New kitchen help - is this a good design (with pic)

[Kitchensanta]

DH and I bought a house with a long covered terrace which looks out onto a walled patio garden which gets great morning and afternoon sun. The current kitchen is small, and badly located in the house so we are trying to work out if we should knock out the exterior wall between the house and the terrace, and turn the terrace into a kitchen or not. The room we would be knocking through from is actually our dining room so to us it kind of made sense.

It's narrow, about 2.9m .. but long .. 8.50m ... and has great high ceilings 2.8m. There are 3 evenly spaced arches (structural) 2 of which we thought we would put doors into so we can have that indoors/outdoors feeling, and 1, at the farthest end where we would put in a window.

In this design, because we want to keep the feature of the old stone wall (it is an old village house and we don't want to hide the true character of the building) we tried the idea of just having a long, fairly wide island (about 6m x 1.2m) rather than a more traditional design of cupboards along the back wall.

The window/door side of the island would have an underset (space for legs) so bar stool seating can go on one side, and on the side near the wall it would have the dishwasher, small fridge, and storage for pots, pans, plates etc. We have a separate area of about 2.2m x 3m which would sit just off on the left hand side of the picture (just before you would walk into the main kitchen area) which would hold main fridge, freezer and serve as a walk in pantry too. On the far end of the island we would have an inset sink, and on the nearer end a ceramic hob with extractor overhead. The far wall will all be more storage and also house 2 ovens (we cook a lot and entertain), and have the microwave and coffee machine.

It is pretty different to anything I've had before and I am really attracted to a minimalist style.

Do any MNs out there have any experience with a space like this? Or any suggestions / drawbacks you can see. This is a big project for us and I really don't want to screw it up! I put this design together using an online app, but can't seem to get it to do a rendered picture from any other angle .. so apologies for that.

Please help me judge if this is a good design or not TVMIA

Sorry if I am slow responding to all your amazing ideas .. DH and I are overwhelmed and so grateful we are just trying to absorb it all

Oh, and if anyone wants to know, this is our joint Christmas present to each other ... hence the nickname. So at least we haven't got to rush we have time to think it through and get it perfect.

Thanks @PurplePansy05 .. your ideas are fab, am so grateful for the time you and everyone is taking to help us. We've never done a new kitchen before so hence asking for help, and truly am taking all the points and ideas on board.

Not so sure about a P shape .. can't quite visualise what you mean. However, your second idea about extending and doing a glass roofed extension really appeals to me. Not sure how that would affect our budget though .. but it would solve a lot of problems!

@Badgertadger a point very well made lighting really can make or break a room. Luckily the area is very bright during the day, but am now imagining a combo of really practical bright working lights, and then some mood lighting (maybe in colours) for when it is dark and we have friends over.

A good kitchen designer should be able to advise us on that won't they?

Oh yes, have to add this ... @lightlypoached .. your ideas have now put an island back in the mix haha! DH is now happily sketching even more, and feeling vindicated that not everyone thinks his idea was a total biff

I didn't suggest an extension.

I attach what I meant as an open P or C kitchen layouts, the other part would be a diner.

So sorry @PurplePansy05 .. of course you didn't, I got confused between you and lightlypoached when I was trying to reply to everyone, my apologies. Now I get what you mean but it wouldn't work. I don't think I explained it well, but the bit on the left is where we have an opening into the dining room so any units there would block the access. That's why we originally thought the little alcove would be good as a walk in pantry.

I don't get where this opening is that you're talking about tbh and the dining room would move in to the space you wanted to put the kitchen in per my design, so do you need another opening from the kitchen? Even if you do you can keep the opening, just not have the units wherever it is, or move it. I think it's best if you get a designer in, it's a bit difficult to advise with no photos and limited information.

Sorry @PurplePansy05 .. I know it is do hard to visualise things when you can't see it clearly and I am bad at explaining. DH has just tweaked the original floor plan, so you can see now how the kitchen bit would flow into the dining and living areas. Does that help?

He has also made the island smaller (now only 90cm wide so at least 1m clearance all round) and he likes the island idea again. Lol men eh?

@mobear

I would suggest having a run of cabinets along the back wall - perhaps building out that plinth so it lines up with the cabinets. You'll then have around 2.3m in front of it. I assume this will provide a lot more counter space than you need - one neat solution might be to use some of that space to add a built in bench with a slimline table which faces the garden (I think a floating oak bench would look lovely if you're going for a minimalist look). It wouldn't allow you to cook looking out at the garden but I think it might be as close as you can get to what you want and break up the very long run of cabinets you'll otherwise have. I attach a photo of the kind of thing I mean but you may not have room for chairs on the opposite side (which wouldn't necessarily be a loss, in my view).

I'd agree with this. The island would mean you have to shimmy around your kitchen. Currently, we temporarily have a table in our kitchen that means we have to do that, and it is very annoying. You could leave the stone wall exposed even if you have the units against it. I usually say a sink should be under a window, but in your case, I'd make an exception. You might be able to fit it to a short 'L' perhaps?

Well this is a completely different layout to what I thought. It would have helped to see it in your original post. Do you want to keep it all open plan, or to have a separate lounge, more of a snug/relaxed area? And the rest open space, linking up with the outdoors?

