When we originally bought the Hoarder House, it was difficult to imagine the vision for the kitchen. The layout was meh, the floors were nonexistent, half the cabinets were ripped out, and there were plants everywhere.
Underneath all those plants is the sink. As you can tell, the previous owner began a renovation on the kitchen but never finished. So the cabinet drawers were missing, there were three stoves in there but none worked. And the dishwasher…. When you opened it, a MOUNTAIN of cleaning supplies fell out… Oh my, it was something!!!
There was a drop faux ceiling over the counters in half the kitchen to add lighting (and collect dust in my opinion).
On the other wall there were miscellaneous storage cabinets, then to the right was the fridge. The doorway leads to the hallway and bedrooms.
Overall, I kinda dug how the kitchen cutouts faced the main living area. And knowing that to change them, we would have to mess with load bearing walls, I was more than happy to keep that part of the kitchen design.
I also enjoyed the peninsula that faced the old dining area. I think it would be so neat to have people drive up to the house, look into those big windows and see counter stools and a peninsula. So those are the two elements that are staying.
There was much debate around the doorway to the hall and whether it should stay, or if it should be closed in to allow for more cabinets. My initial design I kept it so that the fridge wall would have tall built in cabinets and I wouldn’t have to deal with any funky corner cabinets. (I really dislike corner cabinets!)
But it felt like everyone thought we should close that door in… So I went through some other design options and ultimately none of them felt right. I love that you can access the kitchen from three points. It makes it truly feel like the hub of the home. So the original design triumphed!
Here are some rough sketches I did of the concept:
In this sketch you can see the sink still centered under the pass through. The cabinet to the left of the sink will be for trash and just to the right of the sink will be the dishwasher. I really want to do a bridge faucet, but we will see if I can find one at a reasonable price point…. At this point I have like 20 things I am waiting until Black Friday on. HA.
Here is another sketch I did of the sink side. You can see the peninsula. And I was really wanting a ‘sit-on-counter’ cabinet… They seem very on-trend, yet so classic and ‘built-in’ feeling. Plus, I was very torn about having a normal wall cabinet in that spot because I thought it would look off-balance as the lone wall cabinet. So, I was aiming for the on-counter cabinet, but I felt kind of unsure about it…
Then on the side that faces the fireplace room and hallway, we will center our stove. You can see the slab extending up the wall as a backsplash in both the sink and stove sides of the kitchen. And the exposed shelving and built in exhaust fan like I talked about in the kitchen cabinet post.
We plan to have tall pantry cabinets surrounding the fridge like we did in our last home. It’s so nice to house appliances out of sight!
With this design in mind I set out to create a 3D mock up of the kitchen in Sketchup. The major undecided factors were the color of the wall (I was playing around with a moody kitchen with walls that matched the dark gray cabinets), and the lone wall cabinet on the sink side…
Here was one of the first iterations with on-counter cabinet and dark walls. Then I explored two wall cabinets, which felt much more balanced:
Here you can see the oven wall…. Oh how I love it!!! I’m sooo hoping the slab on the backsplash doesn’t totally break the bank. And then those exposed shelves will be so yummy!
Ultimately, after debating and looking at inspiration pictures, Jake and I decided that the kitchen was not the place we wanted to experiment with ‘moody’. We can leave that for the fireplace room. So, we’ve decided to do white shiplap on the walls instead. I think that will accentuate the wood shelves more too.
I feel pretty settled: I like the two normal wall cabinets versus the single on-counter cabinet. And I like the white versus gray walls. But what is still a debate in my head is the color of the hood. I’m pretty sure I want to continue the white shiplap over it… But a dark gray could look cool? What do you think?
And then finally did you notice the crazy pattern on the outside of the peninsula?? No! I’m not doing that exact pattern… Sketchup was limited in its tile selection 😉 But I do want to do a fun patterned tile there. I think it will be such a showstopper to drive up and have this view:
