The Plan - Layout

It took us about a year to seriously decide on a layout for the new kitchen and the looming expiration of an IKEA kitchen sale to push us to make the move. Since it's a weird shape and pretty small, after many drawings on scrap pieces of paper, we decided to stick with a very similar layout with a few minor adjustments. Yeah, not that exciting.

We kept the appliances on the right side of kitchen in basically the same spots. The stove and sink are the same locations, but the dishwasher moves over a bit to be next to the sink. The big change for that side of the room are for the cabinets that are under the window at the end of the kitchen - they are gone! and the kitchen goes to a true galley layout. With the cabinets under the window gone, we will be able to have a better view of the backyard - primary to make sure that the dog isn't eating a squirrel or a rabbit. 

You'll also notice that we are living on the edge with having no uppper cabinets flanking the stove and no microwave/fan combo (more on that below). I know, CRAZY! Depending on how it goes, we may add open shelving to that wall if we need more storage. What we are adding, are two 24" wide drawer cabinets for plates, bowls, pots, and pans.



Now for the other side of the kitchen! In the picture below, we have the fridge, a pantry, and then an upper and lower 12" wide cabinets. Our microwave will be going into the pantry to keep the counter tops free of appliances.

Due to code regulations, we have to change the swing of the door that currently goes over the mudroom steps (located near that upper/lower cabinet. It's the ivory door that you can see here) and have it swing into the room which eats up precious kitchen space. In order to make it work, we are going to switch the location of the fridge and pantry from the rendering above's layout and hopefully still be able to get a shallow depth bottom cabinet in there too. By switching the fridge and pantry, we will not need to have 7 inches on the left side of the fridge (for the filler strip) to be able to open it fully and will only need 2 inches for the pantry doors to open against that wall.

I'm depending having that single upper and lower cabinet for the coffee maker and baking supplies as well as having a home for an USB outlet above the counter top. Since the room has been gutted, we have done a lot of double and triple checking our measurements and it will be close. Fingers crossed it works!