Our Kitchen, Sneak Preview
We are getting ready to buy our cabinetry from Ikea tomorrow, so I thought I would show a quick sketchup rendering of what our design is going to be. Unfortunately since we are mac users at our house, we don’t have the nice Ikea kitchen planner, so some imagination is required. The basic layout goes like this. From left to right: 24″ 1 drawer 2 door, 36″ sink cab, 24″ dishwasher, 15″ 3 drawer, 36″ cooktop 3 drawer. Around the corner is a 36″ cab that will have 1 door 1 drawer, and a Lee Valley hardware blind corner unit. Lastly will be the oven cab with a oven micro combo. Everything will be abstrakt white, with white floors and white caesarstone counters. We’re still a little sketchy on the uppers and how to get them to fit best. There is 44″ between the wall and the oven cabinet, and then 8″ on the right side of the fridge. Any suggestions or input?
The view from the sink will overlook the living room. Should be great for entertaining.
Related posts:
Comments
24 Responses to “Our Kitchen, Sneak Preview”
Leave a Reply
Sponsors & Advertisers
-
To be honest I’m still a little nervous to go all white on everything. It seems like it will be an epic flop or an epic win…
Grrr…well, I’ve commented before here so I’m not a total stranger but I feel like (since kitchen’s are so expensive) I need to say something.
Quite frankly, I really don’t like this design at all. Specifically, here are my gripes:
- White on white on white:
I’m nervous too. With the price of Caesarstone, it’s a huge gamble and I’m afraid it will come across a bit more sterile and feel too cold.
- Refrigerator touching oven / micro cab:
I’m not a feng shui person, but this just feels wrong to me and looks tacky. It gives the impression that this layout was draft #1 and you stopped designing.
- Refrigerator backed into a corner:
On one hand the 8″ gap mitigates this but it also highlights. Aesthetically, it just looks “wrong.”
- Blank pass-through wall:
Your kitchen isn’t very big relative to the size of your home. A blank wall feels like a prodigal design choice, especially in light of how cramped the refrigerator / oven is. Also, I have the visual sensation of your kitchen leaning to the side with all the stuff; it feels very imbalanced.
With all that said, I’ve never stepped foot in your house. I don’t really have a feel for what lies beyond the kitchen walls. But, I think you can do a lot better than the present design.
Hope you don’t ban me from future comments
Stephen
White caesarstone white did you choose? I think we’re going with Blizzard white, but there are a couple of others that I think are nice too.
I think white on white on white can look great, as long as you put some color somewhere in there… countertop and tabletop accessories, clocks, pictures, rugs… that kind of thing.
I do agree with Stephen in once sense, that the oven and refrigerator should not be right next to each other. I realize appliances are insulated much better than they used to be, but I still don’t know if I’d be comfortable with it. I’d probably try to stick even a very narrow broom cupboard in between if you can. That said, it doesn’t look like you have a lot of room and may not have the choice.
sorry, I seem to be full of typos today
Thanks for putting your design out there. It’s not easy listening to criticism of something that you’ve worked hard on but, that said, it can lead to a better design in the end.
I agree with the earlier comment about the refrigerator wall. I seems a little jumbled. Maybe if the fridge were centered on that wall you could put the oven/micro cabinet in the corner for a more built in look. A deep cabinet over the fridge would tie that together, and connect to the wall cabinets on the other side.
Anyway, thanks so much for letting everyone in on this process. I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I’ve always wanted to follow an IKEA kitchen remodel from beginning to end, because that’s the price range I’ll be dealing with when I redo mine some day.
Thanks again.
Stephen, I do appreciate your comments, and you certainly won’t be banned. I take criticism very well.
