Oh, I don’t want to spend much money on this. Let’s say total budget is $7,500. But I can DIY cabinets, plumbing, electrical, and most everything else, so that budget is just for appliances and materials (plus Ikea or RTA cabinetry if it is faster or cheaper than me building plywood boxes and installing built-to-measure doors and drawers.) No slabs of Calcutta marble in the plans :-)

I don't understand how you wrote the measurements on your plan. As an example, what is this supposed to mean?

I hope that wonderful range disappears to a good home. They don't make them like that any more!

You are removing the ette from kitchenette. This is a full blown kitchen - full fridge, induction burners, dishwasher, microwave, breville, albeit in a smaller space than what you are used to. You make an excellent case for why this is overkill. But, you seem eager for it so...

Figure out how much circulation area you need around the Breville. Build shelves where you can stack the microwave and Breville. Smart ovens are a bitch when it comes to countertop real estate. They take up a lot of it.

Search Manhattan U shaped compact kitchens and see what you come up with.

Sorry, my Sharpie sketch is bad. I’ll post a clearer plan drawing tomorrow when I’m at my computer.

When the space is complete it should NOT appear to be a kitchen.

Beverly, can you elaborate? What do you mean, “ should not appear to be a kitchen “?

I’m thinking - and maybe this is what you are saying? - it should look clean, simple, uncluttered, everything out of sight, the opposite of lived-in, in a word, “professional”.

I put the sketch into a CAD model with dimensions. I've added the planned wall and doorway. It just about 55 sf of available space.

Hope this is clearer. Sorry about the confusing sketch - when I do field sketches, I pick one corner as the origin and the other points are coordinates.

Here is one, not very creative, layout I thought of. The sink here is very small, like 12" wide. Microwave could go under the counter; maybe toaster oven too, with appropriate space for heat and airflow, and induction hob stored in a drawer. Looking in from the doorway, all you'd immediately notice is the stainless refrigerator and some anodyne counter + drawers.

If the adjacent space to the right of the kitchen is your office, where do you plan to put your desk and other items? I'm wondering if it would be better to have the kitchen doorway closer to the chimney end of that wall. It's just a few less steps through your office space to get to the kitchen and your L could be across the top and left sides of the kitchen space (like the rough mockup.) It might help to map out how that space will work while you work on the kitchen plan.

Or if possible you could create more of a separate office space by closing the wall between your office and the kitchen and putting the door on the bottom kitchen wall across from the window. Might not be worth the trouble of that, unless you ever need to have private meetings or secure files in your office.

Oooo that is an interesting idea chicagoans. Thank you for pushing me to think more creatively!

Here is a plan of the entire second floor, as-is. The kitchen is where the text "CHANGE OF USE" is. The chimney is that "9 sf" space.

I could reconfigure it like this:

This will be a little more work, but not much more. I was originally planning to do as little to the second floor as possible, just move in ASAP, but now I am leaning toward extending my current office lease for a bit and taking more time to remodel the second floor.

I've already decided to cut out the lower 18" of all the walls, so that my electrician can comprehensively rewire w/ 20A circuits, add receptacles, and get rid of any knob & tube remnants. I've torn out the gas fireplace in the living room/future conference room and the closet in the bedroom/future office. In for a penny, in for a pound?

So . . . if I did this, then the kitchenette becomes sort of a "galley" layout? I've redrawn it, using 30" fridge and 24" dishwasher, just to see if standard size appliances will work.

You know, in ten years when I retire and give the building to my daughter, it might make sense to convert the second floor back to residential, either a rental or she might want to live there. So i should think a little bit about how the plan could work for that, e.g. if an induction range could fit into that kitchenette to make it a complete if tiny kitchen. I probably won't be up to DIY as much by then, so changes would get more expensive.

I believe you are overthinking future use. Make the kitchen *adaptable* for future use, but that doesn't mean you have to make it usable in that way now. We have a kitchenette that we will have to make back into a full kitchen when we go to sell. (By coop rules.) We made sure we laid it out so a range can be included at that point in time but didn't include the range now.

Smart oven under counter - I'd want it closer to eye level as you have to look more at what you are cooking in a smart oven, moreso than say a microwave.

I like the option of the kitchen entrance from the bottom. It just seems like it would give you some flexibility in how the space to the right is used. Depending on how much room you want for the office vs kitchen, and how the space really lines up, you could do something like this too. What I'm unclear of is where that wall by the chimney really is in relation to the window, as it's a bit different on your kitchen mockups than in the overall view. The purple circled area is what I mean.

Thanks, chicagoans and Kendrah! The overall plan, done by my architect, is unfortunately a bit off. He has that window too small. My SketchUp drawing of just the kitchenette is correct. So I can’t move the new kitchen wall to the “right” without annexing that window.

I wasn’t going to install a range now, just have a space prepared to drop in a future range. Maybe I should move the refrigerator to the ” bottom “ of that run so the future range can be by the exterior wall for easier venting.

The counter space is so limited, maybe I can put the Smart Oven in the upper cabinets at eye level.