Today we put in the toe kicks, and base boards, no pictures of that. Boring!
So here are shots of the cabinet doors and drawer fronts installed. Not adjusted yet but they fit good as is so far.
Near the sink.
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The 35" x 128" pony wall revision with 12 large drawers.
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Before adding the drawer pulls and where the refrigerator WAS. This was the whole point of the project. With the refrigerator in this spot my wife had an 18" wide counter top to the left of the range. Now she has
58" and 6 drawers.
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A closer detail of how the doors and drawers look.
It all looks great. Nice job on the doors and drawers.
We're still trying to figure out where to put the fridge. I mocked up a couple of locations with a 2 x 4 frame covered with a sheet, just to get a visual. Every idea we tried results in a blocked view or huge loss of cabinet/counter space or some other negative issue.
It's a small 1950's kitchen and SWMBO is starting to understand what I've been telling her all along: We may not like where the stove and fridge are but there's a reason they are where they are. It's the only place that results in maximum cabinet/counter area.
I've even called a couple of kitchen design places and they all agree with me. While rearranging things may make the kitchen look "prettier", the loss of storage/work space is something we have to consider. Is it worth the sacrifice just to please our sense of design?
I redesigned out first kitchen about 34 years ago, and now this one.
Something to consider. On the first kitchen it was an apartment style kitchen with a narrow path that wound around an elevated "L" shaped bar. I eliminated the "L". That enabled me to end that section with just a straight counter top, minus the L. And that opened up a wide path to enter the kitchen. I added an 11' counter top opposite the counter that had the L. We doubled maybe closer to tippled our counter space.
I was at a friends house last night and they have have a small kitchen and much of it is like yours, designed about as good as it gets given the restraints.
They have a dual level house, you climb the porch stairs up about 5' tall, go in the door and then immediately go up another 4' or down 5'. This was a trend 35~40 years ago.
Anyway at the top of the stairs is the Living room, relatively large with a fire place. Further back the living room goes into a narrower space to become the dining room. On the back left side of that space is a doorway that goes immediately in to the kitchen.
"IF" they clocked their dining room table 90 degrees and eliminated the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room the kitchen could expand into the dining room.
Food for thought, can you eliminate a kitchen wall and expand out into another room?
My kitchen (single story ranch, circa 1976) is shaped like a dogleg. One end of the dogleg is the door to the garage, the other end opens into the dining room. DR and LR are one large space spanning the width of the house.
Basic working organization is the traditional triangle; sink-gas stove-refrigerator.
California granite countertops, ceramic faux wood-plank tile floor (extending into LR/DR/hallway); recessed copper single-basin sink, with bay window behind sink. Glass walls. Cream-colored cabinets, several with glass fronts all slow-close. Lots of drawer space. Swing-out shelves in the corner base cabinet. 36" reefer, wine fridge and drybar. Over-under wall-mount microwave and electric oven (smaller than the gas oven in the Technogas range). Pull-out vertical spice racks on either side of the range in the floor cabinets.
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The previous owner had done a complete remodel and spared little expense - self-closing cabinets and drawers with quality slides. He removed a skylight and added the bay window. Great undercabinet lighting (even has USB ports for chargers). Nothing really for me to do to make it better (other than finishing the incomplete wiring for the undercabinet lighting).
Maybe but the house is pretty much a rectangle and the first story is the same size as the second story, directly on top. The second story does not change the footprint.
I was hoping that you had a pic of your kitchen. ;~)
Sounds great! I went with self/soft close side mount drawer slides, Dura Close from Hardware Resources. I use those on a kitchen redo 2 years ago and was pretty impressed by their closing mechanism. I have had issues with KV G-Slide slides not wanting to close all of they way when the capture pin that pulls the drawer completely closed wears out. The Dura Close uses a larger steel T shaped capture pin.
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I have looked at soft close cabinet doors but I use Blum Euro hinges that attach to the inside edge of the face frame as opposed to a bracket inside and on the cabinet side. Those transfer the strain of the soft close to the cabinet carcass. My fear with using a soft close hinge that attaches to the face frame is that some one pushing the cabinet door closed, faster than the soft close hinge is designed, could place excess strain on the FF. Nothing proven there just a long term concern.
I use LED ribbon lighting that self sticks to the bottom of the cabinets. I bought this from Lee Valley 10-11 years ago and they have worked well. We leave them on 24/7 to help with negotiating a trip to the kitchen during the night for a drink. You don't reuse them after 10 years so I bought more ribbon and a bigger transformer, this time from Amazon, same brand, for less.
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If the your cabinets are prefab, not built on site, you likely have narrow gaps between the cabinets and behind the face frames, assuming you don't have frame less Euro style cabinets. You can run your wires in those spaces.
Sure, if we want to give up some of the already too-small the living room. Plus it’s a load bearing wall, which of course *could* be dealt by adding a beam. Rerouting the 4 HVAC ducts and 2 returns should be a breeze too. ;-)
In the end, all it would do is make the living room narrower and the kitchen wider. It wouldn’t add any more counter space or room for an appliance.
I’ve got 2 “designers” from local kitchen remodeling places coming over on Thursday to confirm what I already know. There always the chance that they’ll see something that I’m missing, like a certain style of fridge that will fit (and open) in a spot that I don’t see or something like that. My gut feeling is that we’ll end up leaving the kitchen layout just as it is. New appliances, new countertop, the new doors/drawer fronts that I’m working on and we’ll be done.
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