To me this looks like a perfect house for entertaining, because I love to have the action seperate from the kitchen.

I don't know how exactly I would improve it, though I do know I would take down the wall between kitchen and breakfast room. I'll be interested to see what others suggest!

My opinion, I'd convert the dining room into your kitchen and make the existing kitchen a large pantry. The breakfast nook would make for a great laundry-mudroom combo. Assuming that you are planning to use the garage for a vehicle, the direct access into your pantry would be great for large trips to the grocery store.

Depending on how much of your entertaining is done in the kitchen itself, you might want to consider a scullery. I hate when dishes start stacking up and take away from the party.

If you combine kitchen and breakfast room, you will have adequate space for a fine kitchen. You can even keep the seating booth in the bumpout if you want. There are 2 main choices depending on whether you want to keep you kitchen separate from the dining area, or combined in the 21st century way. As to which is preferable, it depends whether you want guests being in or looking into you kitchen or not.

1. Separate kitchen (1-2 cooks, 1 guest at times) - combine kitchen and breakfast room, reconfigure counters etc. Dining stays unchanged

2. Kitchen is hub of home (2 cooks, 6-8 guests) - take down all walls in dining, kitchen, and breakfast room. Do the work to configure an island or peninsula. Much more expensive than the previous.

I can't believe I'm suggesting that you take out built-ins, but I see no other option. This is the simple version, rerouting traffic through the DR, but still providing easy access to the kitchen. I couldn't decide on which side of the sink to have the DW--out of the prep space, or opening in front of the entry from the hallway. The counter beside the DW could be open, with a stool tucked underneath, in case you need to sit to prep, or so that someone can perch there to keep you company as you prep.

Making the DR into a large kitchen seems like overkill for two people, but I agree it would make a nice kitchen with an island, and the current kitchen could be a nice pantry/laundry/mudroom, as chc27 suggested. Could (what I assume is) the sun room, be used as a DR, in that case?

That dining room is large in comparison with the kitchen size which is typical of the era. Newer houses would have a smaller dining room and more space devoted to the kitchen. I wonder if you could remove the walls to the breakfast room and combine that space with the kitchen. Then steal space from the dining room to create a small mudroom or back entry with the door and traffic pattern shown above. Taking about 4 feet from the dining room would leave a 10 x 14 room which is still a nice sized space.

I would not remove the wall between kitchen and dining room as I believe the separate dining room is essential to maintaining the original charm of the home, unless all the original features have already been destroyed. I also don't believe in removing walls that would otherwise be used for cabinetry, fridge, stove etc. Older homes often have significant window space in the kitchen which limits layout choices. I had several people suggest that I remove the wall between kitchen and dining room but I knew tha wasn't going to keep the vintage charm I wanted to preserve. My compromise was to change from a 30 inch door in the corner of the kitchen to a 48 inch arched opening in the center of the kitchen.

If this is the first level, than either you have a basement or a 2nd level. Removing walls? bringing a porch into the kitchen perhaps? kitchen remodeling is the most expensive adventure of all in a house redo, unless you are doing it yourself, perhaps. If this house is not in the PERFECT location for your dreams to live in geographically, I would try to find a home that has a nice kitchen. The most important part in real estate purchase is Location, Location, Location. If this meets that requirement better than any others, than you are going to be creating a new kitchen perhaps? I once had someone say, 'all you are saving is the frame up lumber, when you need interior walls sheetrocked from newly installed(it was pre finished paneling from 'just after the war'.. LOL., electrical wiring, plumbing, kitchen gutted, wall removed, new bath fixtures/plumbing, floorcovering, H/VAC, hotwater heaters, a cellar that flooded, WINDOWS.....but it was the Location... It was a mistake 20 years later, because they never got finished working on it they realized, and it was sold for less than 5 cents on a dollar to be moved off...but they did live in it for 20 years and not pay rent, so there was that. It may be that selling it to be moved off, and starting fresh is a better idea also, if the location is the first choice. There is nothing more unnerving than realizing you have to pay some one to remove things and than pay someone else to replace them after that square footage is gutted. You have gotten some great ideas to consider, however. Enjoy the journey if this is what works out best for your family.

I agree with redsilver. It's one thing to buy a house which needs new cabinets and maybe rearranging how the cabinets are laid out, but if you don't feel you can make the kitchen into what you want without tearing out walls, the odds are this is not the house for you, unless it is cheaper than others in the area by an order of magnitude.

I wouldn't go into a new house knowing that I was looking at very expensive structural changes unless there were something else seriously compelling enough about the house to make it worth spending a LOT of money.

Sometimes it's possible to make a difficult space work without changing the walls, like Emory's beautiful kitchen, which makes an awkward small space very functional and looks like an old kitchen that's been kept up, rather than a new one randomly imposed on the house:

[https://www.houzz.com/discussions/finished-1923-kitchen-with-breakfast-nook-dsvw-vd~4506819?n=57[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/finished-1923-kitchen-with-breakfast-nook-dsvw-vd~4506819?n=57)

could you push out the kitchen sink wall to line up with back breakfast room wall ......then see if it's worth all this, once you get a bigger square to work with....all depends on budget and value relative to list price, your long term plans, the neighborhood's value, etc. When the family room was added the logical thing would have been a kitchen aspect as part of the plan.....leaving things like this just raises more issues now to be dealt with. I dislike how the rooms are all segregated...do not flow....but understandably some of this is the character of the house. So you do have large spaces here..although you say large is not important....kitchen as is remains tiny..... this is a disjointed setup for entertaining..I would seriously be looking at other properties.

