MelissaH's Kitchen (Renovation) Dreams

[MelissaH]

Just make sure you'll be able to open up the refrigerator door all the way to allow you to open your crisper drawers.  That's a drawback of putting it in the corner.  And if you swap the hinges, then you're sort of trapped with nowhere to put the food.

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Sounds to me like another reason to slide a tall pantry cabinet between fridge and wall.

MelissaH

[snowangel]

This may have been covered upthread, but trust you are planning on running the cupboards all the way to the ceiling? I have empty sofits above mine, and could just about cry looking at all of that wasted space.

[MelissaH]

This may have been covered upthread, but trust you are planning on running the cupboards all the way to the ceiling?  I have empty sofits above mine, and could just about cry looking at all of that wasted space.

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Absolutely! I think the part of the demolition I'm most looking forward to is taking sledgehammer or sawzall to the soffits.

Speaking of soffits: our friend Anne's got a doozy of a soffit. Her cabinet space actually extends up through the soffit. But of course there's no good way to access all that space since the soffits themselves don't have doors.

MelissaH

[phaelon56]

My last kitchen and cabinets that extended all the way to the ceilings and I loved it. Granted, even at 6' 2" tall, I had ot use a step stool to reach things on the upper shelves, theres plenty to store that I acess only on occasion.

Interesting comment upthread about a monument company that was getting into granite countertops and selling them for less than the going market price. I just noticed a new store on Syracuse's North side - up on Wolf Street. They specialize in selling granite monuments and also caskets at discounted prices byt "going direct". If you like I'll get the name and number and PM it to you. Might be worth checking out since we're only an hour or so from your location.

[MelissaH]

My last kitchen and cabinets that extended all the way to the ceilings and I loved it. Granted, even at 6' 2" tall, I had ot use a step stool to reach things on the upper shelves, theres plenty to store that I acess only on occasion.

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My husband's 5' 10" tall, half a foot more than I. Our kitchen will have a designated place for a stepstool, because even though we don't often need a gravy boat, we like to be able to get to it on those occasions we need it.

Interesting comment upthread about a monument company that was getting into granite countertops and selling them for less than the going market price.  I just noticed a new store on Syracuse's North side - up on Wolf Street. They specialize in selling granite monuments and also caskets at discounted prices byt "going direct".  If you like I'll get the name and number and PM it to you. Might be worth checking out since we're only an hour or so from your location.

I'm definitely interested. We have a monument shop here in town, but I like knowing all my options.

MelissaH

[Smithy]

THIS may have been covered upthread too, as I've been in and out of this thread too much to have good recollection, but keep in mind the possibility of cabinets that don't go to the ceiling, but with no soffits. My husband and I store some of our more decorative plates, bowls, pots up there - not to mention the stockpots, that would take too much cabinet space. With the stepstool we can get at them easily, but we think they really add to the look of our kitchen. I'm pretty sure we'll make sure to keep that open space if we ever get around to remodeling our kitchen.

I'm with you on marble. Too soft, too vulnerable to acid. Granite, though - that would be fun.

[Varmint]

We have no soffits, but not enough room for storage above them. We like the way it looks, even though it really wasn't intentional to have the cabinets like that.

Oh, and we have granite tiles and don't mind the grout one bit.

[kiliki]

keep in mind the possibility of cabinets that don't go to the ceiling, but with no soffits. My husband and I store some of our more decorative plates, bowls, pots up there - not to mention the stockpots, that would take too much cabinet space.

This is what we'll have, too. One of the happy surprises during demo was that we actually have 10' ceilings, so instead of having cabinets that go to the ceiling, as planned, we're now going to have a foot and a half of extra space to store the same kind of things you do.

