Kitchen Layout & The Power of Pocket Doors | One Room Challenge: Week 2
And we’re back! If you missed it, last week I went over some of my plans and a mood board for my kitchen renovation. I’m tackling a complete renovation of my 1939 home’s kitchen over the course of 8 weeks for this season’s One Room Challenge.
In the last week we’ve started demolition, running new electrical, and framing and this is where things are sitting right now.
I thought this week would be a good time to talk about the new layout of the kitchen and how I got here. Taking it back to last week, here’s the lay of the land:
Floor plan of the main floor of a house. Contains an entryway with closet and two doors leading to a living room and kitchen. Walking through either space takes you to a landing, off of which you’ll find two bedrooms, a bathroom, and two sets of stairs (up to the second floor and down to the side door and basement).
As you can see, the door placement means that even though this kitchen is actually a decent size at more than 100 square feet, about 40% of the space is unusable for appliances or cabinets (you know, the two most important parts of a kitchen). Additionally, the placement of the stove and fridge restrict the use of 50% of the cabinets/counters that do exist in the kitchen. Obviously something needed to change.
the options
knock down a wall
Same floor plan as above image but with a large green box drawn over the living room, kitchen and entryway, amalgamating them into one large room.
When I bought this house, almost every single person I know asked me if I was going to knock down the walls separating the kitchen, entryway, and living room. I have known since the start that this was not in the cards. There are three main reasons. First, I love a traditional layout instead of open-concept. Seeing mess stresses me out, so I’d much prefer that the kitchen, entryway, and living room be three separate spaces, not one big one. Next, I like having a dedicated entryway and entry closet. I want to keep a space designated for entering and leaving the house. Finally, one big room just isn’t always better than two smaller rooms. Losing the wall in between the kitchen and living room wouldn’t give me more space, it would give me less. I’d have less available wall space for cabinets (which I really need) and I’d have to scale down my living room furniture (goodbye perfect nap couch). So I’ll keep my walls, thank you! Next!
close off a doorway
Same floor plan image as above but zoomed in on the kitchen. Here the doorway on the right, connecting to the landing, is blocked so that counters can wrap around that wall.
The kitchen as it exists now has two entrances, a swinging door from the entryway, and an arched doorway into the “hallway” that connects the kitchen, living room, bathroom, guest room, dining room, and stairwell. Kitchens don’t need two entrances, so I could close one off and use the extra wall space to really run with a new cabinet layout. I did play around with this option, but ultimately I think closing either doorway off ruins the flow of the main floor. I don’t want to close off the kitchen from the front door because I want to be able to drop groceries and things into the kitchen without dragging them through the living room, but I also don’t want to block it off from the hallway. That would mean that grabbing a glass of water before bed or when I’m working at my desk in the guest room would necessitate walking through the living room and entry to get to the kitchen which just feels silly. Scratch that, moving on!
move a doorway
This was the real breakthrough in this kitchen. I was trying to design a better layout with the existing doors and I could hardly improve what I had. I was working with a weird U-shaped kitchen with a shallow, 15” deep peninsula and honestly, it sucked. It was better than what I had, but only barely. And that’s when my dad suggested moving the door. The arched doorway to the hallway can’t be moved without intersecting the stairwell. But the swinging door to the entry? That one we can play with a little. Moving it just 24-30” over on the wall allows me to change the flow of the kitchen and add a full bank of floor to ceiling pantry cabinets flanking the fridge. This small change is essentially allowing me to double my storage space. I’m also building two appliance garages (#1 and #3) into the pantry cabinets so I can have dedicated space for the microwave and our tall Vitamix blender without having them waste precious counter space.
The only problem? Where to have the door swing. I can’t keep the existing swing - since we normally leave this door open that would block the pantry, or be too close to the stove if I swapped it. And the entryway is too small to have another door opening into it (the front door and closet door already do, and I’m toying with having a living room one swing in there, too). But I wanted the option to close a door here for a few reasons. I like having the ability to keep kitchen smells out of the rest of the house, I like being able to close off the living room from the kitchen when one of us is using a loud appliance, and I like being able to keep the dog away from the front door if someone is dropping something off and prefers not to be licked to death. The solution? Make it a pocket door! My dad and uncle (Level Headed Home Improvements) had recently installed a pocket door for a client and encouraged me to consider it as an option. When I found out I could convert my existing door to one so it would still match all the other doors on the main floor, I was sold!
I won’t lie, moving this door and converting it to a pocket door made this project a lot more work. It’s added extra demolition, drywalling, and it meant relocating the heat vent, light switches, and light fixture in the entryway (they would’ve all been in the way of the new door opening). But I think it’s more than worth it. It’s enabling me to design a much more functional kitchen, and opening up the walls anyways pushed me to add a LOT more electrical, new outlets in the kitchen, a new outlet in the entry closet for a future rechargeable vacuum cleaner, and even new hard-wired sconces in the living room (on the opposite kitchen wall).
As of now the old kitchen has been completely ripped out - we took out the cabinets, old layers of flooring down to the floor boards, the wall separating the kitchen from the entryway, and took the exterior kitchen wall down to the studs (removing some old compressed insulation which we’re replacing with fresh insulation and vapour barrier). The floor was reinforced, repaired in places, and with some brilliance from my uncle and dad, even levelled better in some spots. We laid a fresh layer of plywood underlayment for me to tile on top of, framed out the new wall housing the pocket door, and began on new electrical and insulation for the exterior.
What’s next?
DemoFrame out the new pocket door- Insulate and vapour barrier exterior wall
- New electrical, venting the range hood
- Replace drywall as needed & paint
Replace/reinforce subfloorLay underlayment- New floor tile & grout
- Install cabinets
- DIY appliance garages
- Run new heating/cooling vent for kitchen, gas for the gas range,
electrical for the dishwasher, and water for fridge and dishwasher - Install counters
- Install and grout backsplash
- Install appliances
- Finishing touches
And let’s celebrate some progress! Here’s the kitchen a week ago vs. now!
I’ll be back next week with an update! In the meantime you can follow along with my progress in real time over on my Instagram, and you should check out all the other awesome projects the other participants are tackling over on the One Room Challenge blog!
