Help With Kitchen Remodel

13 years ago

We are planning a kitchen remodel and I've been getting lots of great ideas from everyone, but now I would like more specific help with the design of our kitchen.

The current situation:

-There is a wall, with a pocket door, between the formal dining room and the kitchen. The formal is currently carpeted and never used. The formal eating area is 10'10"

-The informal eating nook area is too narrow, 7'11", making entertaining difficult.

-The door to the back patio is currently in the carpeted family room (which is next to the eating nook) so when we go to the back yard we have to walk through the carpeted family room--not good.

-The kitchen is fairly large, about 12 x 13'9", but there is only one nice working counter space area between the sink and cook top (I will try to add a photo of our current kitchen).

-The enclosed space, with built-in shelving, behind the refrigerator and oven cannot be moved.

What we'd like:

-to use the formal eating area more often: remove carpet, remove wall (it's non-supporting)

-create more useable counter-space: add an island

-add a way to the back patio: put a door in the nook area

-make the nook into a more useful space: add 1/2 wall and use a bench and a smaller nook table that can be off center, moved towards the 1/2 wall.

Our concerns are:

Will the cook-top in the peninsula be too far from the sink?

Will the traffic from the formal dining room interfere with the kitchen work space?

Should the oven and refrigerator locations be swapped?

Many thanks in advance for all your helpful advice.

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Comments (3)

nwtravelbird
Original Author
13 years ago
Here's our current nook, kitchen and door to formal.
lavender_lass
13 years ago
Why don't you use your formal dining room? If your informal dining is too small (and wall is non-load bearing) why not add a few feet to your dining room?

Do you like your cooktop on the peninsula? Do you think your exhaust is adequate? Are you sure you want to duplicate this design in your new plan?

Is that a banquette, by the back door? How do you plan to use that space? Is it going to be the space for kids to use?

If you like your current layout...and don't plan to add more space to the formal dining room...why even move the door to the dining room? Why not flip the cooktop (so it overlooks the now informal dining area) and add an island for prep? That would keep traffic out of your main work area. I would swap fridge and oven locations, though.
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nwtravelbird
Original Author
13 years ago
Thank you for your comments lavendar_lass. I'll try to answer your questions.

My guess is that we don't use the formal dining because it is so blocked off from the kitchen. It's also carpeted which doesn't help.

We can't add a few feet to the formal dining room because that would mean making the kitchen smaller, which I don't think is an option. The formal dining area is 10'10" which is just wide enough for a dining room.

The informal eating nook is too small at 7'11", but the wall between the informal eating nook and family room is load bearing, so I don't see that it's possible to increase the size of the informal eating nook either.

The banquette area is our current informal eating area and we want to continue to use it as a breakfast/study nook (we are 3 generations in one house). It's 7'11" wide. It's the nearest to you in the photo. Right now we have a 38" wide table that is somewhat centered in the space. It's an awkward space because there is not enough room to walk around the table if someone is sitting at the table in front of the cooktop. We are planning on building a half wall and use a narrower table, with a bench abutting the half wall, sort of like a banquette area.

I like the cooktop on the current peninsula, but I definitely do not like out pop-up exhaust. We will add a real exhaust fan over the new cooktop.

Are you saying we should keep the peninsula in the same spot?

I've included a 3-D view of what we are thinking of.

Thanks much,