[LindaK]

Melissa, a few thoughts:

Have you thought of moving the refrigerator to the far end (near the door, across from the range) of the inner wall? That would address your concern about fridge-to-sink distance and Varmint's advice about getting it caught in a corner. You'd still have a long stretch of countertop along that wall. And, you'd be able to put that full-length pullout pantry cabinet where the fridge currently is, in that pesky corner. It would also let you use all tall upper cabinets all along that back wall instead of some tall/some short ones. Lots more storage space.

re: your worries about having the dishwasher near the patio door--can't you put it on the other side of the sink? Just switch the dishwasher with one of those drawer stacks, you'll still have one next to the stove.

Maybe I missed this, but how user friendly are you finding the Ikea planning software? I'm also considering their cabinets but haven't tried the software yet.

[MelissaH]

Oh, and we have granite tiles and don't mind the grout one bit.

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Varmint, what happens when you roll out piecrust or other dough? Do you see crisscrosses from the grout, or were you able to get everything flush enough that it isn't an issue for you? Tiles are much less expensive than solid hunks of rock.

MelissaH

[Varmint]

Oh, and we have granite tiles and don't mind the grout one bit.

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Varmint, what happens when you roll out piecrust or other dough? Do you see crisscrosses from the grout, or were you able to get everything flush enough that it isn't an issue for you? Tiles are much less expensive than solid hunks of rock.

MelissaH

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I have an area that's a solid piece of marble. Just for the pastry.

[MelissaH]

Have you thought of moving the refrigerator to the far end (near the door, across from the range) of the inner wall?  That would address your concern about fridge-to-sink distance and Varmint's advice about getting it caught in a corner.  You'd still have a long stretch of countertop along that wall.  And, you'd be able to put that full-length pullout pantry cabinet where the fridge currently is, in that pesky corner.  It would also let you use all tall upper cabinets all along that back wall instead of some tall/some short ones. Lots more storage space.

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We've been tossing a bunch of ideas around this evening, but haven't actually put hand to mouse yet to try them out. There is a problem with putting the refrigerator directly opposite the range, though: our fridge is about 33 inches wide, and the aisle would only be about 48 inches wide. You wouldn't be left with much room in front of the stove if someone wanted to open the refrigerator. The kitchen is narrow enough that we've realized it would be best to avoid having major appliances directly across from each other.

re: your worries about having the dishwasher near the patio door--can't you put it on the other side of the sink? Just switch the dishwasher with one of those drawer stacks, you'll still have one next to the stove.

This is certainly a possibility. I still think we'd want to move everything inward a bit, though, to give us the ability to round or slant that countertop and the base cabinets underneath and open up space just inside the doorway. That would also exacerbate the issue of having the sink far away from everything else in the kitchen, so we'd want to explore the options for second sink placement. (In actuality, if we did this sort of thing, I believe the sink currently shown could wind up being the secondary sink, not the primary sink that we use most often, of the kitchen. But I'd want to think good and hard before committing to locations for the small single-bowl sink and the larger main sink.)

Maybe I missed this, but how user friendly are you finding the Ikea planning software? I'm also considering their cabinets but haven't tried the software yet.

Some parts of the software are maddening. I've had issues before with things being off by an inch here, or an inch there: I know the kitchen is 8 feet across the inside, and when I add up the lengths of the things I want to put across that dimension I get 8 feet...but then when I try to drag those cabinets into place, I come up short by a smidge. I'm not sure if they're building slop into the software to allow for sloppy installation, or if it really is impossible to fit 8 feet of cabinets into an 8-foot space. My tactic has been to go back to the room dimensions and tell it to make the kitchen slightly more than 8 feet wide, so everything will fit.

We've sometimes had problems finding everything we want to use. The 2006 version, in particular, is limited on the available cabinets (so says my husband, who's played with the new version more than me) and appliances, so you may need to kludge some of what you want to see. The program's a bit persnickety about letting you place cabinets where you want them, especially if you're running tight spacially. And make sure you get everything on the floor exactly where you want them before you start working with things up above, because once you have upper cabinets in place you really can't move the down-below stuff. What I've been doing is pretty much any time I want to move things, I pull out the entire upper level of stuff so I can do the down-below, and then once I've moved the bottom level, I put the top back.

