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Advice for Small Kitchen Renovation

5 years ago

Hello! We are renovating our small kitchen and looking for some advice. We have a 1920’s Sears house. The ceilings are 9’ and we’re removing the fake beams. Ideally we’d like plain or shaker style cabinets with a smaller square glass cabinet at the top going around the “U” shaped area to give an older 1920’s feel. We met with a kitchen cabinet specialist at a discount customer cabinet company near us and she suggested that with the layout of our kitchen and size of appliances we would need custom cabinets. Hoping to get by with good quality stock cabinets. Would like to keep stove and sink centered on the walls but not 100% necessary.
Our big choices are should we make a large arched pass through from the wall above the stove to the bright sun room on other side (from appliance garage in current photo to door opening leaving above portion of wall there like a column) thus having a hood for our gas range that comes down into the opening, would going with 30” stove instead of 36” allow us to go with standard stock size cabinets, and do we have room for undercounter garbage or is it a waste of space since we have so little storage.
We will buy a hutch for the walll without cabinets to provide a little more storage.
We don’t like looking at the fridge from the dining room but but not sure if it can be moved.
Looking to go with a standard 36” sink and 36” wide fridge.

Comments (14)

  • 5 years ago

    Thank you for the advice here, any and all advice is welcome!

  • 5 years ago

    Hope the kitchen people chime in. I would not put a pass through arched or not over a stove

  • 5 years ago

    @jck910 for aesthetic reasons? We were thinking to add more light to room and also to allow a site line into the room where folks gather most

  • 5 years ago

    Are the measurements for the space available for cabinets (not including the door and window trim), or the total lengths of the walls?

  • 5 years ago

    @mama goose_gw zn6OH total wall length

  • 5 years ago

    If you account for 4" door trim on each side of the U, the stock base cabinets listed below should fit. The fridge measurement includes a 3/4" panel surround, and the 12" cabinet beside the range allows a counter overhang between it and the door frame. Even if stock cabinets aren't a perfect fit, you can use fillers wherever necessary.



  • 5 years ago

    Wow @mama goose_gw zn6OH thank you so much! This is starting to make sense!! Is the left corner cabinet dead space?

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    Yes, it's a void, but 27" to make sure the cabinets on each side will by pass the hardware on the perpendicular cabinet. I just noticed you have light switches beside the fridge, so the 18" cabinet to the right might need to be reduced to 15". If you search on 'trash pull-out under sink', you can find images, but you could make the 15" drawers to the left of the DW the trash pull-out. ETA, another reason to make the 15" cabinet a trash pull-out is that it won't need to be extended all the way to access a trash can, and since there will be only about 18" between it and the fridge door, it will either need to be a trash pull-out or a door cabinet.

  • 5 years ago

    Depending where you live, you may be able to get custom cabinets for similar price to better stock cabinets. We have the square glass windows in the top of our upper cabinets, and it really helped. We used an antique looking glass that obscures what's be behind it.

  • 5 years ago

    @seabornman thanks! Love that example!!

  • 5 years ago

    I e no pass through over stove for safety reasons

  • PRO
    5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    Encourage using drawer base cabinets (they hold so much); not cabinets with roll-out drawers.

  • 5 years ago

    Another vote against the pass through, for both aesthetics and safety. Also, a wall mounted hood will be cheaper and easier to put in than a ceiling mounted chimney. An insert style hood would make it easy to match the style of the cabinets, since the insert lives in a cabinet.


    You are lucky mama goose weighed in, she is probably the best kitchen planner on Houzz. I plan to use her design for my own kitchen.