Ideas to renovate a small galley kitchen

Hello,

We have a relatively small galley kitchen in a traditional-styple house. We are trying to get ideas on renovating it without increasing its footprint.

Of course, most kitchen renovation websites/books discuss larger (and more expensive/extravagant rooms).

Does anyone have ideas about where to find information about renovating smaller areas?

Thank you, Steve

Reply to
SGreenwood
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I've been there, had two houses with fairly confined kitchens. Never could figure out anything other than busting thru a wall and stealing some space elsewhere. How long is the kitchen ? Ours was 8 feet long, like a shotgun passage, really pointless.

Reply to
roger61611

There is a free kitchen planner on IKEA's website. At least you can try different things to see how they work.

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Reply to
BiffNightly

take dimensions to a big box like home depot they can show you different plans. you can end up with nice kitchen

Reply to
hallerb

My old house had a small galley type kitchen, but was efficient and had a LOT of cabinet and counter space. It was a "U" shape and nothing was more that a couple of steps away. My present kitchen is twice the size and has half the counter space.

Anyone selling kitchen cabinets can offer some suggestions. They do this to sell stuff so they do have some interest in helping you. Make a sketch of your room, take down some dimension, a few photos may help, and off to the store with it.

Big or small, you can apply some basics of efficient design to any kitchen. You want a 24" cabinet between the refrigerator and stove. You want the stove, fridge, sink, to be in a triangle for minimum distance. Think of the normal work flow. Take food out of the fridge, wash and chop veggies, then tot he stove to cook. Try to follow that line up when you can.

Wall cabinets with glass doors look very nice. The insides of most cabinets do not look so nice on a normal day so use the normal ones and save a lot of grief keeping up appearances.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

I'd just add that you should keep your galley a true galley and resist the urge to put in corners. If you lack space, you cannot afford the dead spaces that corners create.

Over-the-range microwave hoods can save space as well. Big, deep drawers that extend out fully give you more storage space, and avoid the two step dance of opening lower doors and then pulling out a shelf. And for a little more space, extend cabinets to the ceiling (if your ceiling isn't too wavy or uneven.

Reply to
mike

But nowdays there are cabinets with pull-out shelves (or, I have a corner unit with pull-out shelves, and pull-over shelving into the space that can be reached with the pull-out shelves out). Granted, I use this space to store less-used items. But that space isn't necessarily wasted.

Yes. Pretty standard, actually.

I recently had my small galley kitchen remodelled, extending the cabinet trim to the ceiling made a swoop in it a bit too obvious. Something to consider.

Other hints - get a side by side refrigerator - opening the fridge door in a galley kitchen forms quite a block. Even with my side by side, with my 14 year old parked in front of it with the doors open half the time, it might as well be a wall ;-) Glad I didn't get a full door. It may be worthwhile to invest the $$$ and tolerate the smaller cu. ft. of a cabinet-depth fridge - sometimes I wish I had. What I have visually extends a bit too much into the floorspace past the cabinets, too.

See if the same flooring can be extended out of the galley, like into a dining or family room area, to make the small galley look like less of a small space (some continuity).

With that kind of layout there was a pretty clear tradeoff between sink size and configuration and countertop space. I went for a single D-sink, the D-curve gives more sink front to back while allowing the faucet to be installed in a "corner" for a standard depth counter and cabinet. With more space, I would have certainly gone for a double sink, but with the dishwasher I dont' miss it as much as I thought. Having more counter space between it and the stove definately was the right choice, I would have had to cut into that for more sink.

I got a great floorplan from the kitchen speciality outfit that provided my cabinets. Went through a wall, not to extend the kitchen, but to open up to the pretty family room. Overall a great result. Very efficient and pretty too. You don't have to go growing your kitchen just because the home TV shows are pushing it.

Cheers, Banty

Reply to
Banty

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