Kitchen

Moore Family
of Arizona

Kitchen Remodel

Now I should first note here that we do actually really cook - really - we both do. We almost never eat pre-prepared frozen Microwave food. We cook virtually every night and eat together at the kitchen island.

We have seen some mighty impressive looking very clean kitchens with great clean appliances - but we know they never actually cook. Partly we know because its so clean (except the microwave) - but mainly because their impressive looking kitchens would be totally impractical to cook in and no real cook would ever have built a kitchen that way.

We're designing our kitchen to be used, to be functional, to be efficient, and to be pleasant and good looking too.

As it Was:

We lived in the house for about 10 years before we started the kitchen remodel. We never liked the kitchen decor much and felt much could be improved in the design - but obviously it can't have been that bad....

Well actually in retrospect it was - we should have started sooner. Although you do need time to create a good plan - 10 years was a bit long.

The Bad:

We hated the bland white look, the floor being light pink tile showed up every bit of dirt, the countertops were unevenly installed white tile with badly stained and irregular grout. We also had limited fridge & freezer room and quite poor task lighting. I had installed a basic under-sink RO water system - but it was very difficult to access and limited our garbage bin space under the sink. Hot water was remote and took a long time to heat up. Our dishwasher & garbage disposal were very noisy. We had lots of storage space but it was very poorly organized and it was difficult to access everything especially in the tall and deep pantry cupboards..

We also had an empty space at one end almost large enough for a small kitchen dining table (but not quite) and an awkward low wall between the kitchen & family room. We wanted to eliminate both of these... Whew! how did we ever live with it for 10 years...

Before: (a very bland white/pink kitchen)

Note the smallish island, everything is white, uneven tile countertops with stained grout, pink floor tile

Note the empty space beyond the island and the odd (dead space) low dividing wall between kitchen / family room

Note, tons of cabinets/drawers (25 doubles!) - replacing all these would be very very expensive...

Now unlike many folks - our challenge was not how to make more of small kitchen, but rather how to redesign a quite large kitchen to be more useful, better looking and easier to live with.

We wanted stunningly good looks & bolder colors but combined with everyday practicality, easy cleaning and effective work and storage areas. We wanted a real eat in kitchen for everyday meals, more appliances & storage space and some novel features. we were not on a tight budget but we didn't want to sped a fortune so we compromised in some areas - we didn't really like the all white thermo-foil cabinets - but we had so many (25 mostly double cabinets) we decided we needed to keep them to minimize expense - but change the way they looked.

Our design had been evolving for many years... I had paper sketches of ideas and magazine articles and books on kitchen design .. it was a lot of work to plan it out and even more to do it...

Did I mention that I did all the demolition & construction myself...?

Here are same pages with details on on the construction as well as the end results for those who just want to see how it ended up..

Primary focus areas were: A redeveloped bigger island with dedicated family eating area, swapping the low wall for countertop, cupboards and appliances, new countertops throughout, new tiled floor throughout.

We also changed the sink, water system, dishwasher, disposal, cooktop and swapped the extractor hood for an over the cooktop microwave/combination oven. We added under the countertops: a drawer fridge, wine cooler and small freezer.

Some of the challenges of a big space are keeping the preparation areas compact and segregating different usage and storage area appropriately to maintain efficiency.

To this end - one end of the kitchen has the fridges, main freezer, pantry cabinets, knives/utensils, spices & condiments, ovens, cooktop, main pots/pans, sink, dishwasher, trash & recycling. Basically all that is required for the food preparation & clean-up.

The middle area contains the main eating area, plates, cutlery, serving dishes, extra pots & pans and cleaning supplies.

The other end near the family room has the wine fridge, small freezer, cocktail bar, coffee equipment kitchen desk area, wall mounted PC, and occasional use small appliance storage.

Appliances

We didn't change that much - We had already swapped the electric hot plate cooktop for a Jenn-Air combination radiant/induction cook top that we like very much. Of course we needed a major magnetic cookware update for this.

We did also add the under-counter GE wine fridge, GE freezer and Marvel dual drawer fridge - these were all new items we didn't have in the old layout.

We also added an over the range GE Profile Advantium speed-cooker (Halogen/Microwave/Convection) Oven, in place of the basic outside vented extractor hood. I modified this to control an external wall mounted extractor fan motor for lower noise (this made a huge huge difference).

Years later we replaced the existing built-in Jenn-Air basic microwave stacked over the single oven with a built-in Kenmore combination (Microwave/Convection) oven. This combination of ovens is perfect we have 2 microwaves and 3 convection ovens - so can practically handle many different tasks at once including cooking for large numbers, and keeping lots of food warm. I had wanted to make this change sooner but in the end the Jenn-Air microwave made the decision for us when its magnetron failed.

We also added a new RO water system, chiller & instant hot tank as well as a new garbage disposal with remote switch and dual soap dispensers.