In Design: A Kitchen Renovation
A few years ago, my husband and I bought the apartment next door with the intention of joining the two to make one large apartment with a new kitchen at its core.
Since then, we’ve been saving up to do it right, and it appears as though this winter we will finally be moving forward on our plans. So, over the coming months, interspersed with standard posts about kitchen gadgetry, tableware, and one-off design ideas, I will be sharing with you the trials and tribulations of planning, sourcing, and construction, as well as the general thought processes behind our choices for everything from flooring to lighting.
Although our apartment is blessedly large by New York City standards, at 10 feet square, the room that will become our kitchen is fairly “cozy” (to put it in brokerese). Because of this, much of our cursory planning has focused on using the space to its utmost while avoiding heft and clutter.
Two doorways and a large window will keep the space open and airy, and smooth, simple, monochromatic finishes will preclude visual clutter.
A tall, narrow refrigerator (instead of the relatively short, squat standard), upper cabinets that rise to the ceiling, and a band of cabinets along the top of one wall will all capitalize on the height of the space. And special inserts and pull-outs in the lower cabinetry will maximize work and storage space below.
As of now, however, these are all just ideas—no commitments have been made. We have yet to officially decide whether that tall, skinny refrigerator will be a Northland or a Liebherr, where precisely the stove will be placed, or whether the counter tops will be made of marble, zinc, or epoxy. There are still many decisions to be made, lots of research to be done, and—I’m apprehensively sure—countless obstacles to be overcome. In the months to come, you’ll get to read about it all.
Related: Easy Meals During a Kitchen Renovation, from Talk.
About the author: Amanda Clarke is a recovering restaurant pastry chef with a background in architecture. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes, tests, and develops recipes and works on freelance food-styling gigs between walkings and feedings of her two dogs and husband.
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5 Comments:
Brett at In Praise of Sardines posted a lover letter to his kitchen today, and it sounds like he found the experience of remodeling it as rewarding as it was challenging. Lots of good ideas in there you might want to borrow. And thanks for sharing your project with us...I'm looking forward to following along!
Alaina Browne at 6:18PM on 09/27/07
I, too, am eager to see the reno take place. I wonder if you'll keep the rubber flooring that exists in your current kitchen ...
Adam Kuban at 8:09PM on 09/27/07
My husband and I just remodeled our kitchen. We did concrete counter tops. They are fabulous. The beauty of stone with incredible durability and we got to put things in the concrete that really express who we are.
Magoos27 at 8:25AM on 09/28/07
Brett's post is excellent! I hope I love our new kitchen 10 years on as much as he does.
We remodeled our kitchen earlier this year, and faced a lot of the same challenges you do with space planning. We blogged the entire process on our food blog -- something our regular readers seemed to love all out of proportion to its actual value -- including the meals we cooked in our temporary kitchen. There's definitely something to the notion that people read blogs out of a sense of voyeurism. :)
The Kitchen category on our blog covers most of the remodel posts, in case you're surfing for ideas, along with guest links to some of our Flickr sets.
anitaepler at 7:34PM on 09/28/07
You should read: The Kitchen by Spechtenhauser (ISBN 3764372818) before you proceed any further. It starts in the past and tells you what pitfalls to look out for today. If you know German, take a look at Otl Aicher: Die Küche zum Kochen, order it though amazon.de though, the German reprints are much cheaper than your American antique editions from 1983.
After seeing the mess a friend of mine did with his remodelling, I noted down all the pitfalls. You can find the latest version at http://kueche-et-al.blogspot.com under the topic Kücheneinrichtung (I am sorry, but it is in German, maybe the bablefish can help...).
Good luck with your remodelling!
DrJunge at 3:48PM on 09/29/07