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I have to vacate my kitchen for two months during a remodel and set up a temporary one in my dining room. (Side note: I have enjoyed Dave The Cook's and MelissaH's threads immensely.) I plan to move the fridge, some base cabinets with a small length of counter, a microwave, toaster oven and portable butane burner. I'm not sure what I will do about a sink, other than washing them in the bathtub. Anyone have suggestions on how to set it up? Also seeking suggestions for meals that are easy to make in a makeshift set up like this. Thank you!

We are starting to noodle with the idea of renovating our kitchen, and while I have about four dozen questions, the primary design issue at the moment involves the following. In an ideal world, we'd like to obliterate the wall between our kitchen and dining room, so that we could open up those two busy spaces and allow me to interact with people while I cook. Unfortunately, there is a chimney and heating duct smack dab in the middle of the wall. As a result, we believe that we will be able to open up a space that is 4 1/2 to 6 feet wide, and it would be Our contractor friend has indicated that this space is simply too small to provide anything that will feel remotely "open." We're not quite giving up, though, and I thought I'd ask you for help. Do you have any spaces between your kitchen and dining room -- or, frankly, between any two rooms -- that are only about this wide? How do they work (or not)? What function do they provide, and what can't they provide? I've thought about lazy susans, dumb waiters, sculpted arches, and so on, but it's very hard for me to visualize anything. I'd thus especially be grateful for any photos you might be willing to share.

I am in the midst of my kitchen remodel - can people stand another thread on remodeling? I started planning for this years ago, then had to stop because I had to find a job. Last spring we decided to take the plunge and redo the kitchen in our 1923 Mediterranean "bungalow" (I use the term loosely) in San Francisco. I meticulously researched, relying heavily on Jane Powell's book, Bungalow Kitchens, magazines, the internet, and my own ideas. I knew I wanted modern functionality (new stove, solid stone countertops), but I also wanted the kitchen to fit in with the rest of the house and evoke the era when the house was built. Twenty-three skiddoo! Can we do the Charleston and drink bathtub gin in the kitchen? Well then, let's begin! First, the old kitchen: I designed the kitchen myself and hired a great contractor who'd recently completed a major addition for friends of ours. He, of all the people I interviewed seemed to "get" what I wanted and understood that the devil, indeed, would be in the details. No walls would be moving, just a relatively straightforward upgrade to electrical, new appliances, flooring and cabinets. To avoid having an unfinished kitchen over the holidays, I opted to wait them out and begin in early January, figuring that the worst that we'd have to deal with would be rain. During the months leading up to the remodel, I made extra dishes: casseroles, soups, meatloaf -- foods that freeze and reheat well -- and froze them in individual servings so that we'd have several months' worth of food at hand and avoid the takeout trap. I packed up the old kitchen, cleaning out several boxes of stuff, and set up a temporary kitchen in the adjacent dining room (the fridge will go where the empty space on the wall is). We'll eat on paper plates with plastic utensils (working through our supply of plastic before switching over to compostables) to minimize dishes, but I have a stainless topped cart, cutting board, knife block, and most of the necessities for sandwiches, salads, and other non-cooking tasks. So January 8, we (that is, my GC and his assistant) started ripping the old kitchen apart at the seams. Intrigued, I watched them the whole day as, piece by piece, the original 1920's kitchen began to appear from under the later additions. Vertical grain douglas fir paneling was covered over, the original white subway tile blithely plastered over with newer (and uglier! ) square beige tile, the original doug fir floor covered by all manner of things (plywood subfloor, linoleum, vinyl, vinyl, most of which my husband and I had ripped out when we put in Pergo in '99 before moving in). The best part of seeing my kitchen demolished? Seeing the subway tile and the routed grooves in the old sink cabinet and knowing that I was doing exactly the same things in the new space. Had my kitchen been talking to me? In two days, they had the kitchen stripped down to the studs. Even the ceiling was gone. The line "...on the walls he left some hooks and some wire..." from the cartoon Grinch (heard in Boris Karloff's voice, of course ) kept running through my head. The dust (a lot of it from the ancient cellulose insulation in the ceiling) was monumental. I ran out to Target and bought a Swiffer sweeper with both dry & wet cloths, and between them, my vacuum, and duster, I'm managing to keep it under control, but by no means would it pass a white glove test! The temporary kitchen was functioning just fine. Having a range of food in the freezer meant quite the variety at our fingertips! Lasagne one night, split pea soup the next, and follow that up with something else! We are doing dishes in the laundry sink in the garage. I keep a bus tub upstairs that we put dirty dishes in, transport down to the garage, and then back up again. Then the unexpected happened. (stay tuned! I have to build up suspense somehow! )

Since this will be our first kitchen remodeling project, there are a lot we don't know. Right now, we're searching for someone to design our kitchen. Home Depot will do it for $50 or $100, but I don't want to use them since there are lots of limitations working with them. There is a local appliance/cabinet place that charges $500 for the design and I believe we will be credited it back on what we spend if we go with them. Is that reasonable? I'm in San Francisco, so please share any suggestion you have on where we can get our kitchen design at a reasonable price. TIA

