A kitchen, in spray paint.
At some point, when planning a kitchen renovation, you need to lift your head out of the daze of scrolling Pinterest, and the stacks of ELLE Decor UK and Dwell and actually, you know, plan your kitchen. I've told you all about buying a house, plunging into renovations, and tearing down plaster by the bucketful. Now, back to the kitchen itself — how in the world does one go about planning a kitchen renovation? How do you actually make decisions? What to put where, how many drawers and cabinets, where to install the sink? Well, I don't know how other people make these sorts of rather scary decisions — I can only tell you how we did.
Looking towards the back of the house during demolition, and before the addition was put up.
It's very simple really. We went to the playground and sketched it all out in chalk. Presto — kitchen planned.
OK, OK maybe we should start a little farther back.
Our Kitchen Planning Process
So, everyone comes to the process of planning a kitchen differently. Lots of people remodel in a fairly constrained space. My parents, for instance, were remodeling a kitchen at the same time as us, and they didn't want to move the sink or refrigerator. They kept their floorplan fairly similar to save money and for practicality. Other people keep their cabinets and just reface and refinish with new countertops and appliances.
But we were creating a whole new space — a brand new, wide open kitchen. Where do you even start when in this (very lucky, very exciting) situation?
A brand-new space — something actually feels like it's happening now!
Quite frankly, I had a fairly clear idea in my head of what I wanted. Years of editing kitchen tours and trawling the internet for smart kitchens had to pay off sometime (finally).
I shared some of my style inspiration already, but I should also add that I loved the open galley format, with cabinets lining one wall, and a huge island between the main cook's space and the dining area. I like the functionality of the galley layout, with the fridge, oven, and stove in a line, and the sink in the island. We wanted the kitchen to be open to the dining area, and I also wanted to be able to stand at the stove and look outside into the (as yet imaginary) garden.
I wanted the kitchen to feel open, spacious, and filled with light. I also wanted the stove on the wall, and the sink behind me, with plenty of space for my husband to do dishes while I cooked.
So this is what we planned out, first sketching the basic shape in the big square box we were adding on to the house, then filling it in piece by piece in IKEA's addictive, torturous little piece of kitchen software. I moved cabinets around, nudged the sink, bumped the stove, measured aisle space, until I finally found a layout that seemed to work.
Lots of space — what to do with it?
The Kitchen Designer?
But wait — what about a kitchen designer? What if we accidentally laid out something wrong? What if we made a huge mistake? Well, we didn't have the budget to hire a kitchen designer. We had an architect on our project who drew up the plans and helped us finesse and visualize the materials in the kitchen. He also confirmed our measurements, helping us feel more confident about the dimensions and space. I also have to give a shoutout to Susan Serra who gave me a bit of free advice over email and was so encouraging about our design.
The takeaway: In the end, you live with your kitchen. You need to find a layout that you love and that you know will work for you. But it is also really invaluable to have feedback from people who are used to thinking about the corner radius of your island and the minimum walkthrough space (a kitchen aisle should be at least 42 inches wide).
Sketching out the plans at the playground.
Pacing Out the Kitchen
And then, after all that, yes, we took our plans and our tape measure to the playground and paced it out in chalk. This was so helpful — really walking through the kitchen, drawn out in chalk on the playground.
Later, after our addition was built, we spray-painted the outline of the cabinets on the subfloor again, to walk through it one more time and make sure all the measurements lined up.
Taking the design of the kitchen off the page and into the real world was really important for us in feeling confident about our decisions and moving into the next phase of buying cabinets, and putting it all together.
(Images: Faith Durand)
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"IKEA's addictive, torturous little piece of kitchen software"--ha, perfect description!
We had a kitchen designer who came up with the most fantastic use of my space. We had to move a wall to accomodate my stacking washer/dryer and found that all the electircity for the entire house ran through that wall. Also, discovered why the kitchen in the west side of the house here in AZ was so hot in the summer.....no insulation in that west wall!!!!! So, be prepared for surprises and make room in the budget for such additional expense. This ment we had to tear out the whole wall, insulate and then redo the wall. Much cooler now!! Great pictures and have enjoyed your commentary.
Renovating my kitchen was the most stressful year of my life. The planning stage wasn't too bad but actually doing it was crazy. The decisions are almost petrifying. So much to pick out and you can't just go out and buy new countertops if you decide you don't like them. Anyway, I chronicled my reno on my blog thehouseofy.blogspot.com. I am so pleased with the results but hope not to do it again any time soon! Good luck.
We did exactly the same thing, but with the whole ground floor: pegged out the foundation footprint, then spraypainted in the walls. Once we had the building envelope, my genius husband built "worktables" that were the same dimensions as the kitchen cabinets, so my visualizationally-challenged self could get a good sense of the space. One thing you can't predict is how much drywall and paint changes the light in a room!
Before we moved into our house, we used the wide open floors of our loft to painter tape the layout of the kitchen. We had done everything on paper in 1/4 scale, but until we taped it full size on the floor in our loft did we realize a breakfast table would actually not fit in the small space. Well, it would have fit for my daughters dolls.
I love the chalk on playground idea!
When we did our kitchen, after pulling everything down to the studs (we kept the floor) we got boxes, and construction paper the color of the counters, and aluminum foil to represent the stainless steel and built a life-size model in the space and then walked around it for a week or so. I have trouble looking at a 2 dimensional drawing (or any drawing for that matter) and sensing how it will feel so having the actual "bulk" in the space really helped me. After nearly 20 years it still makes me happy every time I walk in there and I still get compliments from folks who see it for the first time.
oooh, chalk on the playground is brilliant. I'm going to tell my husband (an architect).
That's it, I am officially addicted to these daily updates. Faith, this must become a regular item on AT - I can hardly wait until the next day to find out what happens next! Pretty please?
the smartest thing we ever did in our Kitchen Reno was a complete accident! we tore out all the cabinets for a complete redo with IKEA. here is the thing about IKEA: those vignettes that you see in the store? they didn't seem so big in the store (because of all that open space) but when you get home, it can be a different story. like so many people i know, i love their big, spacious islands & knew i wanted that too. so when we tore out our old cabs, we rearranged all of them in our space just like the new IKEA kitchen was shaping up to be (we'd not finalized or purchased anything yet). an entire wall of old cabs that was now going to be floor-to-ceiling windows, got re purposed as our makeshift island (complete with OSB top & faux cardboard sink). turns out that 48" wide island in the store was going to impede flow in my kitchen. so what looked okay on paper, turned out to be a bad idea in reality. but this "dry run" helped us reconfigure some cabs & resize the island to something just as functional but more appropriate! we lived with this for about 3 months & it saved us so much time & effort. 2 years later, i have NO complaints about my kitchen layout & even have 2 cabs that have nothing in them after pairing down some stuff as well!
I love the ideas you have for walking through the plan... literally. That has got to be the best way to test it out before everything is underway.
I would look up the NKBA design guidelines and run your plan through them to make sure you haven't missed anything terribly critical. And adding any ideas you hadn't thought of. There are other sites that offer the top rules or guidelines to follow. I would take a look around at those until you stop finding improvements to your plan. Do a google search on 'kitchen rules' or 'kitchen guidelines'. The wikipedia entry on the work triangle has some good references and links.
Keep us posted on what you learn through the process.
I think creating a mockup with cardboard, chalk, or painters tape is a great way to test out spacing (along with consulting NKBA guidelines as sarajanie suggested). Once you have the design in place, there are a number of ways to streamline the actual renovation and install. The Design Coach Guide to Kitchens(http://cavdesign.com/shop/product/design-coach-guide-to-kitchens) has great info on layout and materials, as well as printable templates and checklists to lead you through a step by step. And yes, be prepared for surprises -- no matter how well you plan, there will always be an unexpected challenge.
We also spray painted a layout on the floor when installing our new kitchen. I love reading your renovation story. Thanks for taking such good pictures along the way.
Great walk through on your thinking! Another way to think about it - or any space for that matter - is how you really use it. Ie. Are you right-handed (wash/rinse left to right? dishwasher on right of sink?). Who's doing what in the kitchen at any given time? Where you want food stored vs. dishes. What about guests? Can you set up barware/fancy glasses outside of the cooking zone so they don't impede at parties when guests want to "help"? Etc. etc. It's so much fun to recognize that good design can actually help the flow of your daily life.