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Space Planning: Kitchen

Let's think about this, the most important room for function, and I think this was the conversation that was coming out this morning is either the kitchen in the bathroom, right? And I said we would talk about some of the rules of thumb for the kitchen later and that time is now, so and we're going to see this space show up again throughout this process and even some monday three, but this is the one where I told you about creating the bank it attached to the kitchen island to really increase the function there, and I'm gonna show you the before and after of this, I think on the third day and how that really works. But first let's, just talk about some of the basic rules of thumb for the kitchen that maybe their design school ten tips and techniques that you wouldn't know if you actually had not been schooled in interiors, but there were really, really helpful, so the first one is the idea of the work triangle. And so this is the idea of how how far the three points of the kitchen are ...

from the sink to the range to the refrigerator, so that that's where you're really moving back and forth between most of the time in the kitchen and you want to be able to use those with these, not have them too far apart. Not having obstructive if if possible and there's things you can do if you have to have an island or something else in the center which a lot of this one I want and I'll tell you about that in just a moment but there you have the three areas of the refrigerator which is the cold storage the sink which is cleaning in prep and then the stove, which obviously is the cooking work site so all three of those need to have equal importance in the kitchen so for space planning if possible you want no more than four to nine feet between each of these areas. So if you were going to start creating a new kitchen that's ideal now, if you have to have more than that that's why you see humongous kitchens these days that have and island and we'll have a second sink or a sex or a set of refrigerator drawers or other tools so that you don't have to walk all the way from this point at the same way over two of refrigerator across the room we put something in place of that to help make it more functional uh so the total typically between all three legs should be between twelve and twenty six feet and if it's going to be longer than that that's when you want to start saying we need us that we need a second thing we need a some refrigerator drawers or we need something else to increase the function here without walking all the way across and then no obstructions ideally but that's not what most of us want. We want these beautiful things we see in magazines like islands and other things, so, um, just something to think about and laying out your kitchen. This was really important. The household traffic should not flow through the kitchen work triangle of helpful I mean, if possible, it's helpful if it doesn't if possible, because in my last house when you pulled the at the oven door down, if you're not really careful of kids were running through, they could run into that it's really could be dangerous, so you have to think about the traffic flow, and we're gonna do a little of that in our planning in just a minute um, and over the next couple of days and think about how people move through your space also in the kitchen, we love things to be pretty we don't think want things to be too utilitarian. I got you excited on the other two courses about color and pattern and fabrics and all those fun things and you can tell use those in the kitchen if you vinyl have vinyl coatings on them, so this is a really fun typify if you haven't heard this for me before something to note that there are companies once called sb I once called custom lamination sze, but they're fun cos you confined online that you can send fabrics that are like this like a linen or something with the pattern it's not really suited to a durable location and you can have them vinyl coated I do this for nurseries for kids rooms for kitchens we've talked about it before, but just something else to note as you're working and laying out your kitchen space from a function standpoint also don't feel the need to decorate your kishan kitchen's too much either looking at your work tops I want you to think about from a function standpoint and I go into lots of kitchens and I think, well, these people either don't cook very much or they make it really hard on themselves because there's all sorts of decorative things all over the kitchen countertop so really the kitchen is meant to be a space for hard working um function and so don't feel like you have to really decorate that space but the key to any functional room really not just the kitchen is editing it's that concept of getting rid of a lot of the clutter have not having too many items and really thinking about what can g o from all of your spaces and not have to be there that you're not going to either miss them or uh they're not gonna remove some piece of function for you simply so this is kind of what you were doing already, right? You just got rid of everything and you said you were only adding back things that you really love, right? Um so, uh, how about the kitchen any of you had felt that need to decorate the kitchen or decorate on top of your cabinetry or do a lot of that kind of stuff in that space in the past? It's gotten kind of more of a trend to keepem cleaner right lightly you really into cooking? I think that stuff just gets in the way. Um, I mean, I do keep I do have a little clutter in the corner by the stove because I have my utensils in a big croc jar and my mixer is there and some people keep all that stuff put away, but I use that stuff all the time so it's their meeting other than that it's pretty clean and I use all functional things to do, like if I'm gonna have anything on the countertop whatsoever I'll use like giant canisters with like the pasta are rice or flower things that I really used to function with. So, um I just find that people ask us to decorate these kinds of spaces and it's really to me more about function in the kitchen than decorating um, but but I think that's true for for any space there. Hopefully