Preeeeezenting...Kitchen Designs!

A very exciting development last week in our kitchen renovation plans - we received some AutoCAD drawings of our new kitchen design, courtesy of one of the cabinetmakers we are considering for the job. Check 'em out below! (click on any picture to see an enlarged version)

1. A top-down view of the new space:Note the doorway at the centre bottom of the drawing - this is the doorway into our current mudroom/entryway. At the moment, there is a full wall just to the left of the doorway, dividing the space in two (present kitchen to the right, small pantry/study/whatever to the left). This is the main wall that we are knocking down, to enlarge the kitchen space. The heart of the new kitchen will be located where the pantry room is currently. Our existing kitchen space will house my desk, a sewing area, a broom closet, and a large peninsula.

2. Galley Kitchen - South Side Elevation:
We are going with white, painted-wood Shaker-style cabinets in the new kitchen. The tall cabinet to the right will be a pantry cupboard for food, with pullouts like this. It will be full-length, though, without the two lower drawers as shown above.

We'll be putting in a new window in this space - the current window is tall and narrow, and set below the height of where the new countertop will be. And speaking of windows, there's a mistake in the above drawing - they've drawn in a large clock on the wall at the right, but there's actually a window there.

I'm planning on getting this sink, and this faucet. We will retain the existing flooring, which is beautiful 2 ¼" red oak that is original to the house. I'm still deciding on the countertops, but I think we are going to go with a grey-green quartz (engineered stone) - it's beautiful and nearly indestructible, but damn it's expensive. As for the backsplash, I'm planning on glass mosaic tile, in shades of green - maybe like this.

3. Galley Kitchen - North Side Elevation:
There's a mistake in the above drawing - the fridge and the cabinet unit containing the wall oven and microwave will be switching places. Lots of money being sunk here on all-new stainless-steel appliances: this fridge, this induction cooktop, this chimney-style extractor hood, this microwave (which will be built-in above the ovens) and this double wall oven. Originally, we were going to get a single wall oven and maybe a warming drawer, but when we priced those two things together, we found a good double wall oven that cost less!

We're planning on having cabinet drawers, instead of regular cabinets with pull-outs - more efficient use of space, and easier to get at your stuff. Countertops and backsplash will be as above, with the backsplash tile laid all the way to the top of the chimney hood, where it meets the cabinetry.

4. Desk Area
This space is where our sink and dishwasher are currently located. The tall cabinet at left will be a broom closet, with space for the vacuum, cleaning supplies, etc. The desk will serve as my home office, mainly - though I envision using it for sewing projects as well.

I think I may put down a wood desktop here, just to save a bit of money as the quartz counters are so expensive. We'll be replacing the window in this area, as well, with something a bit larger and set lower - so you can see outside while sitting at the desk. As for the floor, we'll be tearing up the grey ceramic tiles that are currently there. We are replacing them with reclaimed red oak floorboards we bought from a local architectural salvage yard, which will be sanded and refinished to match the existing floors in the current pantry room and dining room (at least, I hope that will be the end result!).

5. Peninsula between kitchen and dining room
We're going to take down a section of wall currently separating the kitchen and dining room - the place that houses our ancient wall oven and microwave at the moment. This is a weird-shaped space, intersected by a brick chimney, so custom cabinets are the only option. The main feature of this space will be a peninsula, which will be built where the wall currently stands now (I'd have loved an island, but the room just isn't big enough for one).

Here's a view of the peninsula from the side:
There will be lots of open shelving, for cookbooks and whatever else we might want to display. Also, we'll have a TV here, on one of those swivel-arms, and hopefully a small set of speakers - which the intrepid A. can wire into the existing house sound system (all controlled wirelessly via iTunes on the computer in the basement, naturally!). I'm still looking for just the right pendant lamp to hang over this area - one in this style, probably.

Under the countertop, the peninsula itself will house all our various recycling bins - viz. the two doors you see in the foreground. And on both sides (not just the left, as shown in the drawing) there will be a small countertop overhang of about 8 inches, so we can have stools on either side if we want. I think this spot is going to be very well-used - lots of room to spread out paperwork, do food preparation, or whatever. As the current kitchen suffers from a serious lack of counter space, this will be fantastic. Plus, it provides somewhere that guests can sit and chat with the cook, as it also will serve as...the bar!
This final drawing shows the peninsula as seen from the dining room, as well as a view of the entire new space. The cabinetry you can see at the left of the picture will now change its configuration - the upper part will have glass doors and will serve as a liquor cabinet (freeing up valuable space in my dining room buffet/hutch). The lower part of that area will house a small, dual-zone wine fridge (the pic above has the wine fridge housed beneath the peninsula countertop - that will change).

Well, there you have it. It's a really exciting plan, I think. Whether it will look just the way I hoped when this massive project is done is another matter entirely, of course. But it's a great start.