Our Hobby Homestead Project has been very intense and all consuming. If this is your first time hearing about it, START HERE. My husband and I have pretty much been getting up at 5 am and going to sleep at midnight every day for months now. The kicker is that we haven’t even been doing physical labor for most of that time! First of all, we both work, we homeschool our children, AND we are trying to work on this project. Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT complaining. This is a blessing and I am incredibly grateful that I am able to spend time figuring these things out. A friend and I refer to my current dilemmas as “rich people problems”. I don’t consider myself rich in the money in the bank kind of way but I am definitely blessed, my family is healthy, and our lives are pretty darn awesome. I’ll take stress over floor plan layouts any day.
There are so many facets to this project to cover that I’m going to hit them one by one. I’d have to write a book all at once to cover everything we’ve been doing at once. 🙂 The first focus is going to be on our kitchen design process.
THE KITCHEN LAYOUT
Below is what the original plan called for:
I put the picture in there nice and big for you to see. If you can make out the plan for the kitchen area through all of the crazy lines… It is kind of tucked in the corner on the right near the garage and the peninsula juts out at an angle. Below is a photo of what was framed when we bought it. This design just wasn’t right for us.
View of the kitchen from the dining room/family room area.
The view from the front door down the hallway. You can see the peninsula in the kitchen.
Once we purchased the house, the first thing we did was knock down that peninsula so we could get our head around a design idea!
My hubby knocking that wall down! 🙂
We drew up a quick plan to move forward with the construction loan and get things bid out in June/July and this is what our original design looked like (see below). We just couldn’t get our head around what to do with the kitchen. The kitchen was the most important space for us.
We had the