Kitchens & Happiness Linked.

[LindaK]

More than half the respondents expressed dissatisfaction with their kitchens, with 57% wishing they could get a new one.  However, a whopping 54% of people who were unhappy with their kitchen say they wouldn't change it because the task seems too overwhelming

The most coveted kitchen feature? In island, with over 40% of respondents listing that as a "must add."

Does your kitchen make you happy? Would a new island bring you to a state of higher nervana?

A.

The daunting thing to me is not whether to renovate, but how to renovate. Various sets of architectural drawings have covered my dining room table for almost a year now, and I still can't decide what to do. But yes, I would dearly love an island. It's one of the issues that is keeping me stalled. Structural constraints as well as the width of my kitchen make it tricky to fit in an island. A peninsula would work easily--but to me that kind of arrangement feels confining.

Any thoughts, anyone, on peninsula vs. island?

[*Deborah*]

This is what my kitchen looks like right now.  Seriously.

I am training the dog to install the cabinets.

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I'll see your ugly kitchen, g-man, and raise it:

I moved my rooms around so that my old kitchen will be my new dining room, and an old...bedroom? will be my kitchen.

I'm up to mud and tape and plaster dust everywhere.

Can the dog paint?

[Rehovot]

I despise my kitchen. It was built by misogynistic, color-blind dwarves who evidently had never cooked in their lives.

The only creatures that seem to really like the kitchen are the ants.

I don't mind cooking in the kitchen, because it's small, galley-style, and I can get to everything quickly.

But it does not make me--or anyone else--want to spend a great deal of time in it.

Luckily, I'm leaving it in two months...

and moving to a place with a smaller kitchen, most likely.

[Mooshmouse]

I call both your ugly kitchens. Here's what our kitchen looked like when we took possession of the house last June.

This 1950s bungalow was been tenanted for 10 years by two chainsmokers with two rottweilers that thought they were inside dogs.

In the third photo, you can see a dining-room mural. This was quickly removed after we discovered that the previous owners had drywalled over a lovely paned window with beautiful hardware on it in order to put up that artistic masterpiece.

The kitchen is now as far from its original condition as you can possibly imagine. Custom-made Asian mahogany cabinets, stainless-steel appliances and glass (yes, you read that right) countertops. We still have a couple of finishing touches to go, namely the backsplash for the kitchen sink and installing the stainless-steel-boxed hood fan. Once that's done, I'll post photos of the finished product. Even in its nearly-completed state, though, it has certainly made me a lot happier!

[kiliki]

YES, yes, a thousands times yes, it makes us so happy. It was well worth the cost. The old kitchen, besides being small and dysfuntional, had 100 years of dirt and grime that would not come off no matter what we did-not exactly a place you want to be in, or have guests in, etc.

I think my old kitchen can hang with the worst of them (notice the low cabinets didn't allow for any countertop appliances):

And then it went away!

And then we had a new one. It's been 7 months and the newness and joy still have not worn off. The mr. even likes cleaning it because he's so happy with it.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Any thoughts, anyone, on peninsula vs. island?

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I am having my hot cooking area done more of a "galley style," and the island will be for big projects, classes, and for seating, along the back wall of windows.

I don't like islands that are in the center of the kitchen. They annoy me in a big way. Something always seems to be on the other side of them.

[the g-man]

I'll see your ugly kitchen, g-man, and raise it:

Can the dog paint?

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I call both your ugly kitchens.

I fold.

As for the dog, you are welcome to borrow him and his painting skills, anytime. Warning: He is not a reliable contractor.

Good luck with the renos.

kilicki, I really like your kitchen. You may remember me emailing you a few months ago asking questions about the renos when you posted about it on another thread. The kitchen that is going into my house is going to have a very similar layout to yours, and I am putting in a pass through to the dining room based on your photos. Thanks for the ideas.

[Daddy-A]

I moved my rooms around so that my old kitchen will be my new dining room, and an old...bedroom? will be my kitchen.

I'm up to mud and tape and plaster dust everywhere.

Glad to see you're ready for cabinets Monday morning!

A.

[*Deborah*]

I'll see your ugly kitchen, g-man, and raise it:

Can the dog paint?

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I call both your ugly kitchens.

I fold.

As for the dog, you are welcome to borrow him and his painting skills, anytime. Warning: He is not a reliable contractor.

Good luck with the renos.

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Cheers!

Not a reliable contractor...sounds like a guy I know

[Busboy]

I would love to have a new kitchen but I don't think a new kitchen would cook better food than the old one, so I'm not sure how much happier a new kitchen would make me.

A maid to clean the damn thing? That would make me happy.

[Bombdog]

Appropos of this ...

