Criticize my kitchen/bedroom remodeling plans, please

In My Humble Opinion
1

Due to the larger size (either 42" or 48") of the rangetop I’m lusting after, I’ve decided that I need more room in the kitchen. So I’m going to steal it from the bedroom.

Problem is, I’ve been looking at my designs for so many weeks that I’ve lost all objectivity.So I turn to my friends on the straight dope. Please be gentle :slight_smile:

Picturetrail photo album

There are three pics:

  1. Current: The way it looks now.
  2. Remod1: The wide, double-door entry closet becomes a walk-in.
  3. Remod2: Same thing, except the walk-in closet is squared-off and all of the former closet area is moved into the kitchen.
2

How big is your place? I assume that the drawings aren’t of the whole thing since I don’t see a bathroom.

I would suggest that you keep the shape of the room as square or rectangular as possible. Version two with the angled wall will be difficult to fit furniture on and will look kind of odd. Personally, I would kill for a bedroom without any weird wall shapes or nooks or with four walls.

3

Oops, hit submit too soon.

I’m really liking the angled wall with the pocket door in remod1, but several people I’ve shown this to look at me like I’m insane. But in remod2, the external corner of the closet area juts out into the bedroom and is awkward to navigate when coming in the back door from the patio.

Notice that in remod1 the bedroom north wall (colored green) moves 10" further north making the bedroom bigger in that direction, and the south wall of the kitchen moves 6" south to give more elbow room when working at the range. Still, such a large rangetop will be a tight fit in such a narrow kitchen. That takes me to remod2.

In remod2, there is extra counterspace on the southside of the kitchen where the bedroom closet used to be, and this new area is large enough to take a 48" rangetop. The wall oven goes into a new wall constructed on the east side of the kitchen.

I’m torn between remod1 and 2, wondering if there is something else that might work better.

Any comments or ideas would be appreciated.

4

I just uploaded a new pic that shows the unit’s entire floorplan. The entire unit is 1000 sq. feet.

Keep in mind these old DC row houses are full of oddly shaped rooms & rounded areas where you’d normally expect corners. In v2 you can still put the head of the bed against the north wall for a little variety. I don’t think most bedrooms would allow you to stick your bed up against all four walls since most people are going to have closets and windows that would dictate where certain big things have to go.

5

Are you limited by where the plumbing, gas lines, venting to the outside comes in? Is that a load bearing wall between the bedroom and the kitchen?

You could offset the closet door on rem#2, make it a pocket door. Let me think about it for a while.

Why aren’t you opening up the wall in between the kitchen and the living room?

It’s really hard for me to give a professional opinion when I’m not sure what your goals are.

What are you trying to accomplish with this remodel? What do you need, what do you want, and what are you dreaming of?

Who’s helping you, or are you doing this yourself?

6

I like remodel #2. What is happening in the area to the right of the picture (large X) where the cook top is now? It looks like you have it walled off.
Also before you go tearing into stuff, are any of the walls you are moving a load bearing wall?

7

I’m very familiar with the weird nooks and angles of the DC rowhouse. My bedroom is more of an octagon not counting the nook. It makes placement of furniture in that room rather difficult. The other thing to consider with the angled room is resale value when you decide to move. Most people really do prefer something as close to rectangular as possible and the odd angle may not help with resale.

Since your place is a rowhouse, at least there is no condo board to get approval from. Have you looked at the permitting requirements from the city? Having dealt with them in 2006, I can tell your from first hand experience that the DCRA is a pain the ass to deal with.

8

Currently there is no gas line, even though this building is 110 years old. Washington Gas has given me a telephone estimate of $2800 to put a meter on the front of the building. That’s the orange circle in the “entire unit” picture.

The only non-movable waterline is where the main comes in maked by a little checkered circle in the left wall of the pantry, and it’s not in the way of anything I’m currently planning. The venting snakes through the ceiling to the back wall, but the kitchen ceiling is about 6 or 8" lower than the entire rest of the unit so I’m guessing that’s due to the venting and if need be I can go up there and reroute as needed.

There are no load-bearing walls between kitchen and bedroom. I’ve been inside those walls many times to run phone lines, video cables, modify plumbing, add a new electrical outlet… they’re all stud walls.

Not sure what you mean by “opening up”. I don’t want to steal living room space for the kitchen. I don’t mind taking space out of the bedroom because I don’t consider the bedroom to be true living space. I mean, 99% of the time spent in my bedroom is when I’m asleep.

