Anthony Perez It's difficult to give a valid option without dimensions or doorway explanations, don't you think? I'm waiting on numbers.

Sorry everyone! I have a newborn so my attention is pulled in multiple directions during the day.

The dimensions are 16' x 14'9".

The door on the right leads to a porch. The door on the left leads to some steps and is the only house access to the backyard. The door on the back leads to another covered porch. I envision this porch getting lots of use in the warmer months.

To continue my theme above, An 11' wide space is currently designated your living room, and that is darn small. It might make better sense as the kitchen, and leave the larger rooms to the more social roles, where you will spend more time.

H - No need to apologize! Especially when there's a baby involved.

When you bought the place how were the spaces and walls arranged? Was the front room a living room and the bread oven room a kitchen addition?

At the very least remove both doors from the kitchen (not expensive). Move the rear door to the middle back of the house, possibly replacing one of the windows. That will allow you to fully utilize all three walls of the kitchen. Once you do that you have much more freedom. The range will go where the bread oven is, the fridge can go where the right kitchen door was and the sink can look out a window to the backyard (or reverse).

Never mind the stove. Where are the wall cabinets?

With 14'9", you have space for an island, which means you can omit the peninsula, and slide the range down on the same wall--maybe center it between the double window and the lower window on the left. I think the bread oven is a great feature to keep in an old farmhouse. Can you run water to an island, for a prep sink?

How much space is available between the higher and lower windows?

Okay! I'll try to respond as best I can before I sign off for the evening.

mama goose_gw zn6OH I really like your idea! I am going to mull it over a bit and try to draw up some plans (not that I am very good at that part). Which way would the island run? Would you put it in the same general area as the peninsula? We probably could run water to the island, but we've already roughed in our plumbing and that wasn't something that was done. We could also splurge on some nicer stone counters for the area under the window and then do butcher block on the island ... these are just thoughts off the top of my head.

Skil367 I was worried about the lack of wall cabinets too! Our KD was going to get us bottom cabinets that are designed for glassware, plates, etc... These are items that I have been convinced need to go in upper cabinets, but perhaps do not.

Anthony Perez I like the idea of placing the stove next to the sink. I'll run it by my husband and see what he thinks, also. Originally I was opposed to the idea of a raised peninsula, but maybe it is worth considering it? If that were the case, then the first design you shared today could work. It's something to consider.

benjesbride

Original kitchen. The bread oven is accessed through a door to the right of where the photographer was standing. It was in a separate room. To the left of the stove is a short hallway to the dining room area. You can see the old door to the basement.

This bathroom is now part of the kitchen. We took the wall down that you see on the right. The window you see ahead is the window to the left of where the peninsula is drafted to go.

This was the dining room & will be the dining room. The door on the left is the door to the kitchen.

This shows the door to the kitchen (blue) and the bathroom.

As you can see there were a lot of walls and some tiny rooms. The kitchen was an addition from the 30's or 40's. I am not sure where the kitchen was prior to that. There were also these cheaply installed built-ins that were yucky (I don't know how else to describe them) - built of flimsy particle board and not in great shape. The wall you see dividing the living room and dining room area was not load bearing.

I am sorry I don't have a floor plan of how the house originally looked - only these photos.

One last thought for tonight - thank you all so much for your ideas! You have ALL been more helpful then our KD (sadly) and you've never seen the space and only had my bits of info to go on. Your creativity & fresh ideas have been a source of inspiration.

I think everyone agrees on one thing (to address the title of this post) - we should NOT put the stove in the corner.

Since your plumbing is already roughed in, I should ask before I get in too deep with alternatives for you... Do you want to see floorplans that use the whole 14'9"x16' space for your kitchen?

If yes, can any of the doors or windows in that space move? I suspect the door and window toward the right can't be moved so easily, but I am wondering if the door to the backyard is no big deal since you might prefer to route folks through the covered porch on the back wall.

Thanks!

Here are two other ideas our kitchen designer had. I just dug them up. They may be a good solution. The stove is no longer in a corner & we can keep the bread oven, windows, doors, etc..

benjesbride - This design could allow some more elements of the unfitted kitchen to come into play. Butcher block island. Granite counters. Old hutch in the corner by the brick oven for the pantry ... ??

That said, the design does come with some more questions on my part!! I wonder if the direction of the island makes sense. Everyone is correct that the space is big and open. If we place the island in the direction pictured above the spaces are even more open. I'm not sure if that's a problem or not - just something I am looking at and thinking about.

What does everyone else think?

I think Cook’s is correct. You are not looking at the big picture. That small little room with the fireplace is too small for a living room area. But it is connected to the “kitchen” area better than the room used as the dining room is. Something has to change globally with the space allocation. Your kitchen is located in the wrong room. The largest room should be the family gathering spot, not the food production zone.

now if you are flexible with re-locating you can always do this

You said you expect a lot of traffic to the covered porch. Traffic through a workspace like this is poor design given the space you have available to you and is potentially unsafe. As mentioned above you have a pinch point between the bread oven and the fridge. Frankly, the kitchen you ripped out is way better than the plans your designer has given you.

