going on when they're so far away. So, we're talking about adding a 2nd wood stove in the front room that has a cook top on it (it's a Waterford Ashling, FYI), so this could be nice for soups and eggs and things in the winter. I love the idea of a cozy wood-warmed kitchen.
We have some major storage issues right now. It's called: Lack of it! You can probably imagine the coats, boots, snowpants, mittens and hats that accumulate faster than snowflakes this time of year. We are thinking of putting a coat closet in the front room along the long wall that adjoins the stairwell. This should help some, and could possibly catch the overflow storage of the kitchen, maybe even some toys, puzzles, games.
The entry room has no heat, and would be nigh impossible to insulate. We do use it for coats and shoes during the warmer months. It also currently holds our upright freezer and small chest freezer. It's not your BHG pretty entryway (boo hoo!) but it does work pretty hard for its keep. Honestly, I'd be lost without it here. Where else would I put all of our Good Will donations, extra egg cartons, and overflow from the fridge. (Told you it wasn't too pretty.) I LOVE winter. It means I get lots of free cold storage. : )
We also have a basement where we can keep our root veggies. The freezers may eventually move down there, but it's awfully convenient to have them on the same level as the kitchen. Our garage is on the other side of the driveway, so putting food out there is not a good option.
We've talked about putting a window seat under the front windows. This could hide a lot of the canning supplies, or boots, toys, a few small children (just kidding!) I think it would make a nice place to land when we come inside, and a great spot to play and read.
Another spot we're undecided is where to park the fridge and build in some pantry storage. We've made a hidey-hole to slide the fridge into, and it was there for a while. It is pretty specific to the fridge we have now (a 30" wide Crosley), as there is an angled support that goes directly above it, and support posts to either side of it. This is an 1840's post and beam house. The archway is 10' 4" and we didn't dare push our luck trying to make it any bigger. Those are our children sleeping above, after all. We don't need any unexpected drop-ins in our kitchen. : )
We tried moving the fridge around the corner to the front room when we set up a temporary counter (it's blue). I liked the counter, loved the storage underneath and above, but it pinches the walkway at the bathroom end of the kitchen terribly. It's quite a bottleneck down there. Has anyone done 18" deep counters and been happy with them? Should we put pantries in there instead? I like having some counter space across from the farm sink, but we do need a pantry, too. Should the fridge go back in its hidey-hole, or stay in the front room, or. . . where does that behemoth belong?
We've talked about setting up a clean-up/ beverage center on the 10' section of wall at the south end of the middle room. I was thinking of putting in a European style drain rack above the sink where the everyday dishes could drip dry and be stored. I'd love to hear from someone who has used one of these.
Yes, we have a GE QuietScrub DW, but it's out of order after 1 year of service. We're debating on just going to hand-washing. We already hand wash all our pots and pans. Most of the dishes had to be scraped and/or rinsed before going in the DW. By the time you do all that, you might as well run a cloth over them and be done! We don't like listening to a DW run, either. I know some of you are Bosch fans, but they looked small to me. and pricey. The salesmen I talked to said DW's had a life expectancy of about 5-7 years, if I remember right. That's a pretty heavy replacement regiment, especially when we think about the rigors it would receive in our home.
I'm sorry this is so long. Any ideas/feedback you could share would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!
Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures and Floorplan at Photobucket
rhome410
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