You should see some of the new micro-condos going up in this area… bedrooms are bearly large enough for a double bed and a nightstand. What I currently have right now (about 11×14) would be considered cavernous by comparrison.

Goal #1: Design a kitchen around Viking’s 42" rangetop (or possible the 48" version). Increase counter space by moving the fridge into the pantry (fridge becomes a built-in).

Goal #2: make the bedroom closet more accessible. Right now the two doors are awkward and you have to reeeeeeeach-around to get to the left & right areas inside the closet. I like the idea of a pocket door because hinged doors require a lot of clearence.

I am going to use the same guys that moved a wall for me two years ago when I put in my steam shower. The only things they can’t do are plumbing and electrical and I am skilled with both so I can handle the pipes and wires myself. the only think I can’t do myself is running the gas line from the meter to the rangetop & oven. I’ll get a licensed gas fitter for that.

I can’t imagine cabinetry is all that difficult to install, just need to make sure to take careful measurements before ordering.

The big X is a wall oven. I didn’t show it in v1 but I do show the area where it goes (24 by 36" area to the right of the former pantry). That wall is new construction needed to support the oven. Not sure how I’ll handle the space to either side of the oven… cabinets/storage, I suppose.

Oops I didn’t notice your location.

Actually it is a condo, but converted back in the 80’s from one of those large row houses. I call it a row house to give people a sense of the narrowness. I find that when I say “condo”, people think I’m talking about one of those massive two-hundred unit buildings.

And I’m the president of the association :cool: I’ve been through the condo docs with a fine-toothed comb. They indicate board approval isn’t required unless the building shell or load bearing walls are being altered. The only thing I’ll need a majority vote on is the addition of the gas meter out front because it’s a capital improvement to the property. My informal polling of the other owners came back as 7 in favor and 1 ambivalent.

As for DCRA, I’ve already been told by one general contractor who has looked at my plans that the only permit that would be required is for the gas line. Of course I’ll get multiple opinions on that just to make sure. I work in the part of DC Govt that provides IT support for all of the govt agencies, so I have a few contacts at DCRA that I can check with.

9

I’ve updated v1 to show where the wall oven goes in that version.

10

I suggest that you check into what your GC told you bout the only permit that is required being a gas line permit. I’ve always heard that even if you are adding an outlet, in theory you need an electrical permit. Check with either your contacts or with the Homeowner’s Center at the DCRA. They are easier to deal with on the surface. If you go there first thing in the morning and ask questions, they can see you pretty quick. One of the problems with DC is that even the GCs aren’t too familiar with the permitting process. Our GC was surprised at all the effort that it took to get a permit for our retaining wall in front and even that one was required.

11

Wow, this is really hard to do with a stranger over a message board on a residence I’ve never seen.

What I meant by opening up the wall between the kitchen and the living room is making a half wall. It looks like you have a pass through window above the sink now? Make a two tiered countertop to open up the kitchen, more light, and much more open and larger feel to both rooms. You can then incorporate rem #1, but I would take that S wall, and make it the extend the entire length. You’ll lose a little bit of closet, but you’ll gain it in cabinetry and counter space.

In rem #2 I would put the door to the closet on the NW side, not the S. I also don’t understand why you made a wall if you have your double oven on the E side.

12

I like Remod 1, but then, I grew up looking at Gaudi buildings that make anything with straight lines moderate by comparison :D.

The angled wall isn’t “needed” for furniture. You can put a mirror or pictures on it in the bedroom side; in the “closet side”, if you set up closets with doors (rather than treating the room as a closet unto itself, with say shelfs along each side and a hange bar below them), you will get a slightly-awkward corner. And the plus is, access is much better.

If you go with Remod2, I’d make the door slide-in like in Remod1 and put it on the closet’s long side.

13

My first thought is that that’s a monstrous big closet, whether squared off or angled. In scenario 2, it devours a third of a the room, and leaves only a narrow alley between it and the foot of the bed. Plus it puts your bed practically into the kitchen. I guess I’m not liking scenario 2 much. If I were you, I would mock it up with some 2 x 4s just to get a sense of how much space it takes out of the room. I don’t really know what your closet needs are, but I wonder if there’s a way to reduce the overall dimensions of the closet, maybe by putting some of the less-used stuff in other storage you have?

