A Hard-Working Compact Kitchen
Whether it's dinner for 12 or a seasonal canning project, this small kitchen is geared for more than one person working at a time.
Synopsis: An architect describes the small details, space-saving strategies, and floor plan changes that he used to maximize the efficiency and storage capacity of a remodeled compact kitchen.
As an architect, I’m always flattered and pleased when friends invite me to work on their houses, but I feel an extra measure of concern to get it just right. When the job is replacing the kitchen while they are living in the house, the concern is even greater.
My friends’ kitchen was a liability. It was a fairly modern L-shaped galley kitchen, but it was too cramped and cut off from the rest of the house. They wanted to make the kitchen the core of their busy home; they wanted a place where they could entertain and work, and where family, friends and pets all could interact comfortably.
Borrowing a sense of space
What they needed was space, but there was no way to add a single square foot to this part of the house. So we decided to take out a wall and a small china closet that separated the kitchen from the dining room to increase the sense of space but not increase the footprint of the room.
To separate the rooms, I designed a bar-height Honduras-mahogany counter in the dining room where the wall once stood. The counter creates an intimate spot where guests can sit while still affording people in the kitchen a view of the main living areas of the house.
Balancing the light
Because the main wall of the kitchen faces west, we needed to control the natural light. The late-afternoon sun burning into the original kitchen was overheating the space and hampering the view while my friends were preparing dinner.
The solution required a redesign of the window configuration, but I didn’t want to lose any natural light. In fact, I hoped to improve it. Framing in a steel angle above the window bank allowed us to install counter-to-ceiling casement windows, which are slightly narrower than the old windows but substantially taller. We boxed the windows in an aluminium frame and bumped them out a few inches. Between the casement windows and behind the range, we installed a panel of 8-in. by 8-in. Pittsburgh Corning glass blocks (www.pittsburghcorning.com). The glass-block panel defines the backsplash area behind the stove. The blocks were set in silicone caulk, which gave us sanitary joints that are easy to clean. The joints are half the width of a standard mortar installation, so extra care was required for accurate joint alignment. Projected casements and a panel of glass blocks provided just enough baffling of the afternoon sun.
A range with a view
My friends are serious cooks and organic gardeners, so the placement and the selection of the range were important. I positioned the range in front of the glass-block panel, creating a bright focal point for the kitchen.
They wanted a small range, but it had to have a large electric oven and four powerful gas burners. We settled on a dual-fuel model by Dacor (www.dacor.com).
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