Sorry- I think I need a floor plan for this one!

will work on this and get it up on the site

As an kitchen designer I can tell you that until a professional kitchen designer has measured your space and worked on a design you really haven't begun the process of renovating a tough space like yours. Shop around to find someone that's good, specializes in kitchens, and will be honest with you. Often the initial plans designers come up with they will show you free of charge or for a nominal fee.

This is not something that you can do well on Houzz. Even measuring is very difficult for an older home like yours, and there are many cost saving tricks kitchen designers use to fix a space. like raising a window without doing structural work by adding an outside flowerbox under the new higher window. A range is very dangerous without countertop on both sides and there are many other issues that you need to resolve when you redesign the kitchen. Houzz has the Find Local Pros as a place to start looking for a kitchen designer. Look for a designer with many positive reviews.

A clue to whether a designer is any good will be if they insist on measuring your two or three rooms themselves,. If they will work off other peoples measurements that is always bad omen.
Best of luck in your search,
Paul

I'm glad you appreciate that awesome built-in.
If it seems to limit your floorplan options, discuss with a carpenter the possibility of moving it to another location that will help everything flow.

Thanks all. We did have 3 designers come out but the main problem is that we have a very limited budget, like $20,000. I am a strong believer in DIY and we are DIY experts having renovated several houses. They all said we can't do this for $20,000. I am not sure that is true given that we would be doing almost 80% of the labor and I am not into high end appliances and I dislike granite. Sorry to sound like negative nelly. I am very discouraged about the whole thing and don't really want to give up my DR to make it a n eat-in kitchen but if I do, then all my other problems with my 110 year old house get solved, i.e. I get a functioning kitchen, a place to put coats etc., way more storage space, and an office on the first floor. ANd I can get all this for under $20,000. So maybe I have answered my own question =-)

With your budget you should be able to go Ikea.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/store/pittsburgh

Go to http://www.ikea.com and play around with their Kitchen Planner. Even if you don't use their products, you can still use it to plan. But if you do use their products it will tell you the cost of every cabinet, piece of hardware and appliance that you put into it immediately. We are doing our second Ikea kitchen now. Their cabinets have a 25 year warranty, appliances are Whirlpool with a 5 year warranty and faucets 10 years. They have been around since 1952 and their products are from places other than China. Our cabinet frames are Canadian.
Oh, I love the built-in and we have a similar kitchen table. Ours is pale yellow with green trim and extension leaves that slide out from underneath and decorative legs. Very retro but not in our kitchen anymore. I'm keeping it!

I would say you can get designer and go little bit over your budget and get the design and build it your self but 20,000 would be so hard to work with .

8 openings ... that is a challenging space. Can any of the doorways be closed off? ... or even walls taken out (an open floorplan is easier to work with then a bunch of doorways) ...

I agree with the saying "where there's a will there's a way". Sometimes it just takes time and then something clicks and it starts to happen. Without actually seeing it though, advice will be hard to offer. Good luck.

Main Line Kitchen Design - what is your objection with Ikea cabinets? Why do you say they are not well made? Please be specific with your comments. Do those other companies use Blum hardware? Do you pay extra to get soft close doors and drawers? I assembled every cabinet in our current project myself...it's actually easy and enjoyable. Do they have European styling? Have you ever done an Ikea kitchen? Or have you seen one?

Marilyn- I think Ikea is a place you either like or don't like. I have visited Ikea a couple times and left with nothing. So if you mentioned going to Ikea to me I would say NO, which would not be fair as I could not tell you if Ikea kitchens are great or not. It would just be a perception. Wrong maybe but we do it all the time about a lot of things. A lot of Houzzers do recommend Ikea, which at least has opened up my mind to checking them out ;)

I enter many stores and leave with nothing...it means nothing. We are talking about kitchen price, quality and features here in response to someone who likes to be hands-on and doesn't have a designer's budget. I see no need for Kitchen Designer's to disparage products that they "perceive" they don't like. I have lived with my current Ikea kitchen (that was done for about $22,000 diy) for 3 years now and know that it is quality. So much so that we are putting one in our vacation home at the present time.

@Marilyn It is too involved to go into in great detail and yes I know they have a warrantee but a particle board frameless cabinet that you put together yourself is just not even a good buy. Edge banding can pull off, hinges pull out of cabinet sides, cabinet doors sag over time from the weight of the doors and the lack of strength of the boxes supporting them. 15 years is a good estimate to how long they will last with average where and tear. A long enough time that almost no one would have the nerve to ask for a refund. Hence the warrantee.