I read somewhere once that in my neighborhood (Park Slope), the leading cause of divorce was kitchen renovation. 

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My EX and I did a 30K remodel of our kitchen 10 years ago. We were divorced a year later.

I miss that kitchen alot more than I do her.

Edited April 23, 2006 by Bombdog (log)

[LindaK]

I think my old kitchen can hang with the worst of them

I'm going to have to borrow a digitial camera so I can win this throwdown.

Imagine 100-yr old victorian layout with a (roughly) 14'x11' kitchen with an adjacent 6'x6' pantry next to a 6'x6' butlers pantry that leads to the dining room. Imagine ripping out the pantry walls and squeezing the kitchen along the 6'x11' wall that was once the pantries (the door to the DR hogs most of the other 5' wall). Imagine a stove so close to the dining room door that no one can enter the kitchen when the cook is at the stove. Add cheap, peeling melamine cabinetry, little lighting, and poor natural light...ugly and disfunctional, what a combination.

The only upside is that the large, empty room that was once the kitchen has made a good staging area for various home removations projects. Now my goal is to take over this 20'x11' space and make a real kitchen out of it.

[i don't like islands that are in the center of the kitchen. They annoy me in a big way. Something always seems to be on the other side of them.

I agree. luckily, with my kitchen's structural contraints (doorways, chimney, etc.), that's not a real option.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Whoa, those are some FUGLY kitchens! I have nothing to complain about.

I'm jealous of the painting dogs. Gonna show this to mine and demand to know why they insist that all they can do is lurk until I open the refrigerator, and then lunge for the meat compartment.

[Angela Alaimo]

We've renovated our kitchen (along with the rest of the house) on the Ten Year Plan , and all we have left in the kitchen is countertops to replace the plywood. Yay!

But our inability to decide what kind of countertop is the reason we don't have one yet--all I know so far is what I don't want--no stone, with it's hard, echo-y, parking garage sounding-ness, no butcherblocks, definitely no tile.

Mooshmouse--You said you have glass countertops--I've been looking it to that and it sounds like it could be a contender--how do you like it and how is it on the wallet?

Deborah--Our kitchen is ~11'x13.5' and we have a 48" Viking in there--works just fine! I've even got a wheeled cart that is a sort-of island/penninsula packed in there, too. It's a bit too much, but it's handy, so we work around it. And move it when absolutely necessary.

The old kitchen was a horror show--it had ONE drawer and some kind of peel and stick bas relief stone on the wall--that was obviously great for catching all manner of grease, splashes, fuzz, cat hair, spider webs.....It was a happy day when that mess went into the dumpster!

/Oh yes, to answer the question, my kitchen makes me happy.

[*Deborah*]

Deborah--Our kitchen is ~11'x13.5' and we have a 48" Viking in there--works just fine!  I've even got a wheeled cart that is a sort-of island/penninsula packed in there, too.  It's a bit too much, but it's handy, so we work around it.  And move it when absolutely necessary. 

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Oh, thanks for that. I'm thinking about a little cart-ish thing, but I want to live with the space a little while so I can see if I'd just be tripping over it.

Congratulations on your successful reno! I'm going with granite counters, as I loved it to death in my last place

Edited April 25, 2006 by *Deborah* (log)

[jgarner53]

All your ugly kitchens make me ashamed to call my kitchen ugly. OK, so it's not ugly, but it is dysfunctional. Who puts a range in a corner, with a cabinet perpendicular so that you can't' put anything straight into the (only) oven, and can't stand directly in front of the range?

When my kitchen finally bites it, I will have a challenge on my hands, design-wise. At 10x11, with 3 doors (only one can go away), two windows, and walls that can't move (1 exterior, 1 load-bearing, 1 adjacent to a stairwell that has nowhere to move), I can't really change the footprint at all.

An island is the least of my worries. I dream of counter-depth fridges, 36-inch ranges (even better would be wall ovens, but would sacrifice too much cabinet space), and gorgeous soapstone counters...

[Jim Charles]

This has been our somewhat small. but very efficient galley kitchen for the past 30 years. We are in the process of designing our new kitchen for our retirement home and it will be very different. I don't want an island (I do the cooking) and will be quite large with large windows and be separated from the great room by a bar. Since everyone crams into the kitchen I want it to be a social area as much as a work area.

I have no idea why I can post a picture on every other board I'm on except this one.

Edited April 26, 2006 by Jim Charles (log)

[*Deborah*]

All your ugly kitchens make me ashamed to call my kitchen ugly. OK, so it's not ugly, but it is dysfunctional. Who puts a range in a corner, with a cabinet perpendicular so that you can't' put anything straight into the (only) oven, and can't stand directly in front of the range?

