I’m writing this series of posts to document what went into our 2015 kitchen remodel. I don’t suffer from delusions of grandeur or a particularly acute case of narcissism. I just want to make sure anyone who shares an interest in projects like this gets an opportunity to understand what we did, why we did it and how we did it. This is one of our bigger undertakings for a number of reasons and if you are reading this, you must appreciate what it takes to get through a project like this one. This is for you.
We sunk time and effort into this project for 10 years before the first hammer swung. We knew when we bought the house that the kitchen would require remodeling and we talked about it off and on for years. We would make a sketch, leave it for a few months or even years, then come back and see whether it still had legs. Modifications were made, left to ferment, tinkered with, set aside, tweaked and tickled, sometimes scrapped entirely, over the course of a decade. It was a long-term, slow-growth, process.
Full disclosure: I’m brimming with pride over this project. I’m not proud just of the outcome, which I believe is some of the finest design and execution you will find anywhere at any price, but I’m proud of how we managed the chaos, solved problems on the fly, and stayed (for the most part) positive and invested.
No compromises
I adopted this as my mantra for this project. I repeated it often to myself and to the few people I hired to help. Anyone who has ever built anything knows this is unrealistic. I have no doubt that Solomon himself made compromises when building his temple. Nevertheless, it is a functional and valuable ideal. Every design decision, every material selection, every fixture, every joint and every finish was measured against “No compromises”. We made compromises of course, but reaching for the ideal ensured we always got as close as was realistic.
The Existing Kitchen
We purchased a 20+ year-old house with lots of features we like and a fairly terrible kitchen. Based on a typical U-shape, the builder managed to place everything- the fridge, range, sink and prep space- badly. Here’s the arrangement from left to right around the U: Beginning on the left, the fridge. The advantage of being at the top of the U is that appliances of just about any width will fit. That’s the only advantage. Next to the fridge (I mean touching it) was the range. This was a terrible arrangement for many reasons, only one of which was that the range was flanked by a wall (the side of the fridge). The fridge and range made up the entire left side of the U.
Next to the range, at the bottom of the U, was 24” of counter space just to the left of the kitchen sink. On the right side of the sink, and completing the bottom of the U, was another 24” of counter space under which resided the dishwasher. Next came the right side of the U- a 6 foot by 3 ½ foot peninsula poking out into the room. This peninsula was, no doubt, intended as prep space, but it was about 7 feet from the fridge and the range. Running back and forth across the kitchen was wearisome. As a practical matter, the entire usable kitchen was limited to the space from the fridge to the sink. That included a meager 24” of countertop prep space.
All U-shaped kitchens suffer from the same problem of containing inside corners. Inside corners are a cabinet-maker’s bad dream because of the vacuous and marginally-accessible space they create. Our kitchen was not designed to allow for the common lazy-susan solution to inside corners. The inside corner next to the range was just a massive dark hole into which we shoved things we could obviously have lived without. The inside corner next to the dishwasher was accessible from the other side of the peninsula- one of the few design decisions I concede was a good one.
Still, these inside corners hurt functionality. Both the oven and the dishwasher opened inside a corner, alongside the adjacent leg of the U. Every time the dishwasher or oven was opened, the doors were in the way of something. To make matters worse, a previous homeowner upgraded the range to one that was slightly too deep for the space, so the most valuable drawer in the kitchen (because of its size and location) wouldn’t open. It hit the front corner of the range. As a result, we walked 7 feet across the room for every spatula, spoon, and knife we needed to prep and cook food. The moral is clear: Put two inside corners in a small kitchen like ours and the design is bad. Eliminate inside corners and the design is improved.
There were lots of nuisance problems, too. The lighting was terrible. There was no task lighting at all. Electrical outlets and switches were placed thoughtlessly. The cabinets were full-custom and fairly well-made for production work, but the finish was slap-dash. One cabinet door panel was cut too large and at some point it swelled and busted out the frame.
I began envisioning improvements the day we bought the house. It took Cynthia some time to embrace the idea of gutting and redesigning the kitchen, due in part to her adaptability to whatever already exists, together with a loathsome regard for remodeling. We considered partial remodels- the best of these designs was to put a cooktop in the peninsula and swap the range for a built-in oven with usable counter space over the top. We could install new countertops, refinish the cabinets, upgrade fixtures and lighting, and be done. That would have been a massive improvement, to be sure. We probably would have been fine with these small improvements for all time, but I had an itch I couldn’t scratch into submission. The footprint of the U constituted only about half of the total area of the kitchen, which had been awkwardly envisioned as an eat-in. Half my kitchen would still have been underutilized and awkward at best; useless and embarrassing at worst. Let the sleepless nights begin…