Design Confidently, Live Comfortably
| March/April 2005 A Change of Space Switching Rooms One day our friend Jim, also a home renovator, came over to offer moral support. As he stood in the adjacent (and larger) dining room, he suggested that we simply switch the dining room and the kitchen. Since we hadn’t replaced the old plumbing to the kitchen yet, we could just run the plumbing to the dining room. We’d get a large central kitchen with more wall space and a sunny dining room with a beautiful built-in china cabinet. It was a brilliant idea (see floor plan).  A dramatic change Turning the decrepit dining room (inset) into a new kitchen (above) required a labor of love but allowed the homeowners to reinvent both spaces with clever details. So we set to work. Closing up a superfluous doorway between the rear parlor and the new kitchen added more wall space. We situated our new galley-style kitchen in one corner of the old dining room, with a peninsula for the sink area so I could face windows onto the garden (see floor plan). All the home renovation books we’d read recommended a layout where the stove, sink, and fridge relate as points of a triangle for optimum efficiency. We incorporated that principle into a U-shape that proved most efficient for us, since we usually take turns cooking rather than sharing the space at the same time. Streamlining the kitchen left room for a breakfast area -- a small table and two chairs -- as well as a couple of our antique cupboards.
The new compact kitchen layout also let traffic flow easily to the dining room at the back of the house. Charming old details in the former dining room inspired our materials choices in the kitchen. We repaired the existing beadboard wainscot in the dining room, then repeated that look in the new kitchen. We also used the original molding on the built-in dining room china cabinet as a template for the crown molding on the kitchen cabinets. These common elements tie the two rooms together, and bright green walls draw you into the room. NEXT: Finding the Right Materials |
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PHOTOS EXCEPT WHERE NOTED: KAREN TANAKA. BEFORE PHOTO: COURTESY OF AUTHOR |
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