New appliances installed

We purchased two new appliances before doing any other remodeling. The fridge came first, purchased because we got a great deal on a floor-model at Lowes. It's a side by side and after a few days we're still hunting for things and adjusting the temperature. It has water and ice in the door and I'm still opening it to get ice from the bin - because it's quicker - and getting water from the sink - for the same reason.

We took down an upper cabinet to fit the taller fridge in, and it's a counter-depth fridge. The combination of those two small things seems to make the room seem oddly larger.

My father-in-law helped move the old fridge down to the basement, where it replaced an old stand-up freezer. The freezer is going to a friend at church.

The new stove arrived yesterday and my pastor and another friend helped with the gas hookup. As I previously posted, it's a Chinese-made NXR and seems to be very high quality. It arrived in pristine condition - something I worried about after having it shipped from California.

I was also concerned about it fitting as it claimed to be a full 30" wide, but it squeaked into the old opening no problem.

I'm currently running the oven at the highest setting to burn off the protective oil that kept it from rusting on the Pacific crossing. It smells catastrophically bad and set off the smoke detector once so far. It also is making the microwave very hot on the bottom (the oven vents out the short backsplash at the back). The manual requires 30" above the stove to the vent hood, but a micro-hood is what we have, and it's around 18" up.

We took the old electric range to church to replace the old-and-broken one in the basement kitchen. My kids helped clean it up in preparation.

New refrigerator

We happened upon a counter-depth, side-by-side fridge marked down at Lowes this week - apparently someone meant to order new doors to replace on a damaged fridge, and an entire new fridge was ordered instead. Lowes had it marked down $900 off their normal retail price.

So we bought it. Delivery (free) is on Saturday.

Unfortunately, the new fridge is taller and wider than our current fridge, so the cabinets above our current fridge (which had nothing in them) had to be removed, and the fridge will stick out into a walkway three inches. Had to do some painting today where the cabinet was.

I just found that our local utilities, through "Efficiency United" offer a $100 mail-in rebate on any Energy Star fridge purchased this year.

It's a Whirlpool GSC25C6EYY - Link

New range ordered

We decided to go ahead with purchasing a new range, in spite of not having the layout completely nailed down. Hopefully a plumber can get things close enough that not too much work will have to be done with new cabinets... we're thinking the stove will be in (roughly) the same spot. Our church had a need for a new electric stove and we thought we could donate ours by replacing it before we're ready to do any other renovation.

We required a freestanding range with a gas stove. We didn't care what the oven was, but all-gas is much cheaper than dual-fuel. We really wanted a stove with no electronics. No computer, no timer, no "chicken nugget" button, etc. Stoves like this come in two categories. There are the $200 bottom-of the line models, and then there's a gap where you seem to get, basically, the $200 model plus more electronic features, and gradually better construction and burners, all the way up to $5000. You don't see another electronic-free model until about $2000 which starts the "pro-look" models, and those go up into five digits.

So, we were looking for the bottom of the upper range, rather than the top or middle of the bottom range, if that makes sense.

We decided on a NXR range. It's a brand I've never heard of, but it meets our criteria and has a price on the bottom of that upper range ($1999 delivered).

I wanted to know if I could get a better range by spending slightly more money. I looked at ranges by Five Star ($3000), Electrolux ($3200), American ($3300), Jade ($3500), and Capital ($3550). The Capital is the first one on the list I decided I'd rather have than the NXR, and it's a little bit better. Not $1550 better. So.... we ordered the NXR, from Dvorson's of Sausalito. More information when it arrives!

