Improving my CE Colonial first floor layout

hannahk2018

7 years ago

Hi everyone! I'm a long time lurker and I'm excited to be posting about my project. Our home is a 1930's colonial revival located in New England. We are planning an addition off the back of the house which will make our kitchen bigger on the first level and allow us to fit a 4th bedroom and second bath on the second level.

We have a plan for the second floor layout that we are happy with, but we are still mulling over the whole first floor layout.

Our top priorities are

1. Large kitchen where people can gather when we entertain

2. Improving the flow between rooms without going open concept

3. Having a door to the new deck that is close to the kitchen

Here is the as-built and a preliminary plan.

The living room/sun room will remain as one room, not two as shown. From the outside, we like the way the french doors from the kitchen to the deck will look. If we keep them there, we would want them to be centered on that wall. We are open to alternatives.

We are stuck on two problem areas. First, the sitting area in the kitchen feels like a waste of space. We liked the idea of having a second living area downstairs, but having two armchairs in the kitchen doesn't feel worth it and I think I would rather just have more kitchen storage. Second, the informal dining table is not needed since we actually use our dining room. I feel that it would just become a dumping ground. The table does serve to fill a space that is surrounded by doors, and I'm not sure how else the space could be filled.

Any thoughts on how we could optimize this layout?

Featured Answer

herbflavor

7 years ago

the logical first thing to sketch out is running your kitchen all across the back wall. Maybe utilize a few feet on side wall [range and fridge wall]. In fact you could run a wide U shape kitchen with short sides. And proceed to utilize the available floorspace for a larger island. With the larger footprint to your home, 4th bedroom and all, seems common sense to have a bigger island. That's what I would do.

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Comments (6)

hannahk2018
Original Author
7 years ago
Thanks herbflavor! I took your advice and mocked up some layouts where the cabinets run across the back wall and an island fills most of the space. I agree, this is the logical place to start.

U with a short side:

I am still stuck on what can be done with that empty space. Dance studio?

Peninsula:

I think this just looks off center and creates a weird traffic flow from either the dining room or the mudroom, which is our main entrance to the house.

Big island:

Does this island seem completely excessive? We will be going from about 1700 to 2200 sqft, so still a pretty modestly sized home. I'm sweating a bit thinking about the price tag and the seams for a counter that size.
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herbflavor
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
put a butlers pantry ...nice transition between dining room and kitchen....it will get used when entertaining in living room too. build it off wall on right when you come through from mudroom. it can have passage through to kitchen. Your kitchen configurations are all so different in terms of volume of counters/cabinetry. Think right now about how much you need to accommodate your appliances/how much cabinetry for your basic storage/ what dimensions would be your ideal island. Then calculate what you have left and if a butler pantry would be an asset....it will give you more storage and a secondary zone. So make your kitchen approximations and then what would you do with this area once you carve it off. I think it would be great. Alternatively: a small room with counter for computer use....with a door that closes for quiet.
hannahk2018 thanked herbflavor
course411
7 years ago
Do you need the separate dining room? What if you repurposed that room into an office/guest rm/den/playroom and kept the table/dining space in the first concept drawing as your main eating space?
hannahk2018 thanked course411
mama goose_gw zn6OH
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
You could make the addition only large enough to give you space for an island, and omit the second table:
hannahk2018 thanked mama goose_gw zn6OH
hannahk2018
Original Author
7 years ago
@herbflavor Thanks for this. I'm playing around with the idea of either a butler's pantry or a larger mudroom in that space now. I definitely pictured being able to walk right into the kitchen with bags of groceries, so I need to think this over some more. I don't want it to be a maze.

You're right about the wildly different kitchen sizes. I just threw up all the options I could think of, but I can definitely say that the Big Island option does not feel right for my house. I do love to cook and I have a recipe blog, but I am decidedly a home cook, and I've been perfectly happy cooking in tiny apartment kitchens in the past. Right now I have exactly one drawer for cooking utensils, so I'd love to have a bit more storage, but basically the size of my current kitchen plus an island would suit. Anything else is a bonus.

@course411 We don't need the formal dining room, but we do like it. I love open concept homes but since our home is older we wanted to keep the feel of separate rooms. It would give us a lot of flexibility in what we could do with the formal dining room though, which is nice...

@mama goose_gw zn6OH I love this kitchen layout. The only problem is that the current size of the addition gives us the layout we love upstairs and for the exterior.