editing. We have any comments out on the web about editing? I guess I'm just curious about that very particular space. Is that a home? Yes. Because it seems like a large space, as one of you might be like a hotel lobby or so it's, actually a home. But it is a very large room. It's, the end of a bedroom and it's a ranch style. Yeah. Are you a third of a room? It's? A really, really large room. I don't know if I have the rest of it in this presentation at any point, if I don't notice for you, but really it's it's, the full length of the house from front to back on one end is a master suite in like a ranch style house. It's really low and horizontal. So it is a big space. We do have a funny comment from you matter. And you know, this time, I never had it before. Rachel jay, he says, I hate it when furniture is under a wrist against the walls I quite like manager gets the rules, but I think that's really funny. Well, and, you know, people, I think you can get either extreme of floating all your furniture or putting it all against the wall is not necessarily a good thing. It's more about laying it out for what works for you and it's probably a mix of some of both, but I think a lot of people got away from putting furniture against the walls, too, for a while cause they thought it was the trends float your furniture. And so really my point with one of with that first lay out wass you're not using all of your space if you're not willing tto open things up these the wall space and some of those others. Um okay, so editing is a huge piece um, so let's, look at a few of these before and after so we can see what it looks like to help clients curb clutter, to edit things out, to really get pieces of furniture that start tio fit their space better on dh that really, really work for them. So this client, of course, she gasped that I even took this picture. She was like, you took this picture on the absolute worst, most messiest day of our life, but honestly, it was a great indication to me of how their kitchen didn't work for them because it was small, it was, it was dated that the it was dark, the lighting was dark is more like a fluorescent light she didn't have room for her pots and pans, so like sally, she was trying to hang them somewhere she didn't have time she had two young kids and just like I don't even have time to worry about keeping all of you everything in my cupboard perfectly tidy and that all every kitchen cabinet upper is glass every single one, everything that came out of the diaper bags, the purses, the pockets was all landing on the kitchen island. Ah, and then, of course, every single thing else in the house that they used constantly that didn't have a place to go is lined up around the kitchen. So she's that's a loser mind in this space, and she when they hired us, they said, please help us, we have tohave help with the clutter and then it's just dark and dated and not working for us, so we were doing it quite large. We decided to do a larger renovation of this house that allowed us to bring in an additional eight feet on the back of the house that was a porch kind of like a new orleans style home that had the upper and lower porch is all the way across, and so it allowed us to really enlarge this space so a whole laundry list of things that we needed um things that they didn't like and not much about this space was actually working for them in this instance so we didn't have a lot on the list of what to keep uh more about what tio tio not keep and how to improve it so it went from this to this so a big difference, right? So you can see already we have an extra eight feet on the back of the kitchen um she was saying to me this is really dark and dreary it's what it looked like he bought it was remodeled and probably the eighties um our early nineties and you can tell from the finishes the colors, the maple cabinets, the dark wallpaper that I wanted to I want to fill like I'm at the beach at least uh went in my home something relaxing that was her favorite space and so we didn't want the house to not feel traditional because it's a very traditional home but it needed to, um give her sort of that relaxing, refreshing feeling of being at the beach and being cohesive with this traditional architecture. So a lot of things happening here to improve the space we had to put the column in because it's load bearing so that's where the wall used to end where this columnist so there's another one that matches it on the other side we're creating an eat in space for her kids um vinyl chairs and bank it see, I think I might have another image of this yes. So there's the other direction um I put these large baskets in the end of the island for all that stuff that used to end up on top of the island so it could literally if you needed to just be swept into these gigantic baskets and tucked away until you could deal with it to get that mental and visual clutter out of this the space and really start giving them some peace of mind. So the color palette for one was more peaceful and serene and then just carving the clutter you see there's not a single cabinet any more in this space that has a glass front because it just didn't work for them they needed to cover everything that was in the cabinet tree and we have a lot more storage than we used to have got rid of that dated lighting fixture and put in all kinds of lighting here pendant lighting can lighting in the ceiling under cabinet lighting a lantern over the breakfast eat in area so lots of function happening now um they had asked that the eat in kitchen also serve as a craft work table homework table sonny to make sure there was a lot of lighting there and then all this great natural lighting that we have now from the big double window and the double doors impossible to believe that's the same space and and family amazing job there and just, you know, I think changing up just the white paint on the ceiling and everything, even that alone itself opens it up, even if you know, you couldn't go to all that, you couldn't knock down the wall or whatever blew right? Just brightening up the basement has made such an impact there a little touch of the turquoise it does, you know, in the woman was saying she wanted beat you but classic, right? Perfect, doesn't it? So yes. So even this, like that island and just and it's, even a really great terror koi so it's not it's, not too bright, but it just gives you that little feeling of serenity and softer and really pleasant. Most people like these kind of terms, like most people like the aqua blue color palette. Um, and then with all the silver finishes on the medal and also that gives a really serene, like a spa feeling or that kind of a pot what I call apothecary, um, look to the space that also fills clean and sterile and fresh so there's a lot happening here in the way of function, but also the aesthetics that support all of that that bring it together, another thing that really helps and a lot of projects that I work on is they're just not very architecturally interesting like their new construction and I just don't have great architecture like we used to have ah and historic homes and so you would think the ceilings aren't really that high in here there there may be about nine feet there now higher than that I think they're a little more than eight but she wouldn't think you had a lot of room to do a lot of architectural detail ing but we went ahead and included the coffered ceilings because of the beams and we wanted to create some interest there and it allowed us because we needed tohave a structural beam running across this one particular column where we took the wall out so we use that as an opportunity to then go enhance the ceiling with this great grid call for detail and so it's really really interesting it makes it feel like the home's been here for a long time um much more character and it works great with the cabinetry any comments or questions or thoughts on this space um it's pretty fun so this is where it's fun to see the dramatic change right from going from this um to going to this uh much difference well I think the seal I mean that just adds so much elegance and character mean it would still be a pretty room if it was just plain white but yeah, I agree and architectural detail ing I think has to me I attach it to the whole part of the design phase that the function and layout is part of for me is thinking about as I'm laying out the furniture I'm also thinking about what's happening on the ceiling what's happening on the walls with respect to like panel molding or coffered ceilings or any kind of details so that's all part of the structure to me and not part of the decorative layer so I'm looking at all of that is the bones of the space and I'm thinking of all those kinds of things when I'm laying out a room for example if you start measuring your house and you notice that there is no molding around the window casings you know that's when I started thinking do we want to add trim around the doors or the windows and start making things more architecturally feasible? I mean interesting because it's that's when it's most feasible toe add those kind of elements when you're thinking about the bones and if you get what I call the bones of a space right you don't have toe add so much stuff you don't have to buy lots of furniture and decorative things to try teo spruce up a space if the space is beautiful um at the bones so things like countertops the tile, the ceiling detail, the columns, the cabinetry all of that is what makes this kitchen really beautiful more than the decorative furniture has been a lot of talk online about whether people put things clutter I'm gonna call it put things on the top of kevin it's will leave them there the designers are all saying leave them bare and other people saying no, I like plants and so he's got fluffy animals and stuff on top, but I think what's interesting about that before and this after that really speaks to me is that before had the kitchen cabinets that classic thing and they ended below the ceiling and there was that zone where if you are so I'm married to the person that's, sex, everything up high, it would be full of baking trays and all the stuff that he can reach that you can't go up there, whereas you have psych level e taken the overhead cupboards right up to the ceiling so that nobody has that option of wracking stuff. So yes, I don't like tio if I can help it leave that open soffit area because again either makes you feel and that's kind of what kind of what I was asking a moment ago these ladies of do you feel the need to decorate the kitchen because they were certainly a trend ten or fifteen years ago to decorate all of that space and it was just this dust catching zone or or use it to just put things that, you know, it became this awkward extra storage or something not really very attractive, so when I can help it, when I have a choice, I love to take the cabinetry all the way to the ceiling, and then it just adds extra function, which is what we're talking about here and then as faras the countertops. Um also what I was alluding to about hoping that people don't feel so inclined to decorate the kitchen counter, but if you are going to have things there, of course, some of this is for styling purposes on the island just for the photograph, like the cake plates and stuff, but the canisters in the background with functional items that you really use, I mean that's great if you're really going to use him or there's cookbooks in the corner and there's herbs and those pots that you can actually cook with. So when the few things go away from a styling perspective, it's left with pretty much the bare minimum of cookbooks, some canisters, some things that you really use or for me, like theresa it's, my kitchenaid mixer and appliances that air really beautiful as accessories that I use on a regular basis. Um, now, I don't like to keep all my appliances out that look cluttered if I'm not using them all the time, kind of like you were saying, but the ones that like a big, great looking mixture that you're going to stay in to make sure that you're going to use weekly or even daily, potentially there's no reason to feel the need to put all of that stuff away if it can be beautiful. Okay, so let's, look at another before and after so here's the draw, the drawing we were looking at with the two gigantic pikus trees and it's funny because the sofa just looked so tiny here, too. It looks like it's just a mini sofa because of what's happening around it, and these pieces of art were actually very expensive pieces of art. This clients a collector, but they they don't. They're not cohesive because there's not enough of them in odd shapes to look like a gallery wall, like my friend scott did in his space to really make that work, so they really just look like they don't work, right? They just kind of mismatched, so that's not really working on dh, then there's just a ton of wasted space in this room that they're not maximizing at all, um I can't remember well because somebody suggested that fake I think they might be actually it's been a while since we did this project so I can't remember but I think they were artificial actually and again that was a trend that was for, you know, tim, ten years ago or so lots of artificial well, the thing that struck me was that they're so obviously too large for that for where they're sitting in the space and I think it would've they grew that way that's the way it goes right if you actually went out and bought right so um and I mean, this is a this collect this is very much a collector of art you see thatyou hooley piece on the table and under the flexi box so they had the means that budget and and all of that I just I think over time had just things had become dated and just had it redone their house in a while so the after looks like this much different so that what they wanted was they wanted a home that looked like the places that they travelled tio so this is the one where he went from the weird things on the angle to just cleaning everything up, making them now course these chairs air angle but again that's photo stalling so they actually sit square to the coffee table much bigger self a much bigger tables really really simple and they wanted something that reminded them of really chic hotels and places that they travel because they're very well traveled and so they brought me images of things that they loved ah and then we really used a lot of their art collection to build the project around as well so um real serene really soft beautiful transit transition now from the entry into this space and far different in scale and function from the last space the before okay so let's look at another one so this one is a dining room and this was a space that um they this client knows that the knew that the furniture wasn't a fit but again this was the home where we were blending the family blend new marriage blending households bringing a lot of different things together and they were hoping to make some of their pieces work and this is where you know sometimes I have to just say I know you love that antique table but even with leaves and it's just not going to be big enough for the space it just doesn't work so we can try to use it somewhere else uh but it's not gonna work in this space but what they did have because they had a collection of uh not necessarily on purpose of these upholstered parsons chairs and some of them were a different style with a straighter back and then some had this rolled back and they had all these chairs, and they were like, isn't there something that we can do with these? S o we selected six of them that were the same to go as the side chairs, and then used two of the rolled back like this for the in chairs, we had them all upholstered to match one another, so there is a way to take things that you have, even if some things have been in one room and someone in another room and bring them together and start making them work, so increase the scale of the table added some other details that I'll show you in just a second, and I was wondering, actually, toby, if that was where they might have inherited a table, they did, but they took too polite to get rid of it, yes, and it just was too small for the space, so this is what we ended up with, and so this was also blending two styles, and I think I brought this image before in one of our other classes, but we were blending two different styles. The husband was very, very traditional loved the coffered ceilings loved the wanes coating on the bottom of the wall, the wife was more funky and quirky, and even maybe that artistic traveler a bit and wanted things to just be edgy and she was probably a blend of what we would in the last course called urban and artistic traveler, and he was very much a classicist. So how do you bring all this together? And he is the things that they already have, so this is a very real scenario of what a lot of you're going to be dealing with. You have the layout that exist that you can't really change necessarily, or at least change the shape of it, and you have pieces of furniture that you already own that you need to use, and then you have two people that you need to blend their two styles to make it all work together, so that so what we did was we made the table fit the room, which was rectangular, we added some molding to the top of the wall, tio that would enhance all the other molding in the space, which is this white tran that we've got on the upper part of the wall, and then we mimicked that in the piping on the chairs that they already had, and so we started blending all these things together, and they really work now so much improved, right? Quite a difference again, you wouldn't know it's the same space, this next one's really fun too, I said this one is a client, he just was a basement on dh single daren bachelor so so this is actually this is a basement of a single mom with two sons and one of the sons is his whether both actors now and I live in l a but this house is an arkansas and so she was creeped wanting to create a space for her son that was already working in in l a and was an actor had been from as a child actually but had moved out here uh to work and so this was going to be his apartment when he came home and she wanted him to feel like he could bring friends home and it just wasn't working at all for them and so the ceiling is only about seven feet six inches tall to begin with so you when you're stating in this room you feel like you could touch your head on the ceiling so very lettuce sailing because it's a basement it's a walkout basement but there was no where it was plenty big and the ceilings plenty tall to actually make it function and so they have this awkward um angle