09/05/2010

Kitchen Woes.

Rudy and I both survived April. I don’t believe this was a small feat for either of us, but I am particularly relieved to be staring at it from the other side. It was a good month, with a lot of really good things happening in it, but I rather felt like it was pummeling me from all sides too.

Tonight I am finding that I need reminding that I actually love my house. I’m only half serious with this comment, because mostly it’s looking behind me and seeing all of the built-in bookshelves and such to remind me that I do, actually, adore my Bungalow. But the thing is, I am finally beginning to get serious with kitchen layouts.

Kitchens in the 1920s were very different things from what they are in 2010 and it is possibly one of the few things that I don’t particularly love about older homes because they are typically much more separated from the rest of the house and dedicated primarily to cooking where kitchens today tend to be anything but. However, in my quest to better understand early twentieth century kitchens, I’ve discovered that studying and researching kitchens, really is studying and researching the history of women, because more than any other room in the house it was frequently considered the domain of the woman — and it’s really fascinating to view the changes that take place throughout the twentieth century. And Jane Powell’s Bungalow Kitchens really does dig into some of that history.

So with Jane Powell’s obsessive (and I really do mean obsessive) restoration and Peter LaBau’s The New Bungalow Kitchen as my guidebooks I have been attempting to consider our kitchen, which is a lot smaller than most of the examples here.

The problem is that this, give or take a few inches, is our current kitchen layout.

The hallway leads into the bathroom, the door by the stove into the dining room. I’ve seen other bungalow owners open up that sort of a space between dining and kitchen, but with our built-in, which is the other side of that wall, that isn’t a possibility. It’s also not technically true to the period and I am trying to remain fairly cognizant of period details, although possibly not in a truly obsessive way. As for the other two doors, the one nearest the sink leads into a mudroom area and then downstairs, the other to a bedroom.

Currently, kitchen issues are:

A lack of counter space — this is, in my opinion the biggest issue. You ask what are those grey things? Those are top cabinets… there is no counter space underneath them and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what the people who put them in were thinking.
A lack of a dishwasher — this, surprisingly bothers me much less than the lack of counter space.
No real place to put a kitchen table or eating area — this is partially, in all fairness, because of the top cabinets that tend to make me afraid that putting a table in that corner will lead to people banging their heads on the cabinets.
Pantry… issues. I have one, it’s not impossible, it’s also not perfect.
The ancient stove is also an issue, but it’s hardly worth mentioning because it is obvious that a kitchen remodel will include appliances.
There is no real work triangle currently — and as I’ve been playing with it tonight I’m finding it a bit difficult to establish one…

I know that it’s going to be a long time probably before we can really do anything with it, but I feel as if I want to start making notions. I love the idea of a breakfast nook, but I don’t think there was one in the house originally, and there’s no good place to put one. I’m leaning towards some sort of an island — in 1921 that would have probably been a work table, but really that’s a predecessor to an island so it’s not entirely unheard of.

So far my ‘favourite’ option, and I put quotes there because I actually don’t love the idea of messing with the footprint of the house, but if you added a tiny addition of two or three feet where the windows/sink currently is, it seems to add just enough space to create an easy work triangle and have space left over for a kitchen table. I like this floor layout much better, but there is the added cost, and the fact that it messes with the original house a bit more than I actually really like the idea of doing.

I keep telling myself that there is much that could be an improvement on the current situation, pictured below, and it could very nearly always be worse.