I am in the extremely early stages of planning my new kitchen and, inspired by many of the creative and daring people on eGullet (MelissaH and Varmint, to name two), I thought I'd share/document my thought process and solicit feedback from other people who *think* about what a kitchen can/should be. Some background: My current kitchen is functionally not bad--the layout is actually pretty good, although the appliances drive me insane and the cabinet quality is lousy. My goals for the kitchen are: 1) Upgrade the appliances (currently GE Profile) to serious home cook level, including getting more (and more powerful) burners. Two of the four on my current cooktop barely function (it irritates me that I have to light them with a match) and the other two don't sear or simmer well. Also, the ovens are uneven and I don't like the upper wall oven because it's precarious loading hot, heavy pans in and out, especially if I'm cooking in a water bath. 2) Improve the quality and functionality of the cabinets. The cabinets are MasterCraft and they're just poor, poor quality. They're maple, Shaker-style, and almost all of them have had to be glued where they've cracked along the frame b/c the wood is too thin. Two of them have broken completely and, because I hate them so much, I've been unwilling to replace them so we've been living with missing cabinet doors for several years. Also, the storage in them is terrible. I'm not sure of the terminology, but all of the cabinets have a center stile (that is, when you open both doors, there's still a vertical piece of wood in the center of the cabinet) which means that loading large pans or any of my pots with handles, is like playing Jenga in reverse. I want wide, pull-out shelves in every lower cabinet and I need stronger drawar glides because my son can't seem to be broken of the habit of leaning on the drawer when he opens it. 3) Get rid of the closet that is supposed to function as a pantry. For one thing, it’s too deep, so items get lost at the back of the shelves. For another thing, there’s too much wasted space above the top shelf. I’ve got boxes stacked there, but unless I remember that something’s back there, I end up purchasing duplicates, triplicates, and quadrupulates of random, seldom-used ingredients. 4) Get rid of the desk area. It just collects clutter and looks terrible. We’d rather put a desk in the corner of the family room for our son to do his homework. Ditto with the half-wall between the kitchen and the family room. It is ALWAYS covered with unsorted mail, magazines, random Lego creations, etc. I just hate it. 5) Improve access to the deck on the back of the house. It’s a good-sized deck and, if we ever get our act together to complete the landscaping, the backyard is a lovely place to be. Here in Denver we can use the grill year-round and I’d like to make it more accessible. So here’s the current kitchen layout: As you walk into the kitchen, the family room (about 17'x17') is on your right and the desk area is just to your left. In front of you is our current kitchen table and behind that is the sliding glass door to the deck. Along the east wall is the pantry closet, the double wall ovens, and a 4-burner gas cooktop. On the south wall is the sink and the dishwasher. The KitchenAid is generally stored on the counter in the southeast corner. The things I like about it are: * The workspace flows pretty well. There’s a good distance between the stove-sink-refrigerator areas and there’s good landing space by all of them. * The island is great working space for big projects and, during parties, it’s a great space for appetizers and cocktails, since everyone stands around the kitchen anyway. That’s about it. The lighting sucks, there are too few outlets, the soffit space above the cabinets collects clutter, the tile floor is a pain to clean, the microwave above the cooktop is virtually inaccessible to my son, there isn't enough venting, there's no undercounter lighting (wait, I already said the lighting sucks, didn't I?)... Anyway, I think I've worked myself up about it enough that it's time to make a change. For other projects in the house, we've worked with an interior designer that we very much like. She did our library/dining room (pictures later) that I absolutely love. She also did our basement which, while it's a completely different style than the rest of the house, is truly wonderful. So we're planning on working with her again. However, having had some experience working with her, I want some other feedback too, because I want to know where to stand firm (no, a smaller stove is not okay just because it balances the design better, but, yes, we can go with that cabinet hardware) and where to accede to her expertise. I've drafted an initial layout that I know will be significantly tweaked as we go about the process, but this one pulls in all of my ideas, even if they're not fully fledged yet... My idea is to remove all the cabinets from the south wall and replace the existing window over the sink, as well as the sliding glass door, with French doors. What I really want is this, but that's just not in the budget, so French doors are my curret compromise. Having removed the cabinets that house the sink and the dishwasher, I'd move them into the island. Much as I love the uninterupted counter space in the current island, I'm willing to sacrifice it for better access to the deck, especially since I'd greatly lengthen the island (from 4 feet to 9 feet), gaining more counter than I lose along the existing wall. The other big change is to remove the desk area in favor of real pantry cabinets, with pull-out shelves and space for the microwave. Moving it there means that the primary user of the microwave (my son) will have better access to it while I'm doing the "real" cooking. I rarely use the microwave anyway, so I don't think I need it near the stove. In place of the existing closet, I'd add an undercounter wine refrigerator--a) we want one and b) that places it conveniently near the dining room, which I think is good. The counter above it becomes a staging area from kitchen to dining room, which I'd love to have. I'd also remove the wall ovens in favor of a dual-fuel, 48" range. I'll still have two ovens, but I'll gain counter space. Little things that can mean a lot are that I'd get rid of the corner base cabinet with it's tricky storage/access issues, add a bookshelf in the southwest corner for my cookbook collection, get rid of the half wall to the family room. and add a real vent hood over the range. Finally, the plan is to run all the cabinets to the ceiling, getting rid of the soffet space. Seldom-used serving pieces and holiday stuff could go in the upper-upper cabinets--my husband wants one of those rolling library ladders for access, but I suppose a step ladder would work too. Phew! That was a lot of stuff. I'd love feedback, good and bad. As I said, this is very preliminary and I know that we've got a long way to go, but this is what I'm thinking so far. I've got ideas for the specifics of the appliances and cabinets, but I'll document those later. My fingers are tired! -BekkiM Edited to add smaller images

I have finally started my small kitchen (5'x7') renovation. The new and level tile floor is in and grouted, the re-plumbing is almost finished and walls and new lighting are being installed shortly. And now the dilemna... the kitchen is actually shade less than 5x7 with appliances and cabinets on the two slightly less than 5 foot walls (58.5" and 59.5"). This means that I can have only one full sized appliance and I cannot decide which it should be. At this point, I am leaning towards an 18" Miele Incognito dishwasher on the 59.5" wall and either a 24" or 30" Liebherr fridge and either a 30" Dacor Millenium electric range or 24" Kuppersbusch electric oven (EEB 6800) and ceramic sensor cooktop (EKE 602.4) together in a single 24" cabinet. So it's either full size range and small fridge or full size fridge and 24" range components. I bake, so fridge/freezer storage space is about as important as oven space, to me. The Kuppersbusch oven is surprisingly roomy inside. So, I wonder if anyone here has experience with these brands and models and also if the there are any strong views on the advantages or disadvantages or choosing the smaller fridge or the smaller oven/cooktop combo? Gas is not an option in my coop, otherwise I would just go for the Viking 24" gas range and the 30" Liebherr fridge. I'm also open to suggestions for alternative combinations. I'm just at my wits end and need to start placing appliance orders very soon. Thanks Azlee

