I'm planning on rebuilding my kitchen at some point in the near future. But there are a few design and layout issues that I'm having a bitch of a time resolving, so I'd like to ask for your help and/or suggestions.
Right
now, I have a dining room and a kitchen that are separated by a short stairway.
I'd like to tear down the wall that separates them, and turn then into one large
eating-and-cooking area. However, there's a set of stairs that gets in the way.
The image to the right is a floor plan of the kitchen as it is right now (and
clicking on it will bring up a larger JPEG of the plan in a new window).
As you see, there's a three-foot-wide section that separates the kitchen from the dining room area. To go down the stairs, you must enter through the door (A), go down a sort flight of steps (B) to a landing (C), then turn right and go down the last flight of steps (D).
This is, frankly, a really lousy design. The two doors at A are always in in danger of banging into one another. The stairs themselves are sort of flimsy, and the L-shape makes it very difficult to move large things into the basement.
And the kitchen itself is pretty cramped. I've created a perspective image of the kitchen's current layout to give you an idea of how things are arranged. It's actually worse than this looks-- my cabinets were made by the previous owner, and believe me, they don't look as nice as the cabinets in the picture.
My basic plan is pretty simple. First of all, the stairs in the house originally ran downwards left-to-right in the areas marked C and D. (In other words, there was a door where the stove is now, and that led to the stairs to the basement.) So re-establishing the stairs in that area is certainly feasible.
I plan on removing the walls marked E and F. F was obviously built by the previous owner-- it's just 2x4s and drywall. But wall E is an original wall, all lath and plaster. I'm pretty certain that it's not a load-bearing wall, since it's not resting on a joist, but I will have a structural engineer check it to make sure I can tear it down.
This will leave me with a large, open area, with a set of stairs running along one wall. Here's a perspective picture of what I'll have to work with:
That stiarway does create a problem. I could have it enclosed with walls around it, as was done in the house originally. But I'd very much like to keep the room as open as possible. So, I'm considering building a counter that would sit on top of the staircase, with a countertop and front that would swing open when people needed entry to the basement. (There's a small mistake in these pictures-- on that rear wall, it looks like there's two doorway openings. The one on the left is a window, about four feet from the floor.)
But here's where I run into a small problem. You see, I have a hard time deciding on a decent layout. I could run the cabinets along the wall with the stairs, and have a peninsula facing the dining area. Or, I could have a peninsula coming out from the corner into the dining area. Or... well, I can't make up my mind.
Here are a few images of very rough drafts I've done with the design program.
I'm looking for suggestions. If you click here, you'll get a JPEG of the blank floor plan. If you have Broderbund's Total Home 3d, you can also download the data file I use for designing. I don't need suggestions for lighting and cabinet styles-- I know I'll probably go with green walls with Craftsman/Greene-and-Greene-style cabinetry. I'm looking for suggestions for the layout of the major appliances and work areas.
Oh, one last thing. I'm not a big fan of Total Home 3D. Most home design programs are, frankly, garbage, but this one has a nice selection of design elements and its graphics aren't glaringly pixellated. It also crashes a lot.
Copyright 2000-6 Brian Siano
(unless otherwise noted)
