Please help me with tricky kitchen design

[Pannacotta]

I'm really struggling to come up with a decent design for our new kitchen. As we may need to make some structural changes, local kitchen designers won't help until we have a finalised room plan - I've loaded photos of the existing floor plan onto my profile, hope they're clear enough to see.

We did ask an architect to do some drawings but his plans were very modern, not really what we were after.

It's an odd shaped room and a bit small for quite a big family home.
There is no proper utility room at the mo, the washer/drier are stacked in the long cupboard, which has a door opening into the kitchen, which just eats into the limited floor space.

We need to include a kitchen table to seat 6, 8 at a push.

Any suggestions on how to arrange/reconfigure the space? Also where we might create a better utility area (perhaps in the downstairs bathroom if we take out the shower)?

Thanks in advance.

To be honest i think your house is a bit too small to have a kitchen. Looking at those pictures i just don't know where you could fit it in !

Do you have a local restaurant you could share with ?

can't see picture well enough, can you upload it to photobucket or somewhere similar so we can see better

either that or share with a restaurant. I like that plan - much less cleaning required

A bit small but you want a table to seat 6-8 people? Must be tiny.

What are the dimensions? The room looks quite big.

interesting reading

The photos are very small - could you put them on e.g. Flickr or Photobucket? The kitchen is the one on the top left, isn't it?

A few suggestions at random -

Can you remove the back of the kitchen entirely and have an extension of about 1m deep with a (very well insulated) wall of glass and a small slopy roof? Then have the table up towards that, and units on the other two walls? A friend had that in a small Victorian house (and he's on telly, so it must be good) and it looked great.

Putting the washer & dryer in the downstairs shower room sounds like a brilliant idea. Your downstairs shower room sounds grim anyway.

We have a massive larder (like your big cupboard) that all our food goes in, and nothing goes in anywhere else, which means that all the space in the actual kitchen is for saucepans / plates etc. We have drawers rather than cupboards as they fit in more crockery and cooking equipment.

As the boys get bigger, could you get rid of the dryer? We don't have a dryer, because it meant we could make our awkward kitchen layout work.

Our kitchen is a totally different shape but also rather small for a 4 bed house, and you're welcome to look at it if you like, or I can do photos. I say that it's rather small - it seemed small when we bought the house, but it now seems fairly spacious. It just wasn't laid out and used well.

Can you also go for shelves rather than units in some parts of the room, and have things which are reasonably decorative on them? Could you have some of your dry food in big glass jars on display on shelves?

I don't think that utility rooms are as necessary as they used to be, because washers are so much quieter now.

Or how about you swap the sitting room and the kitchen round, put French windows on the now sitting room onto the garden, use the big cupboard in the now sitting room for the boys' toys, knock down that mysterious cupboard in the now kitchen, put on a big window onto the garden, and hey-presto, you have a big kitchen and a light, sunny sitting room. Now you knock a door from the now kitchen into the mysteriously long thin room by the dining room (? - at the front of the house on the right as you go in), and call the long thin room a utility room, blocking off the doors into the dining room. Then you knock a door from the now kitchen into the dining room, so it's easier to serve Christmas dinner, etc (this makes a massive difference, as my parents had a similar layout in their old house)

Result is that the house is better laid out, you get your utility room, your sitting room and kitchen are much lighter, and you can have a table for 6-8 in your kitchen, or just carry things straight through into your dining room.

Thanks all and sorry for the crap pictures!
Grendel you have some great ideas (thought you might), will read again and digest and yes woudl love to see photos of your space.
I will try and load a better photo of the room on either flickr or photobucket (am a of a techno phobe so may take some time!).

The room is around 5m deep into the bay though and 4.2m from the far wall to the long cupboard, so should be big enough for a table if it were better laid out.

Right, have posted pics on photobucket which shoudl be clearer, I hope!

s1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee370/pannacotta1/?action=view&current=Kitchenplan001.jpg#!oZZ1QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1224.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fee370%2Fpannacotta1%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DKitchenplan001.jpg

and
s1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee370/pannacotta1/?action=view&current=Kitchenplan004.jpg

Brilliant! More kitchen fun - how long have we got?

(Can you tell I have some work that needs finishing but that I really can't be arsed to do? )

Do you need the downstairs bathroom and are you happy to knock some walls down?

Gosh, that's the most idiotic layout I've ever seen. I might amuse myself at lunchtime by playing with it!

What's above the bay in the kitchen where your sink is? Is it a bay window for the master bedroom or something of the sort? Can you knock walls out around that with some RSJs to hold it up?

Lala - I think the downstairs bathroom is currently the only bathroom, but that there are going to be two bathrooms upstairs.

Is there any reason why the washing machine etc is not in the place marked "utility" under the stairs?

