The New Kitchen - Part One

So the old kitchen was a disaster.  Even so, my original intent was to gut it and remodel in the same place, but with time (and a little thinking outside the box), a new plan emerged (albeit one that was going to take a lot longer to implement).

This is the initial floor plan, showing a bedroom abutting the living room.  Someone had already removed the closet from the room (there were telltale signs that one had been there); it may have been used as a study or den.  My initial plan was to use the space as my office.

I had planned to open up the old kitchen to the living room (had I kept it in the same place); the bedroom was much better suited to opening the kitchen up (and was also bigger than the old kitchen, a bonus!).  The new floor plan looks like this, with the future kitchen layout sketched in.  There will be a (Corian solid-surface) counter running the full length of the kitchen on the left, all the way to the far wall—12.5 feet, and no overhead cabinets.  The refrigerator will live on the right side, behind a new stub wall, and next to that there will be a five-foot wide commercial-grade stainless steel counter for bread and pizza-making.  Then the wall oven in a full-height cabinet, and finally more pull-out storage with a cubby for the microwave oven.  A new tall window will fill the space in the center of the far wall.

Because I thought I would be promptly redoing the kitchen, I bought new kitchen appliances right after moving to the house, so they've been sitting around for almost a year reminding me I don't have a real kitchen.  Still need to buy the dishwasher and the stainless steel counter (but those are bookmarked).

With the plan in hand, it was time for demo, and building the new stub wall (where the old door had been).

I really wanted counters that were higher than standard (I'm over 6'2"), and deeper.  I guessed 40" high and 30" deep, but to see if those dimensions were optimal, I built a rough stand-in counter to try out long term.  It's also become home for my temporary kitchen (microwave and toaster oven).  I've really enjoyed those dimensions a lot.

I mentioned that I was not going to have any upper cabinets over the counter on the left side of the kitchen (there is plenty of pantry space just across the hall).  On the right side, there would be floor-to-ceiling cabinets, but I wanted to avoid access issues for storage at ceiling level, which meant built-in soffits.  Putting these in early meant I could postpone cutting through the concrete slab to lay the drain pipe from the sink (hooray!).  The soffit above the stainless steel counter holds two recessed lights for that work area.

I'm currently working on putting the new windows in; that will be the subject of Part Two of the new kitchen saga.