Browse Forums Kitchen Corner 1 Mar 29, 2012 9:41 pm Hi Apologies for the very rough sketches and drawings I hope these make sense. We are renovating our farm house which is currently a rabbit warren with a very very dated kitchen and bathroom. I would love to hear any feedback on the kitchen layout we have designed. Look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks in advance Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 2Mar 30, 2012 1:10 pm I think that's a really good use of the space - loads of storage and still lots of room - well done!! Put some pictures up for us when you are doing the work ... please For info on our build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43093 Built the McLaren by Dechellis - slab down 22 Feb - handover 30 Aug 2011 - and gardens finished 9 Dec 2012!! Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 3Mar 30, 2012 3:43 pm I think you'll get tired of the long trip round to the pantry. Have you thought of moving the stove to the short wall, then put entry to pantry past the stove and move the FF left a bit but still with a bench next to it for "landing space". So those all make a big U shape, the pantry splits into two walls. On the back of all that, you could still have the brooms and linen and maybe squeeze in a sep WC (looks like you're doing all the plumbing works together???) Where's the laundry? You prob only need 1100 from island to bench. It just looks like lots of traffic going round the fridge corner. If you keep your plan, how about a passthru from pantry to kitchen? Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 4Mar 30, 2012 4:43 pm In our last house we found the sink worked well in the centre of the island unit rather than to one side. The Harder You Try - the Luckier You Get ! Web site http://www.anewhouse.com.au Informative, Amusing, and Opinionated Blog - Over 600 posts on all aspects of building a new house. Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 5Mar 30, 2012 6:41 pm My kitchen is similar.Not in my home yet, my layout Will suit my family. Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 6Mar 30, 2012 7:03 pm I don't like the idea of people walking through/via the kitchen to get to the bedrooms. And like planfan, I question the need for a long pantry that's hidden from the goings on of cooking. Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 7Mar 30, 2012 8:50 pm Thankyou all for your comments and thoughts.
Particularly planfan and d@n I will try to give you a little bit of back ground on some of the issues you have raised; Pantry The pantry will be a "dry pantry" which is what we currently have. I am the only one who ever really goes in there as we will use the "short" bench as a breakfast/snack prep area with cereals bread spreads etc in overheads and the tea and coffee is next to the stove top. We live on a farm and therefore i "bulk buy" so this pantry will store most of our supplies and not our everyday foods. The entrance to bedrooms I also have worried about the kids walking past there but I feel it is unavoidable and at least this way guests don't walk past all our bedrooms to get to the loo! Planfan what is a passthru? The laundry is in another part of the house which was unsketched. This area has our "mud room" home office, two guest bedrooms and another bathroom. As I said we live in a wonderfully crazy rabbit warren of a farm house with years ahead to make it just right! I have had a go at sketching the "extra" bit again please excuse my amateur drafting skills! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Please keep the comments and suggestions coming they are all food for thought. Thanks Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 9Mar 31, 2012 7:45 am A pass thru is a hole in the wall - like cafes might have from kitchen to their serving counter. You can rest things on a ledge there and go into pantry to collect them - saves carrying things round corners and fridges. Do you use your lounge room much? How many people live in the house? Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 10Mar 31, 2012 10:43 am Hi Planfan Thanks for the info re the pass thru. We are a family of five three kids under 5. As I said we live on a farm a long way from both of our families so often have lot's of visitors. We use the lounge mostly at night this is where our TV and couches and fire are. But generally when we are entertaining we are in the kitchen/meals. Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 11Mar 31, 2012 3:00 pm Hi idream3, I really like your plan! The house must be huge with all those bedrooms. We also live on a farm and have just very extensively renovated. Just one thing that stands out a little is the wall between kitchen and lounge... did you want it to feel more open as one room or the kitchen to feel seperate. I would maybe loose part of that wall after the pantry to make an island thingy?? Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 12Mar 31, 2012 9:00 pm Hi MelG I followed your thread with interest! A lot of people make that same suggestion but for our family (we don't like the kids watching too much tv, or climbing all over the couches!) we like having a seperate sitting room. the kitchen/meals will be about 10m x 6m so is a pretty large area as is. Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 13Apr 01, 2012 6:30 pm Did I not look hard enough? Where the fridge? (is that fridge freezer at the end of the bench)? (hard to see on my puter) The fridge is the heart of your kitchen because so many fresh & frozen foods are stored there.... So its important that your fridge door opens the right way that you don't have to step around it to load ingredients onto the food preparation space. Likewise the day to day pantry for dry stuffs shoukd be easily accessed from the food prep area (Yes understand a large storage pantry for farm situation - lived on an offshore island running a commercial kitchen to feed charter fishing lodge and pearl farm guests as well as the Japanese pearl seeders etc, and we had something similar, a separate air con room off the kitchen, specifically for dry foods storage and deep freezer storage. In the tropics we'd keep things like flour in the freezer so that it never reaches the temps for weevils eggs to hatch etc when in long term storage - you learn a few tricks when living remote.... Back to Kitchens - as long as you have the room nothing works ergonomically as well a U shaped kitchen with an island bench food prep area - the U incorporating a breakfast bar/serve over one side with a few stools.... Reason is - you reduce the distance you have to walk to the different utilities in the kitchen, basically everything revolves around the Island bench preparation area & fridge & sink- where things are brought together before going into the various stove oven micro etc. The fridge feeds the cold stuff to a preparation area either or alongside the fridge if you have bench space or behind you on the island bench if your short of bench space. If you look down on such a plan (i.e. in plan view) you will see that its a step or two in any direction to the sink drawers pantry dishwasher fridge etc etc and a step back to where your preparing...once its in the oven or micro a step around the bench from the fridge side gives you access to the sink for cleanup and put away of the dishes used in prep. Make sure if you still have the old fashioned land line phone that no one has to walk anywhere inside your kitchen to answer it if your busy (or block up your kitchen work space while standing there yacking for interminably long periods while your busy cooking) BUT it has to be close enough to the outside of the U shaped kitchen that you can get to it quickly easily to answer it if no one else is home and your cooking - YOU need to be able to keep an eye on whats cooking or the sink running etc while your talking! Use your head with your plan and imagine yourself walking thru food prep for a favorite dinner in your kitchen plan - are you walking too far - are you retracing your own steps back 'n forth to the fridge etc etc - look for wasted / repeated steps and try to eliminate them... You shouldn't for example have to walk right across the kitchen to put cutlery into a cutlery drawer from the sink - the cutlery drawer MUST go somewhere alongside the sink depending if you wash and dry right to left or left to right and how many bowl sink you have is it a two bowl sink and do you rinse your dishes after washing to remove detergent ie. glasses etc? You should spend a LONG time over just your kitchen layout plan, it could save you a LOT of wasted kilometers of walking if you get it right... Dishwasher should be near the sink & cutlery drawer and plates dishes and pots cupboards / drawers. A professional Kitchen designer (if they are any good or have any commercial kitchen experience) would get this aspect right for you - without you having to even think about it - just from experience, and they would be able to explain to you WHY they suggest a certain layout. How would anyone here assess your layout if you have bedrooms access thru a kitchen and no location of even the fridge for example... You want your kids to be able to access the fridge from their bedrooms within a few steps? Not me or mine would eat us outta house n home in the middle of the night and we'd have to do another trip to town in the boat to shop every week! With a fridge that close to my kids rooms it would need a hasp and staple on the door with a padlock.. Sorry - I think you need to go back to square one and think about alternate access to the bedrooms and spend more time thinking about Kitchen layout once you have that sorted out! Could you not swap your lounge and Kitchen locations - OK the lounge would then have kids rooms access - but your entry would bring people past your kitchen which you may not want. Everything's a compromise isn't it! I only spent 20 years building kitchens, and a few years running a commercial one...so others mileage may vary. Cheers Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 14Apr 01, 2012 11:20 pm bashworth In our last house we found the sink worked well in the centre of the island unit rather than to one side. we had the opposite experience. Centre sink meant that we didn't have sufficient room on either end. I think it depends on the length of the island bench. If you are going to have a sink in the centre, make sure you have enough room on one side for general use, while the other side is used for storing dirty dishes/pots until washing up time. If you are going to put the sink at one end, make sure you have enough room to put the dirty pots until it is time to wash up (min 400mm). And have room to drain them after washing (again, min 400mm). I don't have a problem with accessing the bedroom area past the kitchen. You have to access bedrooms somehow and at night, I rather have a kitchen near the bedrooms (which is reasonably quiet after dinner time) than the lounge room, which will likely have a TV going for a few hours after dinner or people talking. And the way you currently have it configured, it's quick access to a bathroom from the main living area without actually having to go past (potentially messy) bedrooms. Given that you do have a L-shaped bench and an island, I too would consider just having a U-shaped kitchen. In my experience with kitchens, it's a great shape. You could still have the 'breakfast bar' feature, so you wouldn't be losing anything there. bench. 2010, June : Land bought (1700sqm, battleaxe block). That's it so far! We're in the design phase .... Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 15Apr 04, 2012 9:33 am Thanks again for taking an interest in our renovation everyone. We are taking comments on board and going over our plan thoroughly. Everything needs to be balanced as in we are renovating an old farm house thus money spent on this house does not necessarily increase the value of the property (aside from greatly increasing our home life!), so there is a limit to $$$ that it is viable to spend on the renovation. Will keep you posted once building is underway! Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 16Apr 09, 2012 4:58 pm If $$ permit I'd swap your proposed kitchen with your meals. You'll end up with a lounge,meals area with bedrooms off this which is better to me than bedrooms off the kitchen. The new kitchen location would abut the mud room so a store room somewhere between these two would IMO work better. Personally I like a sink on an outside wall so I can see what is happening (also live on a farm). Re: Kitchen design- thoughts comments advice please! 18Apr 12, 2012 11:51 am indi If $$ permit I'd swap your proposed kitchen with your meals. You'll end up with a lounge,meals area with bedrooms off this which is better to me than bedrooms off the kitchen. The new kitchen location would abut the mud room so a store room somewhere between these two would IMO work better. Personally I like a sink on an outside wall so I can see what is happening (also live on a farm). Agree with the suggestion of swapping the kitchen and meals area. 2010, June : Land bought (1700sqm, battleaxe block). That's it so far! We're in the design phase .... I am building Enfield 201 by Mimosa Homes - York Facade Link: https://www.mimosahomes.com.au/new-homes/enfield-201/ I did my colour appointment last week. I am looking… 0 597 I was being kind to the builder. 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