In fact your downstairs rooms are all quite large - worth investigating whether it would be cheaper to move the kitchen into another roon such as the drawing room, or extend the back door or the kitchen out to level off the bay. Our main kitchen area is about 21x14, and leaves plenty of space for a large table - we have seated 12 at least before now.

You should try and maintian a downstairs loo, even if it becomes a loo/utility room. In our last house we had a run of slatted cupboard doors in the downstairs loo, behind which was the washing machine, big sink, shelves etc (still had a small washroom sink near the loo)

lala there is no rush but would love your input, thanks.

It is very odd yes, the previous owner was a design bafoon and did some very strange things.

The "bay" in the kitchen has nothing above it, it's a pitched roof, we can't extend upwards but yes we can bash it around, subject to cost.

The architect suggested removing the bay and taking the room back to the original wall where the french windows are, and adding bifold doors all along. I'm not keen on this, partly as the kitchen is above ground level and I think bifolds not in keeping here.
Also, he suggested removing the long cupboard and opening the kitchen up to the hall, but there is a big pillar next to the kitchen door which could be very pricey to get rid of.

We cant really put the kitchen in the current sitting room as access to the garden is poor and would be almost impossible to change - a curved set of York stone steps, also I dont think we'd get planning - very fancy west elevation to the house.

We dont need the shower room to be a shower room, but we do need a downstairs loo - could go in long cupboard with door from hall?

Here is a plan with dimensions

s1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee370/pannacotta1/?action=view&current=Kitchenplan008.jpg

crumpet the washer could go under the stairs, no plumbing at the mo, but did wonder if this area would be better as a pantry.

Having looked at other options, the kitchen needs to stay where it is I think, mainly due to garden acess.

Levelling the back wall in current kitchen is on my radar, just thinking through all options really, ie bring it in, push it out, add glazed roof etc etc.

DH is keen to get best possible result with least hassle!

What's the triangular bit at the back of the drawing room: is it a lean-to conservatory? And, am I missing something, but the kitchen is currently at the rear of the house so moving it to sitting room would put it in the front?

My parents had a kitchen well above ground level, and they created French windows onto a balcony / raised terrace, and then a flight of wide steps down onto the main garden. It was south facing, so you could have breakfast out there, and it was lovely.

Are you sure you wouldn't get planning? Does it need to disturb the elevation?

lala the room at the front is labelled sitting room on the agents plans, but we use it as a tv/music room and the "drawing" room (opposite the kitchen) is our sitting room.

Did wonder about putting a door from the kitchen to the tv room and using it as a dining room.

The triangular cupboard at the back is where the boiler is. There is some fancy detailing in the drawing/sitting room, so we cant knock through there.

Are you happy with the utility as it is or do you want something bigger?

When you said you wanted something traditional, can you be a bit more specific?

Sorry Grendel, am confused.
Not quite sure what you were suggesting.

It is quite a confusing house, with an odd layout, not helped by strange labelling on estage agent's plan.

To clarify, the front of the house faces North and the back South, we use the front left reception as tv room/den, front right as study, back right as sitting room and back left is kitchen.

lala I'd like a proper utility space, or two, somewhere for the washer/drier plus stroage for hoover/mop etc and a butlers sink for washing muddy boots.

As the house is quirky I think that ultra modern would look out of place.
Am after a fairly simple, classic style, nothing which will date too quickly.

Will try and find a link.

Your wc/shower room is shown differently in the two plans?

I have a downstairs shower room which is similar to the layout in the older plan. Shower where yours is. I have washing machine & dryer stacked where you have your washbasin. Washbasin (small) is where your toilet is and toilet is on outside wall - so top RH corner of your plan. It works well though we don't use the shower very much. If you took the shower out you could put a clothes horse in there too....

Unless I have misunderstood, the room you use as a study is quite big - and what is the long narrow room leading off it? Could you alter this room & partition it to be a study & den & use the front den/tv room as a dining room & put a connecting door through from the kitchen?

Decor you're quite right.
The first link is accurate and to scale.
There are 3 windows in the shower room so its a hard room to plan, we'd have to take out the shower to stack the washer/drier but it is do-able.

No you could stack them where I suggested - shouldn't matter that there is a window behind (or you could brick it up) & keep the shower

Oh, the kitchen looks really nice in the photos. It just looks so cheerful and family-like. It makes our dining room look a little bit like a soulless over designed magazine photo, and it isn't even that glam.

Yes, your house is laid out very much like my parents', so when I said 'sitting room', I meant your 'sitting room / drawing room'. But that's got fancy moulding round the ceiling, so you can't knock through into the boiler cupboard and get a south-facing window? My parents actually got a specialist plasterer in to re-do the fancy moulding when they re-did their sitting room to have a big south-facing bay window.