Hi! Before we launched our project, I followed Melissa's remodel thread (congrats Melissa) and links to other kitchen remodel threads and I am continually awed by the inspiration and recommendations offered by the eGullet community during those projects. I want to get a piece of that action during our remodel. Demolition began on June 20, with an estimated 6-month project duration. The impetus for our remodel was the addition of a master bedroom and bath to transform our tiny 2 BR 1 BA into a modest 3BR 2BA. In addition, we are transforming and expanding the back of the house to create a "great" room that will combine a new kitchen, dining and family room. I will post plans and initial pictures in a subsequent post to give everyone a sense of the scope of our project. But first... Yesterday, we met (again) with our kitchen designers and appliance people to hammer out our appliance wants, needs, and desires. Here is where we netted out: Range – Wolf 48” R486C (6 burner, grill), w/ Island trim (is trim necessary?) Hood – Independent 27” x 54” Incline INHL54SS (w/ heat lamps) Blower – Independent CFMR1400 (external) Dishwasher – Miele Platinum edition G2150SCSS Microwave – GE Monogram 1.0 CF Stainless ZEM200SF Refrigerator – GE Monogram 42” built-in Stainless w/dispenser – ZISS420DRSS Beverage Center – GE Monogram 24” Stainless ZDBC240NBS (we're not willing to pay $600 more for privacy glass feature!) Sink – Franke 30”x18”x9” Stainless under mount Anyway... we would love to get some reaction to our selections before they hit the SOLD key on the cash register! Thanks! -Lyle PS: I know the Wolf is wimpy at 16,000 BTU per burner, but are there other reasons I should reconsider?