That said, the price is right. You don't need any specialized knowledge: if you can get far enough to download and install the software, you can use it. You can make some decent drawings to work from, especially if you're somewhat well-versed in Acrobat, Illustrator, and/or Photoshop (or other graphics programs). The kitchen designer we talked to asked us whether we'd used special design software or Ikea's program, which indicates to me that it's indistinguishable from the consumer-level programs that aren't free. And I think that in the end, the list of what you'll need to buy would also be very nice to have, especially in a case like ours where the cabinets would need to be shipped in from far away. At least for us, it's been great for a first estimation, regardless of the cabinets you'd want to use.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

I have an area that's a solid piece of marble.  Just for the pastry.

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Looks great to me! (I'm guessing that if something bad ever happened to your counter, you could replace only the tiles that needed to be replaced without having to redo the whole counter. I like that idea.)

BTW, I see that you have a KitchenAid mixer with the crank-up bowl. I know those are taller than mine, which has a tilt-up head, in its resting position. How tall is yours? I'd like to be sure that I have enough room for one to fit underneath, should my mixer circumstances ever change.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

keep in mind the possibility of cabinets that don't go to the ceiling, but with no soffits. My husband and I store some of our more decorative plates, bowls, pots up there - not to mention the stockpots, that would take too much cabinet space.

This is what we'll have, too. One of the happy surprises during demo was that we actually have 10' ceilings, so instead of having cabinets that go to the ceiling, as planned, we're now going to have a foot and a half of extra space to store the same kind of things you do.

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Ooh, lucky you, kiliki! You get to have high cabinets, and also space above. We have plenty of display-worthy pieces, most courtesy of my mom the ceramic artist. We only have eight-foot ceilings, and if we wanted to leave room for a stockpot up above our cabinets, I think we'd lose too much storage space inside.

That said, we may have another issue with leaving significant space on top of cabinets. Right now, we actually do have one cabinet with space on top, next to the refrigerator. That space arose when we got the new fridge last year. The new one was just enough taller than the old one that it wouldn't fit under the over-fridge cabinets. The way our cabinets are attached, the soffit had to come out before the cabinets could come down. So we pulled out the whole soffit on that side, but only removed the cabinets directly over the refrigerator. A little drywall work and a coat of paint, and you'd have to look hard to realize it was ever there.

But almost right away, one of our cats realized that the top of the remaining cabinet is a nice high perch from which to survey the kitchen. The problem: His route up involves forbidden surfaces: both a table that takes the place of a counter and the top of the refrigerator. He's usually pretty good about getting up on top of the cabinet silently (in which case you walk up the stairs and into the kitchen and get that weird feeling of being watched, until you hear his tail thwacking against the wall or otherwise notice him) but occasionally he's a bit klutzy and knocks something down on his way up. Even now that it's no longer a new place that must be explored, we'll still sometimes find him up there. We pretty much keep both the table and the refrigerator top loaded with stuff, to block his route up.

Presumably, though, if the route up weren't so obvious, he wouldn't head up there. I don't think we have the ceiling space to allow it in any case.

I think that for us, glass-fronted cabinets might be a better display solution, if I could keep the cabinets neat enough. We'll just have to live with the stockpot taking up loads of cabinet space, or we'll do what we do now and keep it in the utility room unless it's about to be used, in use, or has just been used.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Here's a question for those of you with multiple counter surfaces: how did you make the junction between them, or did you just plan your surface usage so as to not need to make connections?

Varmint's picture above shows a marble slab set into a granite-tile counter. To me, this looks like the marble was just treated as an extra-large tile, and that the marble was either the same thickness as the tiles or whatever's underneath was prepped to account for a difference in thicknesses, so the entire surface looks flush. This looks like a great solution.

But what about if you want a Corian counter with a zinc surface as a landing area next to your stove? Or laminate except for a marble slab in a baking area? Or if you wanted butcher block, but needed to use something more water-friendly around the sink? Are there good ways to make transitions between surfaces, or are you pretty much stuck with one surface until you get to a natural break point (like a range that breaks a countertop run, or a doorway, or an island)?

