True to form, we’re juggling a lot right now. After switching up the blog design (and tracking down why the header disappeared for some readers) we’ve been working on our $6 cabinet makeover — painting and building are still in progress, and we hope to share photos and details next week. Alongside that we’ve done some yard work, a random bedroom update, and started brainstorming the next phase of the kitchen. So here’s a kitchen-focused brain dump.
We’re still saving for new appliances to begin the slow, steady kitchen overhaul (remember when we upgraded the fireplace and added wood paneling?). While the budget grows — for a new wall oven and a matching microwave — we met with an old friend to get kitchen ideas: Nancy Kulik, the designer who helped plan our first kitchen renovation through Home Depot. Her free planning advice was invaluable the first time around, especially for space planning: where to add a dishwasher, relocate the fridge, and build in a microwave. Pros can save you time and money, so take advantage of design services when they’re available.
We stayed in touch with Nancy over the years, so she kindly reviewed a current floor plan and photos of our kitchen to offer suggestions. Before that, a quick refresher: the eat-in area of our kitchen currently looks cramped and underutilized. We’ve long planned to replace the small dining table with a built-in island, especially since we’ll eventually open a large doorway to the dining room and two nearby tables would feel awkward.
We originally pictured a big round table in the dining room and a smaller built-in island near the fireplace, which seemed like a sensible layout. We’ve also wanted to paint our cabinets white, replace our mix-and-match appliances with stainless, keep the existing granite counters and update the backsplash, and remove the fluorescent lights and the oversized brown fan.
Flooring is another consideration. We’d love to refinish hardwood if it runs under the entire kitchen, but we haven’t confirmed that yet. Our joists aren’t strong enough for heavy stone or ceramic tile, so we’re weighing lighter options like cork or quality vinyl. No firm decision there yet.
Back to Nancy: she studied our newer, to-scale kitchen-only floor plan and realized an important flaw in our whole-house plan — the fireplace actually sits almost in the corner of the room, much closer to the hallway door than we’d indicated earlier. Because the fireplace is off-center, an island couldn’t be centered on it without blocking the doorway. Nancy proposed a solution we hadn’t considered: a floating L-shaped banquette that faces the fireplace and the framed wall.
At first we weren’t sold. But as Nancy explained her concept, it made sense. An L-shaped banquette creates a cozy nook and works with the fireplace’s off-center placement in a way an island couldn’t. She sketched the idea and we taped it out on the floor to visualize it.
The layout we taped shows a smaller L — the bench seating that faces the fireplace and the framed wall — and a larger L behind it that would be built-in cabinetry. The back-of-bench cabinetry would wrap around to create a cohesive, nested nook that looks finished from all sides and provides concealed storage accessible from the back, much like an island would.
We’d keep the tops of the banquette seating and the surrounding cabinetry the same height as the lower kitchen cabinets to maintain a cohesive look. Behind the banquette we’ll open a wide doorway to the dining room, and the cabinetry that faces that doorway will be finished so it reads nicely from that angle and keeps the overall flow airy.
To help imagine the space, we sat at a taped mock-up of the banquette. The table would likely be a pedestal base — round, oval, or possibly square — to maximize legroom. The lighting over this area will need to be repositioned anyway; whether we install an island or a banquette, current fixtures are poorly placed and should be centered over the table or seating.
We realize the banquette idea might be polarizing; many people favor islands. But the banquette feels cozier and resolves the awkward off-centered fireplace in a way an island does not. We taped out the shape, tried a few table sizes, and tested sightlines. From the right angle the banquette balances the fireplace and aligns with the doorway to the living room, which helps the overall composition of the space.
We’ll likely build a temporary mock-up to test the idea further — cardboard or a lightweight prototype — so we can visualize how the banquette reads from different vantage points. We also plan to address the fireplace surround and flooring in future phases, including the possibility of turning the fireplace into a double-sided feature that visually connects the kitchen and living room, while making the floor area cleaner and safer than the current surround.
For now we’ve taped off a new shape on the kitchen floor and are seriously considering a cozy built-in banquette instead of a centered island. It’s an unexpected solution but one that solves some tricky layout problems. We’ll continue experimenting and keep you posted as decisions are made. Off to dive back into the bedroom project and the office cabinet makeover — DIY keeps us delightfully scattered, and that’s probably not changing next week.