New kitchen layout!

When we last left off, I was talking about the good and the bad of this little farmhouse.

After getting a brilliant idea at 2:00 in the morning, I was a little hesitant to share it because it involved some MAJOR reconstruction. But it was too good not to share.

And thankfully, my husband went for it! He could see that the public spaces in this new layout were much more open, which is what we usually shoot for in a renovation. 90% of the time, a family is together in the living room or kitchen. Bedrooms can still be a small space and serve their main purpose. We chose this arrangement for our library renovation and it worked really well.

Here's what the new layout looks like now.

You can see that the living room is virtually unchanged, except for the new door into the library space. We opened up the wall that was there dividing the living room to the bedrooms and put the new kitchen/dining space there. To the right, in the old dining room/kitchen space, we will have an office and a bedroom. The office/bedroom will be on the smaller side, but that's a conscious decision we are making to get a more ideal kitchen space.

This layout is so much better! The backyard is where will spend most of our time, so to have a connection to the backyard with the kitchen is great. There are still little tweaks that need to be made...table layout, pantry cabinets layout, but the main kitchen area is set.

Here are a few quick renderings that can give you a glimpse of the new space. The island needs to be tweaked and so does pantry cabinets. I'm thinking of having more of an open coffee/bar area in the middle to open up those cabinets. But it's really great to get more of a feeling of how the space will look.

I've designed this kitchen for maximum form and function. We've got an assembly line on the sink wall with the trash can to the left of the sink, then sink, then dishwasher and then tall cabinet to put away dishes. When you've got upwards of 7 people in the kitchen at once, things get very tight!

I'm still deciding on exact paint colors and I'm dying to use this Tabarka tile somewhere.

When I added it to the backsplash, it seemed to fall flat with the color I've chosen for the main cabinets (Farrow and Ball School House White). I had it mocked up in Chief Architect and it just wasn't doing it for me. And this is why we mock designs up!

I'm still deciding between inset cabinetry and full overlay. I love the look of inset cabnetry, but I just don't know how it will hold up to my large family. The British designers almost exclusively use inset cabinetry, so it must be okay!

Here's an example of inset cabinetry from my favorite kitchen designers, deVOL kitchens.

Kitchens are some of the hardest rooms to design, because there are so many details to work out. They are also one of my favorite rooms to design! Having a beautiful functional kitchen really is a pleasure in life.