To address some of your points. The white on white, I’m not going to defend to much. I know it’s way out there, but sometimes you just have to take a chance and dare to go out of the box a little. We will definitely warm it up with come colorful accessories…
The refrigerator/oven wall is a challenge. Because our house is small, we are trying to make room for both a kitchen and dining room in one area. The dining room table will go right underneath the window opposite of the sink cabinet. That was the only choice other than flipping the design so the sink was under the window. That leaves us a very small amount of upper walls for a refrigerator/oven. In fact the wall they are on is about the only place we could put them. We do plan on doing a cab over the fridge and a skinny cabinet to the right of the fridge. All cabinets will have a facade to the ceiling to close them all off. I am totally open to ideas of how to rearrange…
The pass thru is the wall I just took down a couple of months ago. It actually overlooks our staircase, which is in a sort of awkward location. The remaining amount of wall needs to stay in place for structural reasons. Not much we can change there.
April,
We are going with the blizzard. We liked the Silestone better but the local fabricator refuses to do the details we want to do…
Have you considered putting your oven beneath your cooktop? I think you will regret not having a full landing spot next to your refrigerator opening. Even though you are using Ikea, I would seriously go to home depot or lowes and see if you can get some design ideas from their cabinet people. They don’t have to know you’re not using their cabinets. I believe they still offer free design service. It doesn’t hurt to look at what they do and maybe incorporate some of their ideas into the look you want.
Your right Denise. Having the wall mount oven does throw a kink in the design..
I would recommend going to the Ikeafans website and posting this design and asking for ideas. The people who post there are really knowledgeable about IKEA cabinets and should give you some good feedback.
I will also state that I think the fridge in the corner and directly beside the oven is a bad idea. If you took Denise’s advice then you could center the fridge and have some counter space on either side.
Also, if you can find a friend that uses Sketchup they could do a full 3-D mockup of your kitchen with the color scheme. This might make you feel better. My guess is that someone on Ikeafans would also do it in the IKEA kitchen designer.
Just another thought. The only issue with your sink looking directly into your living room is that when you are entertaining, it becomes more difficult to hide your dirty dishes. This is why my wife and I did a tiered counter above our sink. She did not want people to see our dirty dishes.
If you want to check out our kitchen I have put a link in the website. We did a full remodel of our whole home about a year and half ago and our entire kitchen was IKEA cabinets.
Hey Creede –
Sorry man, but I have to agree that this layout looks problematic. I am not saying that my kitchen design is a one size fits all, but go to
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/photos/10240-kitchen-ikea-didnt-want-you-have-pics.html for some ideas.
I’d recommend a 30″ slide in stove facing the living room instead of the sink…. I spend more time cooking when guests are over than I do cleaning… plus, don’t you need to vent the sink? There’s no wall to run the vent!?
I would consider flipping the layout so the sink is under the window….. I know it ruins the idea of hangin’ with your peeps while cooking dinner, but you gain so much more – upper cabinets and a decent place for a fridge – perhaps against the remaining wall where the stair is. The thing about having a counter looking out to the L.R. is people want to stand there and watch you cook, but in your case they can’t do that ’cause there is a stair there! They are gonna be in your kitchen anyway…
Also, I just built a little cabinet run in my storage closet and used Aplad white. It’s really pretty nice and cheaper than the Abstrakt. It would be worth buying a door sample and seeing if you think it would work in your kitchen.
Good luck Creede! Thanks for your awesome website! I visit everyday!
OK I fleshed out the sketch to see if it helps people visualize it a bit more. (see last pic) Everyone let me know if it changes your opinion at all.
I know that you are ready to get on with the project, but please take some time to reconsider this design. Having the stove next to the fridge really does not function very well in real life. I have friends that have had this situation and hated it.
I’m also with Richie, consider putting the sink under either the window you are covering up with the oven cab or the big window. People want to hang when you are cooking not when you are using the sink.
Sorry, but it doesn’t change my opinion. The skinny cabinet to the right of the fridge will be very hard to access. Unless it is a pull-out the door will bump into the fridge (which will extend past it) or the wall.
I don’t mind the sink looking out into the family room, but I still think having the oven and fridge where they are is a mistake.