@Kitchensanta a good kitchen designer should be able to help with that

That's kind of why I mentioned it. We have 13ft ceilings and none of the people we spoke to about designing a kitchen really considered the lighting enough. We had a beautiful design that didn't have any task lighting at all. When we tried to put it in there just wasn't any practical way to make it work. Heart breaking and bloody frustrating. It's easy if you have a run of wall units with down lights but if you just have an island you have to think about how to make it work when your ceiling is high.

Re lighting, a good electrician should be able to advise you too, our electrician certainly did.

@Badgertadger thanks. We do have high ceilings with beams, the ceiling slants very slightly, from 3m high at the back some wall, to 2.8m at the side where the doors and windows would be. Task lighting would be really important I agree. How awful you had that trouble with yours. With your high ceilings how did you solve it in the end?

We were just discussing it and we're thinking of maybe some kind of suspended track lighting in a suitably sleek minimalist design, or pendants which can be raised/lowered as needed. Also thinking of low level mood lights on a dimmer to add drama to the stone wall at night, with some at floor level lighting around the room too.

That should be back stone wall (flipping autocorrect)

Totally changed the design. Put in wall units with up and down lights (to light the cornices and the worktops), pendants over the sink (at the widow) and peninsula.

The only alternative with the other design (floor units only along the wall and a lateral Island bisecting the room) was either a small shelf with a lighting strip recessed into the bottom of it - which defeated my "no open shelves" policy; or a whole lighting track installed. Our equation was slightly different as it's a room with decorative cornices so a lighting track is a visual design nightmare.

If you have a good (esp specialist lighting) electrician they can really help, but there are lighting designers who can help at least outline the options - even high end kitchen folk seem to struggle with it

Hi @PurplePansy05 glad the extra bits and pics helped.

We are actually pretty happy with the general layout you see for the dining area and the lounge area ... it is pretty open, but the support pillars that we know we cannot move do work to define the areas quite nicely. Originally, and before we bought the house, the lounge area you can see was one small room (without the double doors onto the patio though - we put those in when we bought it to bring in more light and connect to the patio and garden). Then, where the red rug is, that was another small room with no windows at all! And then the space where the dining table is was yet another small room again with no windows. All of them were opened up by the previous owners ... but they never moved the kitchen which now feels very disconnected from the living area.

Our existing kitchen is completely separated from those living/dining areas at the moment, with a utility room in between so we have to walk through the utility (with boiler, air con, washing machine, tumble dryer etc.) before we get to the kitchen. DHs idea therefore is to move the kitchen to the end of the house where the living actually takes place, and turn the current kitchen into a little gym room for us both to use.

@Badgertadger sounds like the solution you found is lovely. No beautiful cornices here sadly, just the very raw stone bones of the house. Thanks again for your advice, very much appreciated

Ok, so I'd be thinking about how you want your house to flow next. Do you organise many parties/plan to do so after covid? Busy social life and/or kids? Pets? You say lots of outdoor living?

It feeds into whether you'd want the dining room to link directly with the lounge or with the outdoors. Also whether you'd mind the smell from the kitchen to travel directly to the lounge? Just some thoughts to consider. You don't need an extension, if you want to work with what you have, you could consider for example having the kitchen in the area marked purple and the dining table and chairs in the area marked red, or where it is now. Just some ideas. I think a peninsula instead of an island would work better regardless.

That patio area is gorgeous

@Kitchensanta

Oops *@Warmduscher* .. forgot to add we have an outdoor grill for doing flamed/chargrilled stuff and DH loves using it even when (rarely) raining

That sounds like a great setup. I cook chappatis directly over the gas flame and I just can’t imagine how I’d do it with anything other than a gas hob!

After seeing the plans with the dining table, I don't think a kitchen at the end of the room with a casual breakfast area would work. I think that blue kitchen idea i posted earlier has possibilities. I've quickly sketched up an idea that incorporates the little room as part of the kitchen. I think having the kitchen between the dining and breakfast area will separate the two, whilst meaning you don't have to carry food a long way. The way I've drawn it, you could have a bi-fold window next to the bench so that if someone was cooking inside, they could still join in with conversations outside. Also makes it easier to bring stuff in.

Hi @PurplePansy05 I think you are right we need to think very hard about flow and what is important to us.

To answer your questions it would be yes, lots of informal get togethers, with friends / family staying / popping in a lot too. Do a lot of bbqs or buffet lunches and outdoor movie nights in the patio. No young kids, but in a couple of years probably GCs (hopefully ). Just a cat who spends a lot of time outside. And yes, probably March till Oct we eat outdoors in the patio most of the time.

DH spent a lot of yesterday creating plans of the various ideas MNs have suggested. We thought if we do a variety of versions incorporating the range of ideas PPs have suggested we can then compare and discuss them side by side. Still not finished but lots of food for thought

Thank you very much for the suggestions you, and PPs, have made. A lot are things we hadn't thought of, which is great.

@YellowFish12 Thank you, we love it too. Was one of the big reasons we bought the house

@k1233 Thanks for taking time so early/late in your day/night to reply - are you a night owl or an early bird I wonder? (night owl here)

I have shown DH your sketch and he is looking at it right now. Another potential design idea we hadn't thought of. Must admit, I do love the idea of the benches where people can sit and chat with us while we cook or prepare snacks.