MelissaH

[Smithy]

Heh. I understand all about cats and cupboard tops. A few times we've discovered a fondue pot or some tippy thing sitting askew, up near the ceiling, with never an earthquake to explain it. It hasn't happened for several months, so maybe the kittens have grown out of it...or else they're expending all that energy outside. We'll find out come winter, when they're inside all day looking for amusement.

Varmint, my poor innocent, those spaces atop the cabinets are perfect for serving trays, oddball utensils that you rarely use and don't want cluttering up your lovely storage drawers, or last year's tax return that you can no longer find. You're too organized by half, mate.

[MelissaH]

An idea hit me this morning.

Go back to our very first thought:

(If you're thinking that the explanations weren't there before on the picture, you're right. I realized that a little bit of what's what might be useful, so I added it in.) The first problem with this, and the reason we went back to the drawing boad, is that the refrigerator door opens right into the dishwasher. My husband's declared that he doesn't like having two corners to put cabinets in (although that doesn't bother me as much). And looking at this, I'm seeing another potential issue with the very limited space in the refrigerator landing area.

In this first attempt, we were still stuck on the idea of keeping the sink in front of the window. But if we leave that idea behind, what if we just swap the positions of the sink and the dishwasher? Or what if you just slide the sink/DW arrangement (in whichever order) down somewhat (not all the way to the end of the run, but just down far enough to get it out of the way)? You'd then get a little more counter space next to the stove, which could be useful also. I'd definitely want to measure out things to the fraction of an inch, to be sure there's no overlap, but you might clear away some of the awkwardness that killed this layout initially.

As for the limited space on the other side of the kitchen against the short wall: this original plan had a 36 inch wide cabinet, full height, between the fridge and the doorway. But there's not a good reason for keeping it so wide. What if it were instead a full-height 24-inch pantry pullout cabinet like this one? Or an even skinnier 15 inch wide cabinet? You'd then get another foot or 21 inches of counter space next to the fridge, which might even give you the room for a second sink at the end of the counter if you wanted. And heck, as long as you're putting the plumbing in for a second sink there, why not move the DW to that side of the room, next to the fridge? Especially if you put a garbage disposal unit in that sink, so you could also use the sink to wash vegetables and whatnot? Up above, you could put a microwave shelf and also some cabinets to hold our glasses. On the other side, even with nothing up above, we could have drawers for the dishes.

Re snowangel's concerns about having unbroken workspaces: we wouldn't have a single giant linear stretch of countertop. But we'd have the whole cul-de-sac, from the stove edge around to the doorway on the other side, as well as more work area between the stove and the sliding door. (Can't say how big this will be, as it would depend on a number of factors, including stove size and placement, how far down we let the counters go, and where the sink is.)

More to measure again, play with, and draw out. Should also go back and re-read everything here again, to be sure I'm not missing something obvious that others have said.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

OK, here's an approximation with a smaller pantry, and sink and dishwasher next to the fridge. Assume there are also cabinets over the fridge. I haven't measured anything again yet.

In doing this mock-up, I banged into a few limitations of the Ikea software. All Ikea doorways must have doors in them. Ours is just an opening. Why does this matter? Because doors swing, and you can't put a cabinet into a space where a door swings. I was having an impossible time getting things where I wanted them, until I made the doorway into a very tall window. (After everything, I took the picture into Photoshop and erased everything there so it looks like nothing more than an opening, which is in fact all it is. The dining room opening I'd put in as another sliding door, and that also seemed to be causing me problems. However, you can always move objects by using the arrow keys instead of the mouse, and that's what I wound up doing. The downside of keying rather than mousing is that things won't be aligned, and that's why it looks like the sink is not in line with the dishwasher, which is not in line with the fridge.

I put a sink in a 24 inch cabinet at the end of that run, and added the dishwasher between the sink and the fridge. Picture a set of cabinets over the sink, and a microwave shelf and some cabinets over the DW. Cabinets over the fridge also, and a 15-inch pantry cabinet that goes all the way up.

I left the range and other sink where they were, although there's no reason they couldn't slide along the wall to other places. The range could also go back down into the cul-de-sac of the kitchen, which would definitely keep it out of the flow of traffic. I'm not sure if the two sinks (as shown here) are far enough apart that they'd both get used in this case, especially if the sink on the outside wall of the house moves down, between the sliding door and the window. Must think some more.

MelissaH

[LindaK]

Do you really need that second sink? It eats up a lot of counter space. You said you were concerned with a lack of landing space near the fridge--that makes it worse, if I read the drawing correctly. I like you pantry idea. If you scratch the second sink and put in the 24" pantry (instead of the 36" cabinet) you gain the pantry and another foot of counter space. Also, the cost of running the plumbing will be expensive--I'm thinking of having my sink and DW in an island, and my architect pals all warn me about the cost, esp. the DW.

If you leave the DW on the outside wall with the large (only?) sink, think about moving it down to the left so that you get the longer counter space near the stove instead of the at the end. You can put the DW on either side. And now that you've moved everything back from the porch doors, it doesn't look like the DW will be in the way if you put it at the end. And after all, how often is the DW door down?

[snowangel]

Linda K raises a very good point about the extra sink. At some point before you fall in love with any of these ideas, you're going to have to think about money. Having gas and plumbing lines run. I'd take a look at how much these things would cost before you come up with any absolute plans. I remember having a gas line at our old house moved before we finished the basement. The estimate left me on my back, in a dark room, with a cold compress on my forehead gasping.

[MelissaH]

Do you really need that second sink? It eats up a lot of counter space. You said you were concerned with a lack of landing space near the fridge--that makes it worse, if I read the drawing correctly.

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Yeah, it does eat up a lot of space, which we might be able to better use elsewhere.

Linda K raises a very good point about the extra sink.  At some point before you fall in love with any of these ideas, you're going to have to think about money.  Having gas and plumbing lines run.

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But it gets a lot less fun when you start to bring up money!

Seriously, though, once you start talking about sweating joints, we'd want a plumber to do the work. And this isn't an easy area to get at, since down below is a finished room. That was part of the appeal of (unposted) version 2.0, which had a sink down in the cul-de-sac of the kitchen: just on the other side of that wall is a bathtub, so getting water to there's going to be easy. Any of the places we've shown a stove won't be a real issue to bring in a gas line either: underneath the stairs is our utility room, where we can easily get at existing gas lines. And the utility room is the one room in the house that isn't finished.

Thinking some more about this, I came up with:

Cabinets over the fridge, microwave next to the fridge and cabinets overhead, still with a 15-inch pantry all the way up. I adjusted the fridge in the software to be 36 inches wide rather than 30 inches wide (ours is about 33 inches wide), which means that the cabinets between the fridge and dining room are now 24 and 21 inches wide. I'd want to futz with that in real life to get as much room as possible, given the real-life dimensions and existing fridge. Still a possibility of a baking corner opposite the range with swing-up/down marble; still the possibility to separate the cooktop and oven but keep them both down in the cul-de-sac.

On the outside wall, I didn't do anything to the range, other than make the hood a hood so the software knows it's a hood and not a cabinet. Two 24-inch cabinets between sink and stove. Upper cabinets all the way around from window to doorway, except for the aforementioned hood. Nothing up above from window to dining room, still; any task lighting there will need to be accomplished either from the ceiling or from something mounted high on the wall and pointed down. I'm thinking trash can underneath somewhere near the sink, and maybe another one down in the cul-de-sac. Dishwasher between sink and dining room, but not right at the end: I Photoshopped a 12-inch-wide cabinet to have a slanted front. Not sure what exactly I'd do with this space, but the slant at least eases some of the hip-banging potential. Could be a decent place to store some of the cutting boards, since we have them in all sizes. Might be somewhere to put in shelves (maybe ones that can pull out?) and use them to store soft goods like kitchen towels, since we go through a good number of those. Or cleaning supplies and sponges. Maybe a place to get wild and crazy and make two separate storage areas: one triangular area of open shelves, and another cabinet with a door facing the dining room table? I'd hate to just box that area in and waste the space.