14

Example of what I mean by two tiered counter. This keeps it a little tidier looking, without losing the openess.

http://www.cottagewoodpartners.com/slide/page429.html

Another option

http://www.cottagewoodpartners.com/slide/page448.html

15

Ah, I see. Well, the main breaker panel is in one of those walls, so I can’t do anything with that. I’ve just updated v1 to show (1) the panel {in red} and (2) the original location of the bedroom north wall & kitchen south wall {pink lines}. As for opening up the north wall, the kitchen cabinets are mounted against that wall right now. The less wall I have, the fewer cabinets I can put up. I was, for a short time, thinking about closing up that look-through window so I could put up more cabinets!

Nava, I didn’t put the door there because I plan to put up the small flatscreen TV on the wall at the foot of the bed (you can see it already in place in the “current” image).

I’ve already got it outlined on the floor in duct tape to see if I can easily avoid the area without much sense of loss. It feels OK. Another reason for a large walk-in closet is that the unit overall has very little storage space. So things like the vacuum cleaner, clothes hamper, a big suitcase, bicycle, etc. are sitting around in plain view or awkwardly pushed into corners and I’d rather be able to hide them in a closet even if that means a somewhat smaller bedroom.

Unfortunately, the grid lines didn’t get saved from Visio when I use the “save as jpg” feature, so it’s hard to get a sense of the size of things. It may help to use the oven as a guide - it’s 3 feet wide by 2 feet deep. And the bed is queen - about 4.5’ wide by 7’ long.

I appreciate all the replies so far!

16

Yeah those look nice, and I’d love to do that if I could but the breaker panel makes it impossible, especially since the mains come in through the ceiling and snake down through that west kitchen wall.

17

Hide the box in a column.

And you’ll get the cabinet space back on your south wall, plus some additional counter space if you run that wall straight behind the fridge/wall ovens in rem #1

18

I remodeled my kitchen a few years back. Some comments:

Don’t just physically map out the big things; know where everything is going to actually go, right down to the utensil drawer. (My first design had no utensil drawer.)

FYI, you may have building codes that dictate having a “landing area” of at least 12" directly next to stoves and/or fridges.

What worries me about including the wall oven is that it leaves very little space for food storage. Look at Rem2. Assuming the upper cabinets to the left of the sink will be used for storing plates and glasses, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for storing your non-perishables.

Rather than do a separate built in oven, I’d consider buying a 48" range that has a double oven attached.

Here’s an idea:

In the northwest corner, I’d put a floor to ceiling 24" x 24" cabinet. I have one and it holds all my pots and pans and plastic ware, plus a few small appliances. To the right of that, I’d leave a small “landing” area, then I’d place my beautiful 48" range/double oven combo. The northeast corner would provide plenty of room for food prep.

I’d knock down the upper half of the wall directly in front of the oven so that I could see out into the living room while cooking. I’d put a countertop and bar stools in the opening so guests in the living room can sit and chat while I’m cooking.

I’d relocate the sink to the east wall (where the double oven is on Rem2), adding a dishwasher if it’ll fit because that will really add to the resale value. Except for the sink, the rest the east wall could be upper and lower cabinets with just a countertop and an upper corner cabinet in the northeast corner. I’d put in a really cool tile backsplash behind the sink so people walking into the kitchen will see that first off. I don’t like the design where you walk into the kitchen and see a built in oven.

I’d keep the fridge where it is in Rem2. That will leave the rest of the south wall for storage. You could put in a combination of floor to ceiling cabinets and/or upper and lower cabinets.

I’d consider putting a few lit glass upper cabinets on either wall so that people sitting in the bar stools could see some beautiful crystal, etc.

My design does require moving plumbing and electricity, which may be more than you can handle. It can be done, though, because I did it.

Good luck and learn to love pizza. :slight_smile:

19

That’s a nice range/griddle, Lisa. I’ll have to bookmark that site and give it a thorough going-through. You’ve given me a lot to think about.

I wrote the OP thinking that it would be unlikely that anybody could change my mind about the major layout & appliance placement but you’ve all done just that. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board to play with some of the great suggestions given by you guys. Thanks, everybody!

20

In model 2, is that the refrigerator to the left of the stove? If so, is it quiet enough that you won’t be listening to it all night as it clicks on and off, against your bedroom wall?