Please read the "new to kitchens..." thread posted by buehl
that is usually on page 1 or 2. It will give you tons of info
on planning a kitchen. It will also tell you what you need to
post to get help for your layout. For example, who will be
using your kitchen? how many cooks? etc.

I saw the sticky "New to Kitchen" by gwTamara. I don't see one by buehl.

In the sticky i read there are some links like FAQ, sweeby test, begin your kitchen remodel etc none of which work.

Please let me know what am i missing.
thanks

Hi, TkNeo.

1. My initial thought is to wonder if the window and door to the back could be combined in the window space, or in the middle of the wall, such as a French door or sliders. This would allow the entire left side to be devoted to kitchen layout. And perhaps the right side--depending on where the glass door was placed.

2. Also, just to know, is moving the inside door at the top toward the middle of the wall doable? Conceivably, even though the room's only 7' wide, this could allow the right wall to be used for kitchen also.

Just for instance, if both doors were 12" in from the right wall, excellent shallow floor-to-ceiling storage could be built at each end, with the table and chairs sitting between them.

Also as a possibility, lining the doors up would add elegance and a feeling of space as the eye just continues on, instead of crashing to a halt on something. It would also frame the view of the back garden from the front rooms. Architects use this device a lot.

3. What portions of your interior walls might be available to mine for an extra 3-4 inches in depth?

4. Is there any place where something, such as a refrigerator, could be recessed even farther into an existing wall by taking space from what's on the other side of it? We did that. If the space is available, a $30/hour framer can work a miracle in a morning. :)

One thing that would give you room would be to go with a European swing door, meaning it will open to the outside instead of the inside freeing up the wall with the shoe rack on it. We wanted to put french doors in two of our rooms that open up onto a large deck. We don't have enough wall space for the doors to open the normal way so we did European swing and they now open up onto the deck. We thought it may be a problem but it hasn't been at all even when we had snow!

With that wall being freed up you could put a PB coat and shoe rack type thing. They are very pretty if you don't have the ability to have built in type storage.

The sticky "new to kitchen" does have broken links and I started a thread about it to alert Tamara.

The "new to kitchen...." thread posted by buehl that floats around like regular threads is now bumped up to page 1. Those links appear to be working.

I don't know why there are two threads but the info. on buehls is very useful.

Everyone....the "sticky" thread is incomplete... Please use the one I have constantly restarted.

Every once in a while I check the links for currency. I did notice over the weekend that the BH&G links are broken once again. I didn't have time to fix them. I'll try to find time this weekend to see if I can find the current links...if they are still available.

Thanks everyone for the advise so far.

Rosie, This is an old house with plaster walls. The outside of the kitchen is a load bearing all so moving doors/windows would be quite expensive, something i am trying to avoid. But i really like moving the door idea and using the entire left side for kitchen stuff.

holly, I love changing the door to open outside idea, gives a lot of space for shoe rack and coat hanger

What i am struggling the most with is the fridge. I would really appreciate the ideas on whats the best location for the fridge ?

If you moved the back door to a central location and shifted the interior door, too, you would essentially have a galley kitchen. You can put a transom over the back door to keep some of that natural light, and perhaps you could consider a window opening in the "backsplash" of the exterior wall of this kitchen, too.

The fact that there are already door and window openings in these structural walls means that it really isn't a big deal to move them. Yes, you will have to reframe to some extent, but the structure should already be in place to accept a revised wall frame (assuming that the floor joists and the structure below can accomodate this change).

Since you have a dining room adjacent to this kitchen, how important is it to you to keep a small table in this small kitchen?

This post was edited by karen_belle on Wed, Apr 24, 13 at 14:11

Karen Belle, TK needs to fit in their small table and 2 chairs too. :) Can be done, and to me would be waaay worth shifting budget from the fluffy items to a little structural tweaking as needed. The investment with the BIG payoff.

Instead of having a table in the kitchen you may perhaps have something like this.