Click Studios is an online cabinet supplier that supplies all plywood constructed framed cabinets with soft close full extension dovetail drawers and buffered doors. But there are many alternatives. If you are selling a home and don't need cabinetry to stand a long test of time then Ikea is a simple easy solution and the cabinets look great after they are assembled. This is also why they get great customer satisfaction reviews. However very few professionals in our industry would recommend them as either a good buy or for being well made. As in most industries knowledgeable insiders have a different opinion than the public at large about the products in their industry.

Yes, post a floor plan

OK- Ikea perception is re-instated!!

Hi ! A lot of good comments here ! So maybe look around for alternatives to suit your price range...
Here's a link to a free room planner - can be fun to mock up rooms and place stuff etc yourself :
Free room planner http://thebrick.icovia.com
Or if your want to have a pro do it for you - remotely :
http://www.houzz.com/pro/oneplan/oneplan
Either way - good design, to suit you and the space you have, is always a good investment - be it in your own time or in money spent !
Have fun creating your dream home !!
Karen from OnePlan!

http://www.ikeafans.com/home/particleboard-plywood-kitchen-cabinets/

Well Marilyn- let's be real, this article was written by Ikeafan??

I assume you mean Cliqstudios?
http://www.pissedconsumer.com/reviews-by-company/cliq-studios/cliq-studios-cabinets-do-not-save-money-service-horrible-20120711330926.html

So remember homeowners, only listen to the Professionals. They never get it wrong. Opinions are like...oh, you know the rest.

Marilyn,to be fair Ikea has 412 complaints. Cliqstudios-5
http://www.pissedconsumer.com/reviews-by-company/ikea.html

@Mailyn I don't sell any of these product so I have no vested interest in recommending, Home Depot, Lowes, Cliqstudios etc. I'm sorry that I'm criticizing a personal selection you made. The nice thing about Houzz is that you can get professionals advice before you make a decision.

Hey everyone, Let's try to stay on track with the Design Dilemma that was posted. Everyone on Houzz is free to have opinions on products, but let's try to disagree respectfully when we do and stay on track when someone has asked for help. Thanks!

Does IKEA even have a line of cabinets that would blend with the charm of this 110 year old house?!

Getting back to the Design Dilemma, Kim, perhaps you might just measure the space, put the dimensions down on graph paper, pick two (or three) entry's you best like, imagine the other's walled up, and stare at the paper with an artist's eye.

Ask for "inspiration" on what YOU would love then see what your inner Muses help you draw and come up with. From there you might have a DIY starting point.

Also, if you haven't already, start an Ideabook specific to your taste for ideas to include.

Enjoy the design *process*!

This is the reality. They can and will do it themselves the way they want it and yes, Ikea does have kitchens that are very traditional in appearance. Take a moment to acquaint yourself with what they have to offer JMittman Designs. You may have clients that would like them.

http://www.elementsofstyleblog.com/2011/07/ikea-kitchens.html

I am a little bit sad that this discussion went down the road that it did. I was excited to read 26 possible helps but I see it went a little a rye.

On another note, I will try to get the room down on graph paper and scan it in. I am leaving for Vegas tomorrow so this might not get done until next week.

Kim... By the time you return, there may be other great ideas waiting for you. Have a good trip!

Yes Kim, maybe you'll hit a jackpot in Vegas for your kitchen! ;)

Is it possible to open up the front kitchen to the back kitchen? Through photos alone, it appears that the wall that the stove abuts could be demoed. If the wall is not a structural wall, that may give you a more open space to reconfigure cooking/dining spaces.

wow- our kitchen has five doors and I thought that was alot.

in answer to your original question - I would suggest in a room with 8 openings - that if you choose to keep this room as a working kitchen - you install everything you need too one large island ! but without a room plan and dimensions it's impossible to come up with anything more for you at this stage !!

You have to love old houses, because if you don't love them, you hate them

I'm an old house lover but trying to put a modern kitchen in a house of that age is an exercise in frustration. You may find inspiration in old house magazines and by going on homes tours and visiting open houses. I have original cabinets in my kitchen and nothing new will ever come close to the quality of materials and construction found as originals. An old house deserves a kitchen with real wood cabinets, not particle board, mdf, thermofoil, or any of those other imitations of classic products.

I think OnePlan has a valid point about using an island. If you look at old books and magazines, you will see that most work was done on tables. I'm not a big fan of IKEA cabinets, but they do have some nice freestanding kitchen units which would look good in a traditional kitchen.

If you are doing the work yourselves, I don't think a budget of $20,000 is unrealistic unless you go crazy with moving walls or updating all the plumbing or electrical in the entire house.

It looks as though you have a back stairs from the 2nd floor emptying into the kitchen and a door to the basement from the kitchen? If so, can you eliminate the back stairs and relocate the basement stairs to under the main stairs of the house? This should open up some space in the kitchen.

Yes eliminating the back stairs, relocating the basement stairs, moving other doorways so they share travel space, and raising the windows that are too low for countertops is what saves the existing kitchen space if possible.

Love the idea of a big island with the stove. I would move the fridge as well as any small appliances to the wet kitchen and use the area as a space for making quick meals/snacks. Wish we had more details on that space. If the china hutch fits on the stove wall, that would give you a longer wall to work in some narrow storage.

A new home owner had a kitchen that was very similar to yours, many doorways, no cabinet or counter space.

I think the history of why kitchens were designed the way they were 100 years ago is very interesting.
People had cabinets that are not very deep, because the only things they stored were homemade canned fruits and vegetables, and dishes were kept in the china cabinet in the dining room, and food prep done on a table like yours.

I think the sink area separated in another room, must have been to keep the dirty dishes from meals concealed.
I'll have to look that up.

Could you take out the wall between the front and the back kitchen to create one larger space?

You can also easily do your kitchen for 20,000 dollars (which I think is about £13,000 GBP). We are just doing ours with a budget of half that (to include sink, taps, large induction cooker, cooker hood, solid american black walnut worktops etc) and the space we have to work with looks to be about half as much again as you have. (hate to say it with the way this thread has gone but we are probably using ikea - their ramsjo line would work well with your built in and has solid wood door frames which can be painted if you want to customise it. In the UK we have a consumer organisation called Which. They are very highly regarded and test products and produce independent reports on them. ikea kitchens just came out at the very top of their category (lower cost kitchens). This was compared against all of our UK chain ranges, most of which are double the price.

I have been agonising over this decision since our house is a very large house by UK standards and is top of the market for our area, but having viewed lots of different ranges Im not sure anyone will actually be able to tell where the kitchen has come from.

Back to the point, I would do a rough costing of units, look at Oneplan's idea of a large centre island and think about taking that wall out.

Thanks for everyone's comments. After much deliberation, we have decided to turn our big DR into an eat-in kitchen. I am tired of trying to make the "kitchen" work and even if I could make it work, I still have issues of space and where to put coats etc, becasue we use the back door as our entrance and the kitchen becomes a mud room as well bc of that. By using the DR as our kitchen/DR, I get a mudroom/craft room/office and it solves all of my issues and makes the kitchen/DR work harder and better for our way of life. Now, all I have to do is find me 8 base cabinets and we are on our way!

I hope you can use that wonderful cabinet by your fridge in your plans. Lots of luck and please post your before pictures again with your after pictures when you are finished.

Your "back" kitchen you described is better known (in old houses) as a Butler's Pantry.

If I were you, I would take some design advice with a grain of salt. I have a 1916 house & my kitchen has 5 doorways & a staircase in it. I had limited cabinet & counter space, so I bought a Hoosier-type cabinet. I personally, intend to embrace my kitchen's quirkiness & refuse to put in "new" crap just because some designer might think it's a good idea.

I am willing to bet you have beautiful hardwood under that linoleum floor. Have you checked?

I would love to see the layout of your home. I have a living room with 5 doors and a set of butterfly stairs, and one of the few walls has a fireplace. I was curious how others would treat a room with multiple doorways. (Also an old home lover & do it yourselfer.) Have you tried floorplanner.com? It's a free online floor planner, that lets you build your exact size room and drag and drop furniture, cabinets, etc into the room. (You can size the furniture, etc. too.) What I love about it, is that you can make it 3-d and really get a feel for how much space you have to move around in. I make the walls transparent so you can peer into the room from all sides. best of luck on your project.

I feel your pain. We have a 160 year old house with many of the same dilemmas, a small kitchen, a butlers pantry and a summerkitchen, and we too ended up just moving a new kitchen into the huge dining room. So long as you still have access to your pantry, it can be great. We turned the summerkitchen into a mudroom, but kept the wood cookstove and headboard wainscoting. Please either keep your built-in cabinet or figure out a way GP reuse it... it is fabulous.

It is possible to have a new but still vintage style kitchen, that will give you modern convenience without destroying the charm of your home.

This is from 2013......