One downside: this design has two corners with cabinetry, which we'll need to do something with. To me, this looks reasonable, but my husband may feel differently. He hasn't yet seen this iteration.

I think the cooking area needs to stay down by the cul-de-sac. There's the utility issue which I touched on above, and also the traffic flow issue, which I haven't really talked or thought about. But I believe that the stove should be out of the areas that people are likely to walk through. I also think the sink (if there's only one) should be easy to get at from either the kitchen workspaces OR from the dining room table.

As far as ovens: if I can pull off yesterday's dinner with only my one miserable oven, I'm thinking that one good and reasonably-sized oven will be plenty. I've been cooking with small ovens for so long now that it's second nature for me to plan my oven-based cooking around limited resources, and make sure that I only do one touchy dish at a time, and never plan more than what can fit on one shelf. And I've been thinking about how I would use a second oven if I had one. My friend Linda uses her second oven mainly when she's doing big cakes, like the 14-inch layers that made the bottom tier of her wedding cake. But she only has one 14-inch pan, and the second oven really just saved her time during the baking process, because she was able to do a couple of smaller layers in Oven #2 while the big layer baked in Oven #1. (Without the second oven, we probably would have needed to spend two long evenings helping her bake the layers, not just one.) I, however, do not own a 14-inch cake pan, do not plan to purchase one, and do not want to get into the wedding cake business. (That whole construction and transportation issue scares me!) And last Thanksgiving when it was too cold for the grill to light, we proved that we could take up the whole oven for several hours and cook a turkey inside without causing problems with cooking anything else for the meal. It would be something to brag about, but I don't know that we can afford it financially or spatially...and Anne's new house is exactly 1 km from ours if you stay on the roads, and as of this afternoon she has a working range! (But I lied about it somewhere up above: it's actually all-gas, not dual fuel, but it does have continuous grates on the burners.) Therefore, I'm going to be working from the assumption that we only need one oven in the kitchen, at least until I change my mind.

MelissaH

[snowangel]

That second oven. Could get far more expensive than just the oven. Power, electricity and the electrician.

And yes, I know, thinking about money is no fun whatsoever.

[Smithy]

Sorry, the microwave position makes no sense to me. You now have it next to the fridge and about as far as possible from the range and oven. I may have missed why it went there, and maybe it would work for you, but (looking at this the way I cook) I'd be crisscrossing the room all the time or, more likely, not using the microwave much.

Right about now you may appreciate a story I heard recently from an airplane designer. I was complaining about the location of a temperature probe in the airframe. He sighed and said the design group had had weeks of meetings about that. One person would say "put it here" and another would say "no, you can't, there's a door post in the way". Another spot was suggested and rejected, and so on. Finally they came up with a spot that, in his words, "only a radio engineer could love".

It really helps that you've put labels on everything! I've been having trouble tracking what appliance was where.

Are you planning to use the corner recesses (atop the cabinets) for storage of things you want out, or do you plan that to be work surface? I use my corner cabinet top for work surface because it's close to my sink, but I find that the recesses are wasted because they're too deep. They're useful for storage, though.

[MelissaH]

Sorry, the microwave position makes no sense to me.  You now have it next to the fridge and about as far as possible from the range and oven.  I may have missed why it went there, and maybe it would work for you, but (looking at this the way I cook) I'd be crisscrossing the room all the time or, more likely, not using the microwave much.

