If your kitchen, closet, linen closet, or laundry room make you grumpy or cause lots of sighs, then how can you be a superstar? Having a space in your home work for you instead of against you is like finally finding the right car, a wonderful work team, a marvelous masseuse or smashing shoes that don’t hurt. It makes your life so much easier & you feel empowered. It’s like walking on air.
Last year, I came up with a new design for my mom’s kitchen. She had been waiting since my parents purchased the house 40 years ago to redo it. Now, we finally had a design(see bulleted list below) to open up her galley kitchen for a more spacious feel while creating efficiency. Here’s what we did.
- Flipped all 18-24” deep items—microwave, oven, pantry—next to counter-depth refrigerator so all deep items are together on entry wall where you look past them to the open area of the kitchen.
- Moved glass-top cooktop to wall opposite entry wall to create a continuous–looking 8’ countertop.
- No lower cabinets at all except for #6. Only lower drawers were installed—even under kitchen sink—to keep anyone from having to“crawl into” a lower cabinet to find anything. (I almost got lost in there one time as a child trying to find the Tupperware cake carrier.)
- Added vertical storage over Refrigerator for trays, cookie sheets, platters, & muffin tins.
- Reduced 24” deep pantry down to 18” deep pantry. This discontinued the necessity of newer items in front pushing food to the back where it would be hidden and die a forgotten death.
- Installed Kitchen Aide lift. That almost too-heavy-to-lift mixer sits permanently on a shelf and is plugged into an outlet in the back of the cabinet. When it’s time to mix your cake, the shelf swings up to counter height. This is the most wonderful invention!
Now that you can“see” our results, here are the preliminary steps that made the final result perfect:
- Edited kitchen items viciously, only keeping items that were used regularly or for very specific occasions that happen each year.
- Planned out on paper what items would live where.
- Measured depth stacked pans or tall items would require, to make sure drawers were the correct width & height. Nothing is worse than needing just one more inch of width or height. If you do the work before anything is made, you won’t be just close to making everything fit. It will fit!
- Made a Must-Have list and a Want to Have list. Once the Must-Haves were accommodated, we moved to the Want to Have list and started including those.
The process was long and arduous but completely worth every pain and inconvenience. There were disagreements on color for the cabinets. I wanted Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue. Mom wanted a rich, creamy white. The owner of the kitchen won; the right decision of course. We painted the new Keeping Room Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue. (And she loves it!)
Endless hours were spent searching for just the right backsplash tile and countertop quartzite—the real, not man-made stone. We found the perfect slab of Taj Mahal leathered quartzite in west Dallas. A hand-made arabesque ceramic tile was discovered in the Design District.
Satin-finished brass hardware, lighting—recessed cans, under-cabinet strips, sconces & brass sink ball light—white granite Elkay recessed sink, Kitchen Aid stainless steel appliances all came from Ferguson Kitchen, Bath & Lighting with the amazingly patient help of Shannon Nogar.
Finally, after 8 months, Mom’s new kitchen was complete. We spent that Thanksgiving weekend unpacking, lining drawers and upper cabinets with shelf liner & thoroughly enjoying her new, magazine photo worthy kitchen and keeping room. The planning paid off in a room so perfect, Mom has almost abandoned her office in favor of working on her comfy banquette at the table—with coffee maker nearby.
We were pleased as punch with our accomplishment.
