With no room for a dishwasher, cramped storage and a serious lack of food prep space, this kitchen was long overdue for a makeover. The new streamlined design integrates the kitchen and eating areas, provides miles of countertops, and plenty of cabinets to hide away clutter.
The homeowners worked with the Portland, Oregon-based design build firm Vanillawood to transform their small, dated kitchen. Knocking out a wall opened up the room and gave James and Kricken Yaker, the husband and wife team behind Vanillawood, an opportunity to reimagine the kitchen's layout. Gone is the cramped square box. In its place they installed a spacious galley-style kitchen, with a sink, new dishwasher and food prep area on one side and the stove on the other. This arrangement offers a better workflow and tons of valuable counter space. Extra windows allow natural light to spill into the formerly dark room.
The genius addition to this kitchen is the stair-stepped island that houses both the stove and a casual dining area. To seamlessly connect the cooking and eating areas of the island, the Yakers designed a custom Corian countertop with a waterfall edge on one side and a table on the other. The wide white table highlights the owner's vintage chairs, which were salvaged from the dining area's previous incarnation, and work perfectly in the new kitchen. Simple Ikea cabinets offer ample storage and the glass subway tiles from Ann Sacks on the back wall add a hint of color to the otherwise simple wood and white palette.
(Images: Ty Milford)
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Is it insanely tacky for me to ask how much this cost? I don't need to know the cost of appliances and flooring, but just the basics like to take down the walls and re-route the gas and water lines. The first kitchen is almost exactly like ours and we aim to do something sort of similar to the "after," opening up the flow of the house and making the living room brighter with the added window light.
Also, it goes without saying but WOW, amazing job! ;)
I love the step down island, I'm not a fan of barstools and counter height seating, so the fact that they have regular height seating is pretty neat
Wow - I love it.
Like @CLODE, I'm working toward a kitchen remodel that will hopefully be much like this one. An idea of costs would be so helpful. Also I'm curious about using a dedicated design firm versus design-build. Thanks!
Aw, poo, I hate it when before and after photos are taken from different angles. The after is lovely, but I don't really have a good frame of reference on how it all looked before from that one lonely before photo. When it's so hard to figure out how the before and afters relate, why even bother to include the before? :(
Ah wait, I think I can see now that the 4th after shot sort of lines up with the before, yes?
Beautiful! Love how bright and open it looks!
I think this is lovely too but I'm curious as to why the windows are so high on the back wall. I HAVE to have a window view above a work space for my own sanity. Perhaps the owners are tall?
Mandy here, from Vanillawood! Thank you for all your nice comments on this kitchen remodel! To answer @Lazy_Lurker and @Clode: A general range for a budget on a kitchen remodel similar to this is anywhere between $30,000 - $50,000. This particular remodel included removing a load-bearing wall & adding structural support in the ceiling, so about 1/3 of the costs are for unseen structural changes. This general $ range is determined by finish selections (tile, hardware, countertop,etc.), cabinetry, lighting & appliances. @Carolyn'sKitchen, we kept the general foot-print of the window above the sink & mimicked it for consistency in design on the additional window we added to the right. Hope our feedback helps. Thank you again!
@Lazy_Lurker- we could talk for hours about the benefits of design-build versus design only! We are happy to answer any questions you may have & provide feedback, so feel free to give us a call if you are interested. Thanks again!
i love that painting in the fourth picture! any idea who the artists was or where i can find one?
Wow, very nice re-do. It looks so much better but also so much more practical and more functional. Nicely done!
@Kort, the client painted the piece himself- he is an artist! If you'd like more information, feel free to call our studio at 503-327-8065.
Super nice but I too would like to see a before and after of the same shot in the same angle.
I like it, but have to say I'm totally not crazy about the island/table combo for my own usage. It would drive me nuts not being able to move the table around.
I gasped - what a transformation! I love the island with the lower table...ahhh - the whole 'after' is exactly up my alley.
Mandy from Vanillawood - what is the name of the counter top - beautiful!
People do this sort of layout all the time with movable tables. It can be done with legs that fold or come off, or with locking wheels, so the table part can be moved when a different use of space is wanted. When the cooking appliances are on another wall, the entire appliance-free island is sometimes movable. A galley style kitchen can be very flexible. Here, where no such movability is needed or wanted, there's no reason to include it.
This transformation is great. Taking that wall down totally opens the space up. I so wish I'd used a design firm to flesh out and shape the ideas in my head. I made so many mistakes that could have been avoided, by in the very least having a consultation.
Well when you are able to knock out a wall, you can do anything.
Really nice! Is that a typo or did all of the cabinets come from IKEA?
@Star Princess- the countertop is Corian. It's a fantastic product!
Whoa! My only little tiny critique is that I wish the subway tile went all the way up to the windows.
Mandy from Vanillawood - which IKEA cabinets did they use and what color are they? We are in the process of a kitchen remodel and went to IKEA to look for cabinets in this color way and couldn't find any with plain cabinet fronts. thanks!
@Cort - We did a very similar project last year. We had a very small kitchen and we expanded by removing walls and combining it with a pantry and a mudroom. There was structural work, new flooring, and new plumbing that ran $50k. By the time we did the cabinets, appliances, windows, etc it was close to $90k.
Hi Mandy - I meant what is the name of the color of corian? I love it - glacier white?
Hi Kikabu- The ikea cabinets are the series "Nexus" in the brown color option.
Hi Star Princess- yes, the color is Glacier White. We love it too :)
No room for a dishwasher!? The horror!
This is simply gorgeous!
Ditto on the regular height dining area – I'm a short person, and I simply hate climbing on barstools...not graceful at all.
Saved this in my dream kitchen archive :)
Great transformation, and imaginative use of space, particularly island-cum-dining-table. Makes me wish I had gone to Ikea for our cabinets rather than spend a fortune on custom built ones!
I like how they reused .... the light bulbs. I bet the light bulbs survived from the "before" kitchen.
This doesn't look finished yet -- it feels like what the contractors have done, a week before the humans arrive to live in the house. The paintings are good but other than that I'm starved for something to look at. Even the lonely accents on the shelves are so self-effacing that it's hard to tell what they are, and the migrating driftwood/ikebana thing is not exactly a visual anchor. I admire the effort and money, but the result looks like a store's cabinet showroom. Weird to have all that counter space, and yet no room for the toaster.
The caption says, "Glass subway tile from Ann Sacks adds a hint of color to the back wall." The word "hint" needs to be preceded by the word "grudging."
The wide white table highlights the owner's vintage chairs, which were salvaged from the dining area's previous incarnation, and work perfectly in the new kitchen.
... those chairs are the ikea gottfrid... and they were available as late as 2006. ಠ_ಠ
The after looks good. I like it, though I can't see all the faults in the before picture, even if the upper cabinets were oppressive. The before looked kind of cute, though.
I agree with bee for brian, and everyone who says that it's not really a "transformation" if there's nothing left from the original (not even walls!)