Today I’m sharing a project in progress! My clients just closed on their new house and I’m sharing some of our design process for the kitchen. The house is in a development, which generally means you choose from the developers menu of options for house plans that fit the particular plot and from the menu of finish selections offered. This project allowed us a tiny bit more flexibility than usual in that we were allowed to customize the layout of the interior considerably.

My long-time clients are avid cooks and frequently host family and friends. They sold a large custom built family home and have been living in a vacation home for a couple of years, but were ready to build a downsized home closer to some of their children and grandchildren. They selected this development for the quality of the construction and brought me in early in the process to help them decide on both the lot and the plan.

Selecting a lot is incredibly important - while you can change all kinds of things about the layout and decor of a house, you can’t change the light! I wanted to be sure that the living areas where they would be spending most of their time got the maximum amount of light. We settled on a plan with a kitchen/great room across the back of the house with a lot where it would have a south-western light exposure, and the upgrade to 9’ ceilings that vault to 11’ in the great room and master bedroom allowing larger windows and a lot of light.

The plan was spacious feeling, but changes were needed. The kitchen was small and would be woefully inadequate to house the upgraded kitchen package they wanted.

The existing plan would be fine for a bachelor with a penchant for prepackaged and microwaved food, but not for a scratch cook. A Man, A Can, A Plan comes to mind…and I’m betting the original designer of the kitchen owned this cookbook, or at least a cupboard full of boxes of pasta, cereal, cans, and jars. And bags of chips, Oreos and dog food. Not that there is anything wrong with any of those things - I eat Oreos and chips occasionally too, but who else would need a huge pantry with comparatively limited counter space??

The plan also had an inefficient layout in the entry from the garage to the kitchen with a lot of wasted space. I knew if I could relocate the laundry, I could give them the kitchen of their dreams!

In addition to removing the inefficient space, I also removed a wing wall and increased the size of the kitchen window since that is the southern exposure and would flood the whole great room space with light. This rearrangement increased the size of the kitchen considerably and allowed us to increase the size of the island as well. The island will provide an excellent focal point for the kitchen from the great room and we were able to add the wine fridge that was on the wish list to the end of it. This placement keeps it out of the way of the cook and lets it easily serve the outdoor space and the bar area. Centering the island on the window allowed us to center the decorative pendants on the window as well.

Because my clients wanted the better appliances, they chose an upgraded kitchen package. This threw a bit of a monkey wench in the works because it also came with 2 additional ovens - one wall oven and one convection/microwave. We would have preferred a microwave drawer, but you pick your battles! The standard upgrade kitchen includes a tall oven cabinet to house these, so we explored the options of moving the stove hood onto the sink wall and adding the oven cabinet vs incorporating them under the counters.

In the end we opted for the under the counter option to keep the open countertop and the location of the stove and hood. We also reverted to a 3’ deep island rather than 4’ since we didn’t need the additional shallow storage and would gain the extra space in the dining area allowing the table to center on the window/door. Here are the cabinet company sketches for the final design.

It’s going to be a fabulous kitchen to work in! While we didn’t have choices about a lot of things I would normally specify, like outlet colors and placement, faucet style, etc,, it is exciting to see it all coming together! It is light, bright, beautiful, and functional. And most importantly, my clients are thrilled! We are waiting on some backordered appliances, but are beginning the process of finishing and furnishing the remaining spaces.

I was able to see the kitchen mostly installed this week when I went for the first visit after closing to measure for window coverings (we need those stat or they’ll be providing reality TV for the neighbors!) Here is my crappy iphone pic of the kitchen to give you a sneak peek. I can’t wait to get this project all done so it can be photographed - it is going to be a beautiful home!