Home Optimized: Kitchen Renovation Update

I’ve shared very little with you about our kitchen and all the ideas of how you want to proceed with it. Astecitally we don’t love the space but it’s so practical for our family (except for having a rug every where in the space where we eat) that we have taken a lot of the ideas from this space for what we want to integrate into the next kitchen. Everything has been so up in the air for the best way to proceed with it because of the funky layout. The space is made up of the original house and a addition added in the late 70s / early 80s. I took these photos to give you a feel for the space not to share my most beautiful styling. Almost every shot is horizontal so you can see how the house flows together.

It’s such a tricky space…it’s almost shaped like a T. The original house stopped right at the cookie jar and the start of the black cooktop. The rest of the kitchen the bottom of the photo above is built on a platform. The back of the house has seven sliding doors and it’s long and skinny like a bowling alley but is a step down from the original house.

There is no way the downstairs can be a single level without completely gutting it so we’ve just resigned ourselves to the fact that we need to work with the levels and make them look fabulous. I’ve been talking with the kitchen designer my parents used almost a decade ago (she did a gorgeous job on their kitchen). We just want someone to tell us if we are thinking about things the correct way… it’s not cheap to do a kitchen over and we don’t want to make any mistakes.

Let me walk you through the entire space that will see renovations:

The mudroom is a giant space but isn’t being practically used now but it’s where we enter the house 99% of the time. I’d love to put some silhouettes of the kids on the wall in the mudroom so they are the first thing people see when they enter into the space. We’d also love to put a glass door in the space so loads of natural light flood the area.

I’d love to see built in cubbies instead of the railing facing the door since there is so little storage in the little area at the door and a bench facing you in this shot and then replace the post with something that matches the beam above. We haven’t decided if this whole space will be tile or just a portion of it by the actual door and garage door.

This desk is the bane of my existence. It always seems to be the catch all for the kids and no matter what I try to do with the shelves it doesn’t look right. We have some ideas for that space now but it’s all up in the air depending on the kitchen layout.

We have some really great storage space that we use constantly in here. The door on the far left stores a lot of paint, the next door is the garage and the next two doors are coat closets. We’ve tossed around the idea of moving the laundry up from the basement to the area where we have some stuff stored from a rental now (this is real life… I didn’t clean up the toilet back for you. ;)).

I’m standing right by the coat closets to take these photos. We plan to extend the deck so that it goes until the end of the sliders on the right. Currently the two left sliders open and you’d fall out the door.

This door is the second entrance to the master suite. I’d love to see the air conditioner removed.

This shot gives you a great feel for how the platform extends into the back addition. One of the ideas we are tossing around would be a large island (at least 10 feet long) in the back part with the sink in it and the range on the fireplace wall and busting out the wall with the dark frame and putting an integrated fridge there.

The original kitchen ended at the empty cookie jar and the addition was built on a slab so it’s a step down. We’d like to have the step down halfway through this kitchen at the cookie jar, at the original end of the house. If it helps you to know how things flow you can see the navy and white office behind the kitchen, the mudroom is to the right and the half bath and dining room are to the left.

Everything feels so “orange” in this space. I’d love to paint the beams or cover them in something that’s the same finish as our kitchen chairs or this table we have in the living room. Our dining room table is also a very similar finish to these so that would further tie all these rooms together.

Possibly one of the things I’m most looking forward to are French door sliders. This will be a big cost item with seven sliders so it might not happen in the first phase of the renovation.

This area will either be where our sitting area and fireplace will be or we will put the kitchen table here. We may put just a few chairs here so leave the space more open or do loveseats. It all depends on the kitchen layout.

We plan on putting French doors and possibly sidelights in the spot where the windows are between the dining room and kitchen area. The dining room is the darkest room in the house and we need to bring as much natural light into as possible. I also ordered this chair to see if the coloring would be better for the dining room. There is something about our dining room and table that make our existing chairs have a pink-ish tint… it’s the weirdest thing because we never would have guessed that in the store.