Plan contender

This is the plan we like best as of today. It has some problems, but some great features. There are upper cabinets only on two facing walls, so no upper corners at all. One pantry cabinet is removed to make the walls right and left of the window more symmetrical. The "bump" in the backsplash is repeated between the range and the sink. The range is moved right of its current location by 6" to center it on that wall, just as the windows look centered opposite. Both bottom corners are left blind, and the counter over the radiator is raised to windowsill height, and kept at the same depth as the pantry cabinets (18-19"). Here's what it looks like entering the room:

A 1910s kitchen would have had a couple pieces of big furniture - not cabinets everywhere. This plan tries to achieve that through limited use of upper cabinets, and maybe seems more spacious as a result. It also "simulates" a stand-alone hearth by making the range more of a focal point instead of just another built-in piece. That's how it looks to me, anyway.

It's not perfect. There's limited prep space near the range, and the sink isn't on the same counter as the range. The longest continuous countertop isn't near anything (except maybe the microwave). But, swapping the sink and the range (which would improve prep space) would mean putting back one wall of upper cabinets, messing up the look. The places that must have upper cabinets are the sink and the fridge, and having them across from one another looks best (in the computer program, anyway).

Old kitchen pictures

These pictures are all from before we bought the house. The only substantive change we've made is to run a low countertop over the radiator, where the previous owners had a small eat-in area. They were a retired couple; we're a family of four.

Plan iterations

Here's a progression of plans we thought through:
Switch the sink and the fridge: Makes an awful blind corner right of the fridge.

 Switch the stove and the sink: Not so bad, but no particular gain either. Requires all plumbing to be redone.

 Switch the refrigerator and the range. This is OK too, but the fridge door and the entry door will interfere. Venting the range is unpleasant (but possible).

 

Remove the fridge to the hallway: Opens up the kitchen nicely but the fridge area is quite cramped, even if those short walls are removed. Kitchen designers suggested this.  

What if we could move the radiator and put the sink in front of the window? The view out the window isn't awesome, and it'd be centered on a post between two windows, actually. Would have to push out the countertop to get the required depth after the passageway. Here, the radiator is right of the entry door:

And here, we tried it on the other side of the room. I'm not even sure if moving the radiator is possible, much less reasonable.

My mom helpfully suggested removing the closet and the bathroom; here's one possible plan:

Finally, we had a bit of an epiphany. We'd been trained by cabinet salesmen that every free bit of wall had to have cabinets on it. What if that's not true? Here's a plan with a few cabinets removed right and left of the window (for symmetry).

 

This is based on one a kitchen designer suggested, but with even more of the upper cabinets removed:

 And, here's what we think we've arrived at. No upper corners. We can put a large chimney hood over the range. We gain another few feet of countertop where the mixer is pictured. We lose half of a pantry cupboard. 

Tomorrow I'll post some elevation and perspective views of this plan.

Current floor plan

It seems the first thing one must do is arrive at a floor plan for the future kitchen, particularly deciding on the locations of the appliances and sink. Here's a floor plan of our kitchen, empty:

The door at the top (South) is the main entrance to the house for all except salesmen and evangelists. There is a hall to the left leading to our dining room, though a bit of a coat closet. The swinging door at the bottom leads to the study, and just to the left of that is the door to the basement. The radiator takes about 36" under the windows. The right is an outside wall, but there's a porch above the top. Now, here's our current kitchen layout:

The cabinets at bottom right are full-height, the rest are normal counter height with 30" uppers. I added a countertop over the radiator held on with some shelf brackets.

We took this plan to several cabinet stores and let kitchen designers fool around with them. The most popular thing to do was to move the refrigerator into what is now the coat closet. We don't like this idea, but it does create quite a bit of counter space in the kitchen. The oven, sink, and fridge can all be swapped around but this gains very little, and the choices are quite restricted. (Dishwasher must be near the sink; neither stove nor dishwasher may be in a corner; fridge must not be next to a wall, etc.) Some designers wanted to remove the wall so the bottom left countertop wraps into the coat closet area, forming a sort of Z-shaped counter.

We didn't really like any of the ideas which involved removing walls (not because we don't want to remove walls... they just didn't seem to work), and just swapping things around doesn't seem to improve anything generally.