Your space plan could be so much better. If you haven't tried it, I recommend you cut out pieces of paper to scale that represent furniture and move it around your floor plan so you can possibly see what it is that most of us are concerned about. Moving around paper is so much easier than having an "Oh no!" moment as your kitchen is being installed.

Here is a link to a beautiful farmhouse renovation. Probably my absolute favorite. You'd be wise to take cues from what they did with their home https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/fixer-upper-to-refined-farmhouse

If you ditched the bread oven for a farmhouse kitchen like this, you'd have a flexible and super family friendly living space + play area/study area/arts and crafts area:

I don't understand the strong desire to keep the bread oven. If you just want to be able to show it off as a conversation piece, you could hang a fun framed photo of it in your new kitchen. If you keep it, it'll be just as valuable as a photo except taking up 30+ square feet of precious real estate and a painful reminder of the awesome kitchen you gave up for it.

following

maybe you could modify and relocate the bread oven, turn it into an outdoor pizza oven or fireplace?

There are experienced people here and you're getting good advice. However, the scope of the work and the problems you're facing are impossible to fully understand and solve on an online forum.

You need a good kitchen designer and an experienced contractor that communicate and work together well. Your contractor may be just fine, but it's very clear your kitchen designer is incompetent.

It would be far better to have a small, single door fridge than to have a stove jammed in a corner without counter space on left and right. It would be far better to lose a window than to go without wall cabinets and have to stoop and fish around under the counters just to reach a coffee cup or a box of cereal.

It's tiring and frustrating to live in a house that's torn to pieces, but fatigue and frustration cloud judgement and lead to expensive mistakes that last for decades.

My advice is to stop the work, take a deep breath and start over when you have a good plan and good people to carry it out. Yes, it will be a royal pain, but it will be better than the train wreck you're on now.

You are so right. My husband reported back that the bread oven will be almost impossible for us to remove because the house is structurely tied into its chimney. We don't currently have the budget to totally remove it properly. So we are kind of stuck with 'the beast'. Sigh...

After a couple of days on this thread I am totally in agreement that we need to take a step back, take a breath and pause. This project needs a little time and some fresh eyes.

I will pause and sign off for now until I have a better grasp of things and can ask for more concrete advice.

.

Just because the bread oven is there, doesn't mean you have to use it as an oven. You could treat it as a wall, and locate the fridge on it, with side cabinets to enclose the fridge for a built in look.

You signed off but I still wanted to work out a plan with the bread oven. I'll post it here in case you return and it sparks more ideas for you.

It would be a minor compromise to change the backyard and covered porch doors to just one exterior door to the right of the bread oven. Traffic is kept out of the kitchen proper and it might help keep your floors cleaner to route people through a covered area. This change does not impact the front elevation of the house. We moved doors to improve floorplan function in our house and it was well worth it.

In the area to the right of the oven, you could have a mini-mudroom with coat hooks and drop zone.

The window in your 2d drawing looks like it in the wrong place, so I guessed on it's location here.

You could have island seating, but I chose to give an example that maximizes storage. You could frame in pantry cabinets above the oven bricks for more storage

It looks as if your original layout has three doors and three windows in the kitchen. Haven't read all the posts. Guessing one is to the garage and another to the back yard?

The area marked dining room is larger than the area marked living room -- swap them.

Something to consider:

What side of the kitchen has the sunlight and view you prefer? That is the only wall on which you need windows.

Connect your back porches into a wrap around porch with a shed roof and hip on the corner(s).

All else being equal -- view, daylight -- and if you want an island/bar, you could move the door(s) -- no more than two (French doors) from the kitchen opposite each other -- move them to the openings nearest the dining area.

Then, after completely removing that old brick oven (saving the brick for your patio), you can create a traditional "U" shaped kitchen ... with a couple of large windows centered above the sink on the back/end wall behind where the oven is now located, your stove against one outside wall with a vented hood and your refrigerator against the other outside wall (creating the traditional kitchen triangle). Put your island/bar between the two kitchen doors facing the rest of the great room.

Hi jane_vt, if you do end up keeping the Oven you should defenately restore it to a working condition, if the design evolves around it, at least you can have the rare pleasure of a brick oven to make some delicious home-made pizza! cheers

A chimney that has structural tie ins is common. And it is t that difficult to deal with for a Pro. Don’t let that deter you from making that change. But it is still going to be awkward using the homes smallest room for a living room rather than a lesser used function.

Bread Oven In The Kitchen ... Help!!?

Okay ... per lindsey's recommendation I will post this question here. I'm sorry for being wishy-washy (on / off )

Question: What can we do with this beast? It is located in what is currently the kitchen.

We can't get rid of it because it has structural value and would take too much money and effort to remove. We are planning to make the space to the right of the brick oven a pantry. We thought that we may make the area to the left a little mudroom area (per an idea we received via houzz) - although we are still open to thoughts.

*We plan to clean up the bricks and the metalwork. This includes cleaning up the red plaster & paint you see. We will repaint it red.

