Sometimes creating a new kitchen is like completing a puzzle – at the beginning you see a ton of tiny pieces all laid out before you, knowing that eventually they fit together, but not yet sure as to the “how” to make it happen. But eventually, piece by piece, you lay out the corners, then the edge pieces, then start to compile the middle. (If you don’t complete a puzzle in this way, use your own puzzle analogy here.) Creating a kitchen that meets our clients needs is just like that, but sometimes it’s more obvious than others.
For this family of four (with a boy and a girl both under the age of 10) the core issue was a lack of space in their kitchen. They had multiple consultations from several different companies to meet their needs but time and time again they were less than pleased with the results that those companies produced. They invited us in to see their space and we began to put the puzzle pieces together.
The family wanted to have more counter space for food and meal prep and so the entire family could be involved in the kitchen process. They also felt that their main pantry area was overwhelming the current kitchen and wanted to move this to around the corner, but the logistics of this move were causing a headache. They were looking to add seating at their small island but couldn’t see how to achieve that in their current space. At the end of the day, the lack of space was starting to drive everyone crazy, and having no solution in sight proved challenging.
Approaching the kitchen design as a puzzle and a challenge, we found a way to move the door to the pantry around the corner, meeting the need of migrating the pantry out of the central kitchen space. The challenge with this move was that there was a lot of plumbing and HVAC work that had to move and be redone, but it was definitely worth it to meet the needs of our clients. We also found a creative way to capture additional space for their kitchen. We looked at the garage and found that it was gigantic – plenty of space with room to spare – so we decided to push back the new fridge and oven wall into the garage two feet, in turn making the kitchen two feet wider. What a difference this made for our usable space! Stay tuned for part two of this project where we’ll share more about how we made use of this new space to turn our clients’ dreams into a reality!