The following plan uses Lyndee Lee's suggestion to incorporate a mudroom into the existing DR. I like the idea of a wider door between the kitchen and DR, but in this plan I kept a remnant of the existing breakfast nook wall, and lengthened the fridge run.

The mudroom has a shallow shelf on one side, with coat hooks on both walls. A low shelf could be placed on the wall with the high shelf, to hold shoes and boots. I drew a barn door slider.

In the kitchen, I changed the door to the back hallway, to block the view of the bathroom door, and since the top stub wall is longer, the DW can go on the left side of the sink without blocking the entry.

you want a mudroom. i'd think about building off the back left corner of the garage so that you can sacrifice breakfast nook to entry/laundry room. leave the dining room alone!

Just for fun, here's the kitchen in the existing DR (sorry, ninigret), with laundry and mudroom in the back. If the built-ins in the nook are structurally sound, and can be used for pantry storage, they can be left intact. You'd have seating in the kitchen, so the DR could be moved across the hall to the sun room, or shared with the LR.

just rip out my heart, mama goose. any way, thats too far away for a dining room, i'd forget where i was going by the time i got there. ; )

What I like about this plan (aside from the bigger kitchen and the island), is that only one relatively small section of wall is affected, between the existing kitchen and DR, and could be easily framed with a new header, or worst case, a laminated beam.

There is existing plumbing for the laundry, and with a basement, plumbing for the new kitchen should be possible. And there are no built-ins in the DR to rip out, along with your heart, ninigret. :'[

Thank you all for your ideas, creativity, and hard work! We have a lot to think about. We are going to see the house again tomorrow and will look at the kitchen with fresh eyes. The home has some other issues, mainly because of its age and we need to decide if we want to take on a project of this magnitude. It is quite a nice house, in a great location and with a lot of potential, so we will think long and hard. We have renovated a couple houses in the past so we are aware of what can be involved, but this kitchen had us a bit stumped. Tomorrow will be interesting. Thanks again!

one word of caution: make sure that the parts you like about the house won't be undone by improving the kitchen. cuz thats just sad.

ninigret, we both agree with you completely. We are very interested in historic preservation and have no intention of ruining the integrity of any home we buy. Our last 2 homes we basically restored, although one of them we added a sensitive kitchen/family room addition. It is often possible to bring houses into the 21st century without extreme alterations. Thanks

Are there listing photos we can see, without giving away the address? I'm willing to look at old house pics any time. :)

i wish there was a LOVE button. that front room would be worth walking to, if it was a dining room!

every time i think 'i'm never going to move again' and then i see a home like this and i just wanna go look at houses again. : )

i do find it amazing they put in a paver driveway and didnt touch the kitchen... angels were at work!

Gorgeous house! I am moving out of a house of similar style and construction so I will share my experience; nothing is easy to do in a house like that. Every single thing is custom and just finding craftsmen you trust to work on the property can be a challenge. We did a small update to the kitchen several years ago and my partner said he had never worked so hard to make it look like he had not done anything.

I covet that stainless steel sink! Can you move it to the laundry room or utility area?

Lyndee Lee, I know, isn't that a great sink, we certainly would try hard to use it somewhere. Maybe design the new kitchen around it somehow? We, luckily have a number of talented tradesmen we can call on who we have used in the past. We know an electrician, carpenter, plumber, and tile-setter and trust them all. If we need anyone else one of them usually has a friend who can do what we need. This makes things so much easier

This kind of thing happens in my town all the time. The wonderful local architect, Stratton Hammon, built beautiful, gracious houses, but the kitchens were small an designed for a cook in the kitchen, with the family being served at all meals in the DR. Baths were small, too, and usually only a 1/2 bath on the first floor, an ensuite for the master, and a small family bath for everyone else.

Yet these houses are much sought after and lots of money spent "fixing" the small kitchens and baths and adding more bathrooms.

Personally, I'd save the money and hire a cook with it and keep the kitchen as it was built!

Anglophilia, you made our day! You described this home perfectly, with the mall kitchen and baths. We never thought of hiring a cook—it would be so much easier! Hmm, our daughter in law is a pastry chef and likely knows people who would be interested. Nah, we will redo the kitchen if we buy the place

We took another long and sober look at the house, and after a great
deal of thought have decided to pass on it. It has other issues besides
the kitchen and when you add up all the expected costs, and we assume
there will be hidden ones as well, it became more expensive than we are
comfortable with. So the search continues...

Thanks for all your help!

So it goes, right? Best of luck in your house hunt! :)

Sorry it didn't work out, but it sounds like you made the right decision.

Thanks, we are confident that we made the right choice. Hopefully we'll find another one that works out better

remember, its cheaper in the long run to buy what you like than it is to buy what you dont like and redo it. it took me so very long to learn this... best of luck on your next adventure.