*We are not set on keeping the cast iron cook area you see. (Perhaps this could be replaced with a nice piece of granite or butcher block??... to be used for .... or make it into a space for cookbooks?)

*Above the red face the bricks slant upwards. What on earth can be done with this strange angle?

*There is also dead space behind 'the beast'.

*The height from the floor to the bottom of the window is 32"

Answer re: Move the kitchen - The windows throughout the house are very tall. You can see them in the above photo. Finding a place to put counters would be quite the challenge. Sophie's right - we have a sever lack of walls.

Do you have an actual estimate from the contractor of the cost to remove the bread oven and shore up whatever is needed?

We do not have an estimate. Our budget is allocated to specific projects and we do not have enough at this point to conquer any structural work.

Just for the sake of minimizing the Oven I would paint the brick white and keep the cast iron, Also yes to butcher block counter on that side and Mudroom on the other, Will try to draw up a plan later

Structural work on that is trivial. Sweat equity and a couple of jack posts to support the top plate that is dogged into the brick. The brick comes down and is replaced with a post in that spot snd the header created and installed.

Seriously, the structural work that had to be done to remove all of those walls should have been far worse! That needed a heck of a lot more. Get that engineer who designed the solutions to all of that wall removal back out. He should have an add on rate as he has already seen the building.

You did have an engineer design the new support system that the house would need in order to remove all of those walls, right?

An hour long consultation with a structural engineer is the best $60 we spent on our project. It's more expensive to make assumptions about structural costs than that.

Also, if you were planning on quartz countertops (or even custom laminate), you can scale back to farmhouse appropriate butcher block and probably pay for the oven removal project. If that's a single level addition it honestly can't be that complicated.

I appreciate your desire to retain the brick bread oven as part of the history of your home. Having read all of the suggestions that you received, I bow to the technical advice of the professionals here. One aesthetic suggestion....instead of a peninsula, think island. Peninsulas are modern. Better yet, please consider a counter height farmhouse table/island surrounded by stools. I, for one, like the rendering that shows a table/island in front of the brick bread oven. Yours is a dilemma that I am following with great interest as one who loves Old Houses. Good luck!

I am the one that did the kitchen Benjesbride referenced in the thread above, and am flattered that my kitchen link is still being referenced so many years later! I am no stranger to 1800's farmhouses, and was excited to see that you are doing one.

If it were me, I'd keep the bread oven-- I think it's fantastic, and I'd learn how to use it! Also, I don't know what climate you are in, but a big gigantic brick structure in an open space often radiates heat throughout the house, which is a plus for your heating bills.

I think it's a no-brainer to flip the kitchen and dining space, and there have been a couple of good plans posted above to consider. If you do that, you get the best of both worlds-- a functional kitchen space and you get to keep the bread oven.

benjesbride $60 an hour for an structural engineer? where is that, such a deal!

We're in Portland, Oregon, but it was 2014. Even if it's now $150/hour, I still think it's the best money one can spend in a project like this.

Oven ideas -

build the pantry around the area to the left.

make the left area a banquett.

fit it with a gas fireplace.

make the fireplace into a wine rack.

I love it.

If the oven stays I'd fully expose it and not paint it. It's impressive and sculptural. If it can be made fully functional it'll earn its keep taking up all that space.

With the whole oven exposed on all sides, I think it would look great and free up cabinet storage to put a pot rack above it. For lack of a better inspirational photo, here's one...

Snork! Sorry Benjesbride, but I have to laugh at your inspirational photo.

Because EVERYONE hangs a hunt cap next to their garlic in the kitchen.

Missed that. Ha!

Reminds me of something from http://catalogliving.net/

Okay everyone. I am by no means a kitchen designer. I am meeting with our KD this week and am eager to hear her thoughts. That said, I played around a little bit with everyone's ideas and came up with the design you see below.

I'm eager to hear what you all think!

I think you are on the right track! And be sure to talk with the KD about an “unfitted kitchen” look. It will be far more appropriate to your house. Good luck, and PLEASE let us know what the K/D thinks of your plan!

It looks as though your new plan includes closing off the door to the porch. I was going to suggest that days ago but didn't know if it was a viable option.

Can you post the distance from the exterior walls to the nearest oven projections? (The red lines below.)

On the top right the distance is 64.5" and the bottom right the distance is 52".

Yes! After much thought my husband and I agreed that 'getting rid' of two doors makes the most sense. In this design, the refrigerator will be placed where the former door to the front porch was. We decided that it was fine to get rid of this door because the porch it opens to has another access point and faces a road.

Getting an estimate to remove the brick structure and shore up what's needed will cost you very little. It'll be a number you have in your back pocket for later.

If you do leave the brick structure in place, buy extra flooring so you can remove it later and patch in the matching flooring.

Your island seems to serve no purpose other than getting in the way as you move from fridge to sink... It looks like you have plenty of storage, and even a decent amount of prep space. If you need seating, a small kitchen table would be far more comfortable.

Really smart idea to get rid of that door. It totally opens up your possibilities and lets you keep your wonderful brick oven.