everything's on an angle the tv cabinet, the table and then the sectional self is really not the right scale and then we have this post that really holds sealing up which is very obtrusive but it's kind of scanning so it's not really a great architectural element is just kind of this post in the way and they just really didn't know what to do with this spice and so we wanted to think from a function standpoint of how do we combine living zone and a sleeping zone there's the bathroom next to this and then at the far end there's even the work zone so we created like a workstation so how do we make all of that work and make the ceiling seem taller when all of this really worked to flow together and so that's the after of the space so quite different isn't it? So what do you notice about the space? That's changed it's just well first off looks taller just by having the light in the you know the wrapping it in white and it increases visually the space and with this long vertical black line on the drapery it really makes you feel like the ceilings taller too do you notice the column it's like three times the size of the other one? So since I can't go away I decided to actually make it have a purpose and so we enlarged it input lighting fixtures on either side of it so that it actually made sense to be their um and then the curtain allows us to close off the sleeping zones of someone still up in the southern area which there's a tv in that space now you could have a little bit of noise in a privacy and noise reduction with this curtain, and then everything really is just squared up to, so we don't have anything on weird, crazy angles. This is the same coffee table even that we had before, but it's just all then tidied up. So a lot of times when you're playing with your house or your space and it's just not working for you and you go to putting things on weird angles to try toe, remedy the space or make it more interesting, you're actually doing more harm than good. And you should really think about putting things in a more simple layout a lot of times, which makes more sense in the space and then use other elements like furnishings, draperies and aren't working things to really become the interesting part of the space. But I think that was just the grins. Could you just toggle back and forth between? Because those that such an amazing transformation, the column ticketing is incredible like that, the impact that that makes on the look of the space? Yeah, just I mean, you never know that was the same space now is it it's amazing? This is another reason why it's so much fun and these aren't the exact same angle but they're pretty close we've probably gotten better and even taking all the right pictures now because with this when we started several years back uh but just this is another reason what's great tohave the before and after pictures even for yourself to just see how much difference there is between what was happening before and what um what is happening here and and you're exactly right about the white the baddest white the walls are white, the flooring is why the ceiling is swine and that's all very intentional here because I wanted the space too seem at bigger than it is now it's plenty big horizontally but just not vertically but I thought by wrapping the whole thing in this white it would just feel like this and we talked about that in the color of course the sort of envelope of a neutral space that really broadened the the whole thing and enhanced it vertically as well. Amazing color in the pops right away. Yeah, yes, thank you for nothing using that. So any questions on these I'm gonna show you the the app two in just a second because we have enough time to do that but any questions on these on the layout really starting to put things into your space um thinking about the kitchens or you covered a lot of tests. The angle that you've got was all about that fairly highness red cipher before on the coffee table in the nasty sculpture thing on it. But there's, a whole lot of just going to mention is the storage for this room. I mean, they must be storage. And what you have is very clean. So does that mean that the wall that was standing against taking the photo might have story, john and a little bit. But there's built ins. Um, at the end of the room, there's a whole built in cabinet that we is a workstation. And some storage is well, because really, on this whole side, it's ah, mainly windows that look that walks out onto a pool it's like a walk out basement on dh. So most of the storage in this space is happening in some built in cabinetry at the end of the room and also in the, uh, bathroom. But again, this is like a hotel room essentially for them, so it doesn't have to have tons of storage. It just needs to function for people to come and stay for short periods of time. So you think about a hotel room eating two claws that eat a desk, you need something to put your luggage on. And that's pretty much what the needs of storage were in this space because that's really how they were going to use it for, um weekend visits, that kind of thing. And so knowing what your actual plan is and who's going to be using, a space convict ate that because it's not like she needed to go plan this as if it was a room for them to use every single day and have tons of storage and because it really is and there was plenty of this is the house that had the peach kind of coral bedroom that you mentioned a minute ago that you said look so large that's in the upstairs, and so you see, even the orange color palette transition down to the space, but that's the master suite upstairs so really expansive huge rooms and this house ranch style really big, enormous rooms, actually and there's plenty of storage in this space. So that wasn't a concern as much as some other things that work concerns here like the low ceiling and the room just feeling dark and that architectural element just kind of being a bother obtrusive in the space and not making it feel very beautiful. So we increased the lighting here at night. We have these lights on the post and layered lamps and there's little swing arm lamps, I think, over by the bid that you can't really see in this picture. So, um, layered all the different lining in this well.