When my kitchen finally bites it, I will have a challenge on my hands, design-wise. At 10x11, with 3 doors (only one can go away), two windows, and walls that can't move (1 exterior, 1 load-bearing, 1 adjacent to a stairwell that has nowhere to move), I can't really change the footprint at all.

An island is the least of my worries. I dream of counter-depth fridges, 36-inch ranges (even better would be wall ovens, but would sacrifice too much cabinet space), and gorgeous soapstone counters...

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Oh, that is tricky. People keep asking me why I didn't open up my kitchen to the dining room. Aside from not wanting the dirty kitchen visible from the dining room, when your space is that limited, you can't bear to lose another doorway's worth of cupboards and counter!

Good luck.

[Daddy-A]

People keep asking me why I didn't open up my kitchen to the dining room. Aside from not wanting the dirty kitchen visible from the dining room, when your space is that limited, you can't bear to lose another doorway's worth of cupboards and counter!

Good luck.

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I'll vouch for Deborah on this one. Opening up the kitchen to the dining room in her case would have resulted in a poorer design, and definitely would have meant she couldn't have her 48" range.

I think in the case of the island, it's more a question of perception (i.e. islands are desireable because people think they're desireable.) I've had many many clients ask me to design islands into their kitchen when IMO it was the wrong thing to do.

A.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

People keep asking me why I didn't open up my kitchen to the dining room. Aside from not wanting the dirty kitchen visible from the dining room, when your space is that limited, you can't bear to lose another doorway's worth of cupboards and counter!

Good luck.

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Hee hee. Wait 'till you see how we handled that! The dirty-dishes thing, I mean, and the cabinet space. I'm probably going to love that part of the new kitchen most of all.

[jackieg]

We moved from our suburban house with a big kitchen and island to a condo in the city 4 years ago. I still miss my big kitchen. The island had seating and was practically part of the family room so I could be a part of everything when cooking. Any dirty dishes weren't a problem as we had 3 teenagers to take care of that. Now I have a galley kitchen that is separated from the living part of the house. I'm used to cooking in it but it's not as much fun. The pantry is in the garage keeping company with my big pots.

Kitchen = happiness, oh yeah.

Still happy when cooking just not as much. Plus the kids are gone so I have to do the dishes!

[LindaK]

When my kitchen finally bites it, I will have a challenge on my hands, design-wise. At 10x11, with 3 doors (only one can go away), two windows, and walls that can't move (1 exterior, 1 load-bearing, 1 adjacent to a stairwell that has nowhere to move), I can't really change the footprint at all.

Our houses have a lot in common. I also have three doorways. One can be moved, but would require ripping out the built-in china cabinet in the dining room. If I keep the little pantry in the bigger "old" kitchen space, that makes 4 doors, 3 along the same wall. Love these old houses.

I've had many many clients ask me to design islands into their kitchen when IMO it was the wrong thing to do.

I'm starting to wonder if that's not my problem. I've spent the past year playing with floorplans, trying to make the island work.

[coquus]

oh, and the oven's on a slant so baked goods end up sliding together or lopsided - good thing I'm going for taste, not looks 

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Hey, you checked the owner's manual on leveling procedure for your oven?

[Chris Amirault]

A couple of people PMed me about the changes we've made, so I thought I'd post before and after pix here. Before:

As you can see, the floating island, while wonderful, didn't have a place in the room, so it, well, floated all over the place. We also had a big bookshelf in the kitchen that we moved into the hall just outside (it just fit into the space between the kitchen door frame and the stairs). Finally, there was a kitchen table whose main function was to hold up the shelving system -- and cut down on square footage, of course.

We got rid of the table and put the shelving unit onto the wall:

And we added the side board and pot rack, and we moved the knife rack to the unpainted section of wall that had been hidden by the bookshelf (ahem):

We also added two Whirlpool appliances (range/oven and fridge). Here's the fridge:

Note also the Ikea laundry rack in the upper right corner of the photo; that's our pasta and sausage drying rack.

Simple, pretty cheap changes that have dramatically improved our happiness in the kitchen. Hell, we can even keep that Hobart out on the floating island!

[MarketStEl]

Never having worked in a kitchen with an island--the kitchens I've used that are big enough to accommodate one, including the 1964 Home Show special that replaced the rear sun porch off our old kitchen in the house I grew up in in Kansas City, usually had the kitchen table where the island would go--my question is: Why is an island so important? Is it the subliminal effect of watching all those TV cooking shows where the cook/instructor works from one in no small part because it allows the rest of the kitchen to be the stage set? Is it because people don't like to work facing walls? Something else?