We don't use the microwave much while we cook. We do use the microwave to heat leftovers, but if we're making something from scratch it just doesn't get used (and right now the microwave is in a corner right next to the cooktop, about as convenient as it gets). So we decided to put the microwave near the fridge and the table. There are two very specific tasks other than heating leftovers that I use the microwave for: melting stuff (chocolate and butter, separately or in combination) and thawing frozen spinach when I don't plan ahead far enough. The butter that we melt in the microwave is almost exclusively used for popcorn, and I could easily see using the popper on the surface under the microwave. And any spinach that gets thawed gets an intermediate stop at the sink before it heads down to be cooked, so I can put handfuls into my potato ricer to squeeze dry. So those aren't issues. Chocolate is sometimes melted for non-baking use (like for dipping chunks of fresh fruit when I feel a little decadent). None of those would cause location issues for the microwave. Chocolate that gets melted explicitly for the purpose of going into batter is about the only thing that would need to be transported down to the other end on a regular basis. If that turns into a major chore, I might find a different way to start melting my chocolate.

Right about now you may appreciate a story I heard recently from an airplane designer.  I was complaining about the location of a temperature probe in the airframe.  He sighed and said the design group had had weeks of meetings about that. One person would say "put it here" and another would say "no, you can't, there's a door post in the way".  Another spot was suggested and rejected, and so on.  Finally they came up with a spot that, in his words, "only a radio engineer could love". 

Are you designing an airplane? Is it as much fun as designing a kitchen?

It really helps that you've put labels on everything!  I've been having trouble tracking what appliance was where.

Me too, because from the non-3D views that I tend to work from, when you put cabinets on top of the refrigerator, all you see is cabinets. If you have more than one set of upper cabinets, the refrigerator disappears: you know it's there, but you don't know where. As long as I'm bringing the drawings into Photoshop to clean them up anyway, it's just as easy to add the labels, which make things easier for everyone.

Are you planning to use the corner recesses (atop the cabinets) for storage of things you want out, or do you plan that to be work surface?  I use my corner cabinet top for work surface because it's close to my sink, but I find that the recesses are wasted because they're too deep.  They're useful for storage, though.

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Good point, and thanks for bringing that up. You're right that it's probably too deep to be easily reachable for work surface. However, I think that they might make good places to store things like a mixer, food processor, possibly even toaster oven (which we do tend to use in preparing dinner) and water boiler.

One recurring discussion between my husband and me is where to store the utensils that can get used on the stovetop: tongs, pancake flippers, whisks, silicone spatulas, slotted spoons, and the like. We have two crocks stuffed between the microwave and the cooktop, and I keep putting the utensils in there. My husband, however, tends to leave exactly one or two of everything out, and stuffs the duplicates into a drawer. (Then again, as far as he's concerned, he'd prefer to have nothing at all stored on the counters. Not me!) While I agree that they stay cleaner in a drawer, especially since we don't really have a place out of spatter range in the current kitchen, I'd really prefer to have everything at my fingertips without needing to open a drawer. We've agreed that appliance garages may be an adequate compromise for the mixer and food processor. One way to handle this might be to make triangular garages in the corners of the counter such that we can cordon them off behind doors of the sort that are often found on entertainment centers (swing open on hinges and then slide back out of the way), or maybe a tambour-style door that rolls back from one side like a sliding patio door. Then we could get the small fuzzy appliances and utensils out of sight but easily accessible, and also make use of an area that might otherwise be hard to reach. The diagonal would also echo the look of the upper corner cabinets from Ikea. However, once again I'd want to measure everything very carefully, to be sure that I had enough room inside the garage to be useful, and also enough room left on the countertop. I'd think that we'd at least have the space for the crocks of utensils on the stove side corner, and maybe this is a place to put some pullout shelves to hold little pastry tools or some of the more-frequently-used spices in the other? We're probably going to need to find somewhere else for the toaster oven, though.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

So, my husband got home from work this afternoon and I told him about my idea of appliance garages in the corners of the counter. His response: "Those are fairly common, and I've seen them before." I haven't, and came up with the idea all by myself based on Smithy's question! He says that we've both seen them in some of the kitchen setups in various stores, and I've always been so anti-garage that I wouldn't even remember seeing them.

That said: if we're both thinking of them, does that mean they're a sure thing in our new kitchen?

MelissaH

edited after we talked more last night

Edited August 15, 2005 by MelissaH (log)