Hello, everyone. At long last, we're able to seriously think about redoing our kitchen. Since I've never had the opportunity to do one myself before, I thought I'd ask the Great Collective Wisdom to add input before it gets much more expensive to do so. In fact, the GCW has already been of tremendous help with some past threads, in particular this one because it's fairly recent. We're hoping to begin this project about a year from now. Why the wait? Because first we'll need to have the electric system in the house upgraded, and that probably won't happen until fall. Then, since we both live in the academic world, we'd prefer not to have massive chaos around us during the school year. But once summer comes, we're able to devote our attention to other places. (Furthermore, this is upstate NY, where we get an average of 120 inches of snow a year. I don't think we could get through this without being able to use the grill.) And the kitchen isn't so bad that I curse it out every day, although should something die in the meantime I may change my tune. The main reason for the upgrading is to modernize. Our house is about 40 years old. Our kitchen is also probably about 40 years old; we don't think anything significant has been done to it since the house was built. We've now lived here for 22 months, which has given us plenty of time to figure out what we like and don't like about the kitchen. First, though, here's a rough drawing of the kitchen (courtesy of the Ikea kitchen software, with a bit of Photoshopping afterwards), as it currently stands: The narrow dimension, measured wall to wall, is 8 feet. The kitchen floor is 16 feet, 3 inches long (and the cabinets add another 2 feet). The dining room adds an additional 7 feet of length to the far wall (with the window). All the dark areas are walls. We plan to leave all walls as they are. The large open area at the left side of the picture is our dining room. The flooring in the dining room is the same yucky off-white carpet (with no padding left) that flows through the opening to the living room and hallway. We would eventually like to put hardwood in the hallway and living room, since that's what we have in the bedrooms AND the closets. (I don't get that myself. Someone who knows, please enlighten me?) The lighting in the dining room is hanging from a ceiling fan over the table. We're planning to keep the fan or a replacement thereof, although I'd probably choose a different lighting fixture. (I'll try to snap a few photos when there's decent light.) The door at the back of the dining room is a heavy sliding glass door that leads to the back deck. There's a floor-to-ceiling window on the other wall of the dining room. The deck is on the back side of the house; it faces south. Between the window and the door, we get a fair amount of light coming in, particularly in the mornings through the window. I should add that our house has baseboard heaters for the hot water heat; there's one baseboard heater running the length of the wall with the window, and another heater that starts just to the right of the sliding door that extends nearly to the edge of the cabinets, behind the semicircle in the drawing. That semicircle in the drawing is a set of three semicircular shelves. They aren't the right size for much of anything, mainly because there's a support pillar right at the outside of the curve that makes it tough to fit anything bigger than a softball inside. We do, however, have a couple of platters for fruit storage resting on the top shelf and some odds and ends on the two lower shelves. We nearly took a Sawzall to the shelves our first winter here, because the heater was clanking and the bleed valve for that heater is at the edge behind the shelf. And then we get to the cabinets themselves. I'm guessing the doors are made of plywood, because the edges of each door have grain wrapping around, and because the entire cabinet unit has matching veneer that seems to be cut from one giant sheet of the stuff. I wouldn't have a problem with the looks, but I have a huge problem with the function or lack thereof. I don't think there's a single door or drawer that actually opens and closes or otherwise works properly. For instance, the base cabinet on the left of the sink can't be opened without also taking the drawer above it. And the drawer refuses to open without also popping the cabinet. (The wall cabinet is mostly fine, although it doesn't latch too well due to deterioration of the little roller-thingie. But the kitchen has a soffit, which doesn't serve any purpose in our minds, and we'd just as soon get rid of that and let the wall cabinets go all the way to the ceiling, using the highest shelves to store the stuff that only gets brought out for big fancy meals, like the gravy boat and the fancy water pitcher.) There's not much counter space. That's another of the huge problems in the kitchen as it currently exists: it's a large space, with very little work area. My grandma refers to it as a "one-butt kitchen." And she's right: my husband and I trip over each other if we both need to be doing things in the kitchen at the same time. Forget about having one person at the stove while the other preps salad at the cutting board! But the good part of having so little of it is that we don't have to look at much of it: sort of marbled yellow laminate that I'm sure was much more "in" 40 years ago. I like the sink's position in front of the window. This is very important, because we spend an inordinate amount of time there doing the dishes. One priority of the remodeling is to put in a dishwasher. (We realize the cabinet on the left of the sink would be perfect to hold a dishwasher. But there's nowhere to plug such a beast in right now, and no room in the breaker box to add a new circuit for the dishwasher until we upgrade the house's electrical system.) I'm not overly fond of the sink itself: it's a stainless double sink, both basins the same size, with a garbage disposal in the right basin and a dish drainer in the left basin. Because this isn't large enough to hold everything we'd like it to hold, we have a secondary drainer on the counter next to it. The disposal functions, but is an older model with a wimpy engine. Whoever did the plumbing decided that both basins needed traps, so there's not much room underneath the sink for anything other than the garbage can. I wish the sink basins were large enough to hold even one cookie sheet flat, much less my roaster! The stretch of countertop is our main...no, make that our only prep area. That's also where the toaster oven lives, since that's the only place it would go and still be able to plug in. (The other option would have been in the corner, at the other outlet, but we put the microwave there, on a diagonal, and periodically pull it to one side or the other to rescue whatever's fallen behind. In the new kitchen, I want enough electrical outlets that my power does not determine where I can work, AND enough counter space to leave both the mixer and the food processor out but still have room to work. If I'm shaping bread dough or rolling out pie crust, I shove the toaster oven to the side so I have room to slide my wooden pastry board onto the counter. The stove isn't bad for an electric stove, from a temperature-responsiveness point. But it's 40 years old, horribly designed from a usefulness point of view, and placed such that the right edge of the stove is bumping up against the oven cabinet. As long as you don't have anything in the oven, or don't want to saute anything in a large pan, it works. There are cabinets up above the stove. This is bad, because it means that the hood under the cabinets doesn't vent anywhere other than back into the kitchen. The hood is dark brown ugly, and useless for anything except as a light bulb holder. (More on the lighting later.) The backsplash is (get this!) GLASS. Not plexiglass, but the real thing, held in place with little clips like the ones that hold mirrors up. The glass protects the faux brick that runs all the way to the end of the cabinets on the left of the sink. As I alluded, to the right of the stove is the oven. It's nominally a double oven, but they're tiny (24 inches wide on the outside) and horrendously uneven (hot spot in the back left corner of the main oven that's only partially corrected by leaving the quarry tiles in all the time). There's a clock that's stopped at half past 6, so anything timed is out of the question. And I wish there were some kind of indicator when the oven is up to temperature! The tiny bottom oven does broil decently, though. I suspect there might have been a third oven rack at one time, now long lost. There is a cabinet above the oven and another below the oven, but since the oven's insulation is notably lacking we don't put anything too delicate there. On the other side of the doorway (open doorway; hall on the other side) is a tall cabinet with no soffit above because we took it out. That happened when we were given the generous gift of a new refrigerator by my grandfather last year about this time. The new fridge (Amana freezer drawer on the bottom; whatever name they call off-white or bisque or almond or whatever it is) was about half an inch too tall to fit under the over-the-refrigerator cabinets. So we took them out, but to do so we had to remove the soffit on that side as well. The biggest problem this has created is that one of our cats has decided that the cabinet top is a great place to sit and watch the world. This in itself isn't a problem; the real issue is that he can't get up there without making intermediate landings of places he's not supposed to go! This refrigerator is the one thing that is likely to remain of the old kitchen after the remodel. In the big empty space, we put a small table gleaned from a yard sale. The cats are not permitted on tables, but this one's apparently irresistable as a stepping stone to the top of the fridge and beyond. And the lighting? The entire lighting in the kitchen consists of two fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling, each of which takes a large and a small circular tube; a 60 watt bulb over the sink; and the light in the otherwise useless hood. Seeing what you're doing? Forget that! So what will we do? Here's a first approximation, also roughed out with Ikea software and then cleaned up a touch in Photoshop: The dishwasher will go just to the left of the sink. The sink will ideally be an undermount, although if countertops that permit undermounting are prohibitively expensive, that may need to wait a few years. The cooktop will be gas, 36 inches wide, 6 burners with continuous grates, and the hood will take advantage of that outside wall and vent such that my husband can make mole indoors without smoking me out for the next few hours. We're debating the oven still (one or two? dual-fuel range or separate wall oven and cooktop?), other than it/they will be electric and convection, and large enough that I can bake two 9-inch round cake layers at the same time on the same shelf. The fridge will stay about where it is now, but there will be counter and underneath storage where we now have empty space and table. I'd prefer to have no wall cabinets between the window and the sliding door, I think. And if we can remove the baseboard heater between the sliding door and the cylindrical shelves, we'll extend the counter all the way there. Flooring is a question mark still. One big point of debate is whether to make the dining area part of the kitchen floor, or part of the living room floor. I'll post more details of what we're thinking, how we tend to use our kitchen, and potential questions or options, along with some photos tomorrow. (We haven't even begun to think about budget yet; we figured we would wait and see how much our realistic-dream kitchen would cost and then work from there.) In the meantime, let me know what you think. (But be aware that I, like some others who have done renovation threads, am apparently not known well for my ability to take criticism well. ) MelissaH

Has anyone else noticed the cool herringbone pattern subway tile backsplash in FG's new kitchen? I really like it. So much so that I decided to do the same thing in my kitchen. It's not coming out anywhere near as nice as his, though, due to the utter ineptitude of my tile guy. So, I'm pretending that I'm renovating a farmhouse in rural Greece and this is just the latest in a string of amusing anecdotes involving the local characters. Like when he discovers 3/4 of the way through the job that the yogurt container of plastic spacers he's been using contains not all 1/8" spacers but somehow a random mixture of 1/8" and 3/16". That explains why nothing is in a straight line! A ha ha ha. I'm sure I would feel better if I could hear a few tales of your kitchen renovation debacles.