I would still probably agree with the folks suggesting you use a range/slide in stove and eliminate the separate wall oven.
First, kudos on being open to observations on your plan.
It’s also great that you opted for as many drawers as possible.
I’d have to see the whole floor plan to understand adjacent spaces better, but my first question is, what is along the wall that looks like it has a window or opening of some kind?
I’d like to offer my stab at a redesign (no charge!) if you’re up for it! (This is what I do all day, and with Ikea cabinets, to boot.)
It will be worth taking time to check out the options, in the long run.
Hi, long-time lurker & former kitchen designer putting my two cents in. With space the issue on the fridge wall, have you considered using Leibherr or Summit? In our kitchen we used a 24″ wide cabinet depth Summit commercial dual compressor fridge centered between two 15″ Ikea pantry cabinets. It was very reasonably priced ($1100), looks great and is 80″ tall so still provides plenty of space. If you pushed a smaller fridge over to the end of that wall you should have room for space between it and your oven/micro combo. Also, when cooking you will spend more time over the cook top than at the sink – something to keep in mind when planning your interaction with the living room. If your plumbing is already there I would leave it, but if you have to move it anyway that is something to consider.
Creede, I won’t go into the design to much, just wanted to let you know an interesting thing I learned on my last kitchen design. Those fancy dead corner shelves actually give you less storage than if you just left it a dead corner. Do the math on the square inches of usable storage space on the pull out corner unit and compare it to if you just used a standard drawer stack with nothing in the corner at all. Just a thought.
I LOVE white on white on white…but…I just put in white floors, and as an OCD germophobe, I’m regretting it! It shows everything, and I don’t even have a kid!
That being said, I do love the look, and drool over those types of designs when I see them. Can’t wait to see how it turns out!
melissa
Creede, I think the followup pictures and your response help me visualize and further explains your design.
You definitely face some big design challenges here.
Is there *any* other way to not have the dining room inside of the kitchen space? I do think there are some tweaks to be done to your existing design and it will “work” — but part of me thinks you should at least consider the following question: What’s preferable, a kitchin and dining that have mediocre (but passable) functionality, or the alternative of moving the dining area and having a GREAT kitchen?
If you keep going with the integrated kitchen here are some things I would do:
- Move to a single oven under the cooktop
- Move the microwave to a shelf option above and to the right of the cooktop (currently open shelving)
- Turn oven cabinet into more base cabinet + counter + upper cabinet
- Eliminate the 36″ fridge in favor of a 30″ single door style; in your kitchen it’s a game of inches and that extra 6″ on the fridge seems particularly wasteful. Turn the 8″ mini cabinet into a 15″, vastly more usable pantry.
Creede, many good comments so far. Our kitchen is currently ‘67 vintage, small, and we have been biding our time, saving, and tweaking for 3 plus years now. With the limited space one big item to save space we found is a range with a double oven, instead of a cooktop/double wall oven setup. While the latter is much more preferable, the savings, both $$ and space are quite hard to beat. I would also switch the cabinet to the left of the sink to a three drawer cabinet. We did our condo about 6 years ago, and had mostly drawers, and they really make the regular base cabinets seem a waste of space. I was constantly wanting to put drawers in my sink cabinet, up until we moved out.
I think the look is good, but I agree with the oven comments -won’t the heat from the oven be too much for the fridge to deal with, or at least increase power consumption a great deal- This could aslo shorten the life of you fridge if it has to work so so in warm temps
can’t wait to see the after shots!
ofifteen
‘designing your life’
http://ofifteenblog.blogspot.com
I just discovered your blog through design*sponge.
I haven’t read all the comments (so many!), so please forgive me if I’m repeating something someone else has said. I think you’re going to need a little more workspace. Have you thought about an island or a well-made cart in the center of the floor? It looks like you might have enough room, and you could gain storage space as well.
A contractor-friend remodeled my small kitchen last year. We used Ikea cabinets and hardware, and I love them.