the plan

Apparently it takes an architect/builder and a kitchen designer/contractor a long time to come up with a satisfactory plan for their own kitchen. In our case, we played with ideas, designs, and plans for almost two years before we settled on the right plan. We even seriously thought about enlarging the footprint of the house, but decided that it was way too much to invest in our home (especially now!)

From the beginning, Zoe and I had 2 strong, and conflicting, desires. Zoe really wanted the kitchen to be open to the rest of the house...I felt that the built-in cabinets in the dining room were too important to remove...for a long time we were deadlocked...

When we realized that perhaps we could open the kitchen to the dining room and retain the built-in cabinets by disassembling and rearranging some of the cabinet components, the planning took off. The top half of the built-in cabinets would be raised by 16" and the wall below the new raised uppers would be removed to create a window/pass-through into the kitchen. The 6'8" door into the kitchen would be removed and replaced with a 8'0" tall doorway (no door). To match this opening, the door to the upper level would be increased to 8'0" as well.

















With the new pass-through laid out, we opted to move the range under the pass through so that the chef can work at the cooktop and look into the rest of the house. The fridge gets relocated to an enlarged landing at the top of the stairs and an 'L' shaped counter with sink and window will wrap the southeast corner of the kitchen. Because the fridge has been moved the the landing at the top of the stairs, a pocket door will be added at the top of the stairs.

Lastly (and thanks to the great idea from dad) we removed the narrow steel entry door and replaced it with a french door to the back porch. Not only does this greatly increase the amount of daylight in the kitchen, but it also--and more importantly--slightly alters the path through the kitchen. Now the landing in front of the fridge is not in the path of someone using the new door.