For a couple of decades -- all of my post-college life -- I lived with kitchens that did not befit the director of a culinary arts society. Our first kitchen was weak even by New York City studio-apartment-kitchen standards: essentially a trailer kitchen. Our second kitchen was not terrible, and a lot of New Yorkers might have said it was pretty nice, but it had so much wrong with it I flirted on occasion with the thought of becoming an arsonist. When we finally got the chance to build a kitchen from scratch I was determined to make it my dream kitchen. A few things got in the way. First, some guy named Nathan Myhrvold already built my dream kitchen and it turns out there's no set of equations that work out to me affording anything like it, even considering the income stream from my incredibly lucrative career as a freelance writer. Second, we were limited by many architectural elements such as the logical location of plumbing, a window, and the overall shape and size of the kitchen area. Third, pricing the components of a kitchen independently it just wasn't possible for us to afford the cabinetry and appliances I wanted in my fantasy world. Enter the "renovation package." We recently left our quiet neighborhood of Carnegie Hill, part of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, for South-Central Harlem. This allowed us to trade up to more space, and also take advantage of the fact that at the bottom of the housing dip brokers told developers that if they put more money into renovations they could increase the values of their properties. So, basically, the developer we bought from was offering an outlandishly lavish (by my standards) package of kitchen appliances and fixtures for free, or at least at no identifiable marginal cost to us. The tradeoff was that with the developer's renovation package we had to use his architect and contractor and every departure we wanted involved delays and protracted discussion and debate. I think I lost a week of my life just to the issue of the placement of our ceiling-mounted pot rack. Here's what our kitchen looked like around Thanksgiving at the end of last year. It was, as you can see, a total gut renovation. In mid-February, we were up to this. Some of the appliances got delivered before the cabinetry, so the stove spent part of March in the bathroom. A little farther along (those are the contractors conferring about something or other). A couple of weeks ago, just before we moved in. The task of unpacking and settling in is enormous and overwhelming, but we did manage to get a lot of the kitchen stuff in place -- enough to do basic cooking. This is the state of the kitchen as of shortly after moving in. There is much to do and over the next few weeks and months I'll cover the slow process of getting the kitchen in order. There's much more detail to go into but I'm not sure what will interest folks so I'll primarily react to comments and questions regarding further specifics. On another topic some folks asked to see diagrams, so I include those here.

What, if anything, would you change about the geometry and layout of your kitchen, to improve its efficiency and safety? Reading the 'Kitchen injuries' thread left me thinking about home kitchen design. We routinely work with very hot, sharp, heavy, and delicate objects in our kitchens, but most seem designed with an eye to looks/industry tradition, rather than ergonomics and functionality. I'm not talking about kitchens that have been crammed in wherever they would fit, and are consequently poorly located/microscopic, I'm talking about kitchens in decent-sized spaces designated for this specific purpose. My biggest gripes are with surface heights and lighting. Cutting or lifting, or even grating, become more complicated when your elbows are raised halfway to your shoulders, or you're practically bent double over your task, as you compensate for a 'standard' surface that's too high or too low. Kitchens that have only overhead lighting are problematic (and seem fairly common), since they almost inevitably cause your upper body to cast a shadow on the task at hand: annoying at best, at worst, you're squinting about, wondering where the tip of your thumb ended up, as you try to not bleed all over dinner. In our kitchen, I'd love to rip away the blocks and panels that were used to raise the counter surface about half a foot/15 cm, and restore the original 1953 counter height (unfortunately not an option at the moment, since our flat is for sale). How about you?

We recently bought our first house, complete with a kitchen which we will be remodeling right away. The cabinets are due for manufacture in September, but we still have a lot to decide - and many kitchen aspects about which we keep changing our mind! (Size of stove and oven is the current one. We were originally thinking a 90 cm range cooker. Now we're thinking a 75 cm hob with 60 cm oven + warming drawer to allow for a little more cabinetry. The second oven would have been mostly for plate-warming anyways. Oh, how I wish I could justify an oven big enough for my American-sized baking trays though! We lived in the US and Canada before moving here. But storage space takes priority given the space we're working with.) Anyways, my first question is this: Is there anywhere in the UK (ideally in the Greater London Area) to go and look at lots of kitchen sinks? A kitchen sink and tap showroom of some sort? B+Q have them high on the walls so they're hard to see up close. Catalogues just aren't the same as knowing what they feel like. Kitchen display places have a random and limited selection of whatever happens to be installed.

Hello all: I'm opening a restaurant (first time I do this) as an upgrade from the catering business I run from home... I have almost (I think) every detail covered and have come to the A/C issue... Should I provide it to the kitchen or will the hood alone extract most of the heat? My concern is that food be in a "cold" environment just to make the cooks confortable. The heat sources under a 6 meter hood (unless of course someone recommends different) will be: 4 charcoal grills 6 burner range 1 oven 1 80cm griddle 2 deep-fryers In front of this hood will be the hot table (bain marie) and besides that the refrigerated table without hood on top, for plating and service. Any input anyone?

So the fiancee and I bought a fantastic house -- very much a right place at the right time situation -- a 1930's era brick colonial. While everything is in decent shape -- the previous owner was an engineer for the DPW who was meticulous about maintenance -- the kitchen is very small and needs some updating, especially for folks like us who like to cook (me) and entertain (my fiancee). On the upside, though, I get to re-do the kitchen how I like it. On the downside, our funds are limited. I'll post photos in a bit b/c I'm sure you folks would have some interesting ideas on how I can update the space, but my first question is about appliances. Do people have recommendations on good "entry level" gas ranges, refrigerators, and dishwashers (we need all three)? I can't afford a $3000 rig, but I could probably swing something in the $1500 range, for example. Thanks, Sander

My wife and I just bought an apartment on the Upper East Side and while the 3 bedroom was bought for a good price (well, good for Manhattan) the trade off is a small kitchen. The kitchen is about 5.5 x 13.5, which is a bitch, but I rationalized it by thinking that if Gabrielle Hamilton can turn out such good food in her small kitchen at Prune, an amature chef, with no tables to turn can make it work as well. The issue is obviously to maximize the space, but give it the function of a professional kitchen. To design a small kitchen that has the flow necessary for someone who is going to be using it heavily. Does anyone have the name of a kitchen designer that works in Manhattan that they would recommend? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

...The kitchen renovation, that is. Yes, after many years of putting up with a kitchen the size of most Americans' shoe closets, I've decided to throw down the gauntlet. Time for a kitchen renovation... God help us. One of the first steps was to replace the old range, a GE model from 1995, with a brand new Bosch 700 Series Evolution Gas Range. The old model's oven died in May and so I've been pan-searing/sauteeing/boiling/steaming since then. No roasting. As someone who loves cooking, this situation was completely unacceptable. Luckily, we had a toaster oven, but man did I have to jam that roast chicken in there. When it came out, it certainly didn't look like chicken anymore... Well, after procrastinating a long time and researching a lot, I decided on the Bosch range. Whereas the old one had a hard time getting water to boil, this one can basically send the Space Shuttle into orbit with 16K BTU of power. When I first turned this on, the paint on my ceiling peeled. The next time my upstairs neighbor gets noisy, I'm turning this sucker on and letting his floor melt. I made our first meal on it tonight, a quick saute of chicken, vegetables, garlic and pasta. Easy right? Well, apparently there's a learning curve with this new-fangled thing. The chicken was over-cooked, the pasta slightly mushy, the pan handles got very hot, so I've got some adapting to do. I am worried about my next omelette. In any case, the next step(s) will be taking down the wall separating my study from the kitchen, replacing it with a peninsula with storage cabinets underneath. All the cabinets in the kitchen will be replaced by custom-made ones, and a new granite countertop is being cut as I write these words. Yay! I'll keep updating this blog with the work as it progresses (or doesn't), and I estimate we should be done in, say, 2012. Pictures can be seen on my real blog at http://vinotas.blogspot.com/ To celebrate, we opened a bottle of 2002 Jacques Frederic Mugnier Chambolle Musigny, which was, to put it mildly, lovely. Cheers!

It started on Thursday, officially. What a wild ride this has been! I've started a blog elsewhere, for day to day postings. I don't want to bore my family, associates and friends with discussions of flitch beams and electrical subpanels, but I do want everyone who wants to see it, see it. So far, no nasty surprises under the drywall (we have a flat-roofed contemporary home with lots of cool angles and detailing, and if it's not roofed right -- which it wasn't until we got it -- it can be awful). I expected families of squirrels, or at least water damage to the supporting beams. So far, so good! Because I do tend to go on, I'll answer questions and post the occasional photo. But this forum was so helpful to me, and so much fun to watch others' kitchens rise up, that I wanted to share my thanks and excitement with all of you.

I did not think renovating my 42 square foot space was easy, but nothing in the world could have prepared me for whole renovation process. My super told me demolition takes two days at most, and my cabinet contractor told me the same for the installation, so figure in a day for painting. I figure, I'll be living out of my bed room for a week at most. That's not so bad for a high end Gourmet kitchen right? Wrong. What I didn't figure was that to get the new kitchen installed, I need to get a new electric line and move a few pipes. Well that meant hiring an electrician and a plumber before anything can be installed. It also meant dealing with shady contractors who quadruple the asking price once the work has started, workers who did not respect your furniture (I went ballistic when I saw a dirty trash can piled haphazardly on my $9,000 Italian sofa), big gaping holes in the wall that make you think of Manhattan critters like mice and rats, and an overwhelming amount of dust that seemed to regenerate itself everyday, even though I tried to sweep and vaccumm when I came home from work. By the third week of living out of my 100 square foot bedroom, I did everything I thought I would never do. I yelled at my dog, fired two separate contractors, had several screaming teary meltdowns, and even toying with the idea of moving into a $600 a night hotel room until the whole thing is done. This is week four and my cabinets are at least assembled, but my kitchen is still a heap of plaster and wires. Is this normal?

I’m in the process of remodeling my kitchen and have been working with a designer on a couple of option for my fairly cookie cutter tract housing 8ft ceiling U shaped kitchen. First off I started down the path of keeping the same U shape however my designer threw out modifying it into a galley kitchen instead. (see pics) Traditional U Galley Alternative

Good morning, y’all, and welcome to the party chez Therese. As per the teaser, this week’s foodblog does indeed come to you from Atlanta, where I live with my two children (hereafter known as Girl and Boy) and husband (hereafter known as The Man). Girl is 11, Boy is 14, and The Man is old enough to know better. Atlanta’s huge: the total metro population is about 4 million, and there are no physical boundaries to growth like rivers or mountain ranges, so people just keep moving (and commuting) farther and farther out of town. Atlantans can be divided into ITP (inside the perimeter) and OTP (outside the perimeter), the perimeter referring to the interstate freeway that encircles the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods, separating it from outlying suburbs. The politically minded may note that these areas could be designated red and blue. I’ll let you figure out which is which. We’re about as ITP as it gets, with home, work, school, and restaurants all in walking distance. The neighborhood’s called Druid Hills, the setting for the play/movie “Driving Miss Daisy”. The houses date from the 1920s, and because Atlanta has so little in the way of “old” buildings the neighborhood’s on the National Register as a Historic District. Charming, sure, buts lots of the houses need some updating, and ours (purchased in 1996) was no exception. So we remodeled last year, including an addition with a new kitchen, and this week’s blog will look at the finished product. So, some encouragement for those of you presently involved in kitchen renovation, some ideas for those who are considering it. But never mind all that for the moment: What’s for breakfast? Dutch babies, that’s what. And even better, these Dutch babies are produced by my children, the aforementioned Girl and Boy. The first picture is right from the oven, the second is after the somewhat messy job of sifting powdered sugar on top. They are delicious (the Dutch babies, I mean, not the children) and a great weekend treat. The Man drinks coffee in the morning whereas I prefer tea. He's not up yet, having played poker last night. I'm hoping he makes it out of bed in time for dinner. I also eat fruit whereas he prefers, well, anything but fruit. This is not such a bad thing, as it means that I don’t have to share the fruit. Pomegranates are a pain to eat, but not so bad if you’re reading the newspaper at the same time. This one’s from California, but you can also grow them here if you’ve got enough sunshine (which I don’t).

It started as a simple idea. I wanted to replace the ceramic tiled counter top of my kitchen island with a granite slab. From there, well, maybe we ought to redo all the countertops, and since I'm going to replace the island top, maybe it's time I put in a new cooktop there as well. Then I started looking at new 30" double ovens, and alas, my GE combo microwave/thermal oven unit started looking dated. And it must have realized I was lusting for a new oven, because the microwave decided to quit last night! And since it is a combo version, the oven's controls are in the microwave panel. (My wife insists that I in some way sabotaged the microwave to help speed up the process!) Well, now I am to the point where I am considering gutting the whole kitchen and starting anew! That's where I hope you all might help! I need some ideas on design, appliances and placement of appliances. First, my kitchen is all electric. And I want a gas cooktop. The present cooktop is in the island and I like being able to cook all around the island. There is no gas line plumbed to the island! I live in Oklahoma and we don't have basements. Or crawl spaces. Concrete slab foundations are de rigueur. As I said, I like cooking at the island, but unless I gouge out a trench in the floor, I don't know how I could get gas to the island. OTH, my present oven setup is on a wall that backs up to the garage, and my GAS hot water tank is on the other side of that wall! I suppose I could remove the oven combo and put a nice big dual-fuel range against that wall. But that would mean that I would have to cook in front of and looking at the wall, as opposed to being free to move around the island. I like the way things are situated in the kitchen, the flow and all, but I really don't like my cabinets. I have a lot of cabinet space, I just don't like the way they are constructed. I also want to get rid of the flourescent lighting in the kithcen, and we also have what, at first glance, appears to be a vent hood above the island. Don't I wish! But, no, it is a ceiling fan! One that is NEVER used. Dumb placement of a ceiling fan. So, I guess I am leaning toward gutting the whole kitchen and embarking on a major renovation. Any ideas!? I also need some help with the cooktop/range/ovens. I have been looking at Thermador and like what I have seen, but I also know that Wolf, Viking and DCS make comparable units. If I can't have the cooktop situated in the island, I will likely go with a 48" dual-fuel range. Any reviews, pros/cons on the available choices? I think my next step should be to visit a kitchen planner. Any qualifications I should look for, or questions I should ask? I am really scratching my head at this point. We need to have a new oven, but I don't want to do a quick fix for now and get what I really want later. So...any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for listening to my ramblings!

When Mrs. Varmint and I agreed to buy her family home from her parents 6 years ago, I did so with one condition: that we'd renovate the kitchen within a year -- 2 at the most. Well, after a 6-year wait, we're ready to go. Thanks to all the great suggestions from our great members here at the eGullet Society (all of which is contained in this monstrosity of a thread), I've come up with a solid plan. This thread will focus on all the details of the renovation. I'll include drawings, budgets, permitting, costs, and all the highs and lows a family of 6 could experience. First, however, I should show you the plans. I drew these, following the ideas y'all helped me develop and refined by Arne Salvesen CKD (aka Daddy-A), who has provided great advice from a professional design perspective. Let me go over the plans briefly: Along the counter where the main sink is located (bottom right), we'll start with a 27 inch full-height double-doored pantry that'll house the microwave. We'll then have 36" of base cabinets/countertop (two cabinets, one of which will be a trash pull-out) with about 33" of upper cabinets. The sink will consist of a 39" base cabinet housing a Blanco 510-874. The dishwasher is next, followed by 22-1/2" of base cabinet. To the right of the sink (if you're standing at the sink) will be 42" of upper cabinets. There's currently a circuit breaker box on that wall, which we'll flip to the other side. We'll also consolidate an existing 6 light switch panel down to 3 switches. The baking area (the complete "L") will likely consist of a slab of white marble cut from the existing kitchen (the short side of the "L") and the rest will be tile -- likely granite. Arne has suggested using a "magic corner" in the blind corner of that region. This is a new product to me, but I think it's pretty cool. Go to this page, and then click on the first thumbnail for a video showing how this works. My Kitchen-Aid mixer will sit on the counter in the corner -- an area that rarely gets used anyhow. After the magic corner comes the oven and then 33 inches of base cabinets. We're expanding the pantry by about 4 feet. This makes for a very narrow doorway (27"), but I'm thinking of installing a restaurant-style swinging door there to make things easy. If anyone wants to research this type of door for me, please do so. Over to the cooking area, we'll have 15 inches of base and upper cabinet, then the range/hood, and then 24 inches of lower cabinet (with pull-outs for cookware) with 36" of upper cabinet. The corner of the eating bar will be a bit unusual: I don't want a lazy susan in this corner, so the unusually shaped cabinet will have the doors facing out, with no hardware. This gives me some storage space for rarely used stuff. Note that the closet is new, too. Moving clockwise, we'll have a 21 inch base cabinet followed by a prep sink (Elkay LFR 1915) and then a second dishwasher. The little block with an "X" represents a post, as it will be replacing a load bearing wall tying into an I-beam over the eating bar. Down to the Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer, there will be a 2 inch wall built in at the end which we'll paint with magnetic paint, creating a giant place to hang our refrigerator magnets. It should be pretty damn cool. To the right of the freezer is a strange configuration of "desk" area and bookshelves. I've marked it with an asterisk. This is strange because the base cabinet will be almost functionless, as the area under there houses some return-air ducts from the adjacent room. This surface will likely consist of a slab of marble from the existing countertop. Above the marble will be a high bookshelf for "some" of my cookbooks! I've worked out a number of other details, but I'll provide those as we go along. I met with one contractor on Monday and will meet with another tomorrow. I'll also fill y'all in on those details later on. I'll be sure to include lots of photos, specifications, equipment choices, price lists, etc. I'll try not to hide anything from you, as this should be a learning experience, and if mistakes are made, you can pick on me! It should be fun, however.

Last fall my wife and I purchased a small house in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Given the outrageous house prices in this neighborhood, we settled on a single-family frame house that, well -- left a kitchen to be much desired. I have a fairly extensive background in construction, both from work when I was younger, as also having to do with the fact my parents totally gutted their brownstone when I was a teenager, doing all the work themselves. There is nothing like living in a construction zone for 6 years to appreciate a home renovation. That said, myself, my wife and a few very very good friendshave been gutting and renovating the kitchen for the past few months with some pretty impressive progress. We have been living without a kitchen for approximately 4 months now, surviving on a slop sink, fridge and microwave for our eating (and tons of freshdirect food). I have been taking pictures along the way -- it is quite a show. Given that work has slowed down recently (I failed to mention I have a day job, so this work is taking place after work and 3 day weekends), I thought by maybe opening up this process to everyone would give me some new found encouragement to pick up the pace. With that said, I start with a old floor plan the realtor gave us showing the first floor layout (it is a 2 story, + finished attic building)

I know several other kitchen renovations have been covered here, but I have some specific questions that I can't find the answer to elsewhere. We've just bought (well, we have a contract on) our first house. It was built in 1953. 1200 square feet. Kitchen, including eating space (there is no dining room, though we could turn the small bedroom into one) is 16.5x9. Not tiny, but not huge either. We want to spend under $7000 total, including appliances. Oh, we only really need a range, but depending on the condition of the dishwasher, we'll need one of those, too. The fridge appears to be in good condition. I agreed to buy this house on one condition: that we could redo the kitchen upon closing. Immediatly. It's very mid-late 80's, with the cheap looking "oak" cabinets, white/pink/blue wallpaper, oak trim, and vinyl floor. There will not be any major work. No tearing down walls, no new/ripping out cabinets, no reconfiguration, etc. We will have to have countertops installed eventually, and that (other than appliances) will be our major expense. Basically, it's a small first house, and we don't want to put too much money into it for fear that we won't be able to get it out when we sell it, but I want to be able to enjoy my kitchen for the 5 years or so I'll be in it. Appliances are a big deal, something I don't find spending more on, since we can take those with us when we move. We do plan on ripping up the vinyl, which will be likely be replaced by hardwood. The wallpaper will be removed. I'm going to put wainscoting in the dining nook. I'm going to paint the walls and cabinets and build in a couple of floor to ceiling shelves around the windows in said nook. If we run into major problems (rotten wood underneath the floor, something like that), we'll hire help, but barring that, we're DIY. Now, on to stuff I'm not even sure I know how to ask: the ventilation is unlike anything I've ever encountered in a kitchen. It's vented through the roof, but the fan is like a bathroom vent fan...set into the ceiling, no vent hood or anything. Is this normal? Is this going to cause problems? The range is at a place where a hood would be difficult to put in...it's in an island type place (but not really an island). It would have to suspend from the ceiling, and because the kitchen is pretty small, I'm afraid it would dominate the room. I guess that's the main problem for now. I don't know what range I'm going to go with, but it's going to need to be around 30'' to fit in existing space. Seriously, I'm pretty baffled about what to go with, even after reading all these threads. I want something pretty high quality, but I don't want to spend a ton. I can handle around $2000. Any ideas? I'm afraid most of the brands I would be interested in would be priced out of my range, but I'm open to suggestion. I'm thinking about a Miele dishwasher (hate, hate, hate noise), but was wondering if anyone had experience with less expensive dishwashers that were almost as quiet as (or as quiet as) the Miele. Oh, also, the house is heated by gas, but the appliances are electric. Anyone have any experiences with having the house converted to gas in the range area? Since we already have a hook up, I don't think it will be a problem, but I'd like to know if anyone knows for sure. Sorry if all this has been covered before or if my writing style makes no sense.

My girlfriend and I just bought a condo in Brooklyn, NY. The apartment was a pit, but a pit with promise. We've laid floors in the bedrooms (floating bamboo), painted nearly every nasty wall left by the previous owners and have been furiously planning for the kitchen. It's a complete overhaul: floors, cabinets, countertop, appliances, lighting... you name it. We are cooking enthusiasts but not pro cooks. We figure to cook some bacon now and again but not likely to be canning or serious cooktop activity too often. Our current kitchen is a one sided galley about 5 x 5 so we are definitely gaining space (esp counter space). We figure to have a budget of around $15k for the renovation and already have some "grand" plans. I figured I would ask for some opinions given the wonderful ideas given in other kitchen renovation threads. I will post some current pics of the kitchen when I can (hold yer nose!). Here is a floorplan: Some fairly firm ideas we have had: - Knock down wall in middle of kitchen and wall to left of stove abutting Dining Space to make an open concept kitchen/LR/DR - Expand kitchen a foot or so into the DR, and add an extra base/wall cabinet. The dining space is large enough that losing a foot won't hurt our ability to have a table and chairs. We think that our gatherings tend to be more informal so having the kitchen island as a central gathering point would be great. We will need to figure out how to get lighting down from the ceiling for the island. We have concrete ceilings that were just professionally plastered so lighting installation is a little more complicated than if it were just drywall. The concrete is probably 1-2" thick at least but we think has airspace that was used by the developers to run the wiring for the Kitchen and Dining light fixtures. - Add an island with stool seating on the non-kitchen work area side when we buy cabinets, running electric under joint between parkay wood in LR/Foyer to electrify island (the wall to be demolished has DR/Kit lightswitches and an outlet on the far side already). A few thoughts: - We'd love to vent the oven but we cannot vent into the fresh air chase on the other side of the fridge (currently washer) space (vents from bathrooms) as I don't think that is its purpose and I doubt the blding would let us punch out through the wall in the DR to the backyard. (sucks, but such is life) - We are thinking of putting a wine/beer fridge in the island facing into the kitchen (where the 24" cab is drawn). - We were thinking silestone for counters... Dark Cabinets (chestnut), Light Counters (diana pearl). We priced counters on Ecounters.com (silestone merchant), should we buy silestone through there or Home Depot? Or should we think about Granite or another material? The online silestone quote I worked up for the counter including the new island was $4100 or so. - Probably will do a tile floor. Don't want to clash vs the wood in the rest of the place right now. - Range, refrigerator and dishwasher, I figure I can knock out for about $2200. I am not looking for top of the line, just better than you'd put in a rental. Probably a 'nicer' top freezer fridge, a gas range with power burner/programming features and a quiet dishwasher, plus an above range microwave ($300 or so). Here is a Lowe's workup of the cabinet design (walls knocked, island in place)... We found Kraftmaid cabinets (all plywood frames) we can live with for just over $6000 at Lowes (we may get them priced through brother in law's supplier too) and have a 10% off coupon we can use also. Is this a good price for the room? We liked another door front design but it takes the price up $1500!! We don't intend to be in this apartment forever, but if we are here 5 years we want to have a quality kitchen. I hope you will share any thoughts that you have on our strategy, choices, purchase ideas. If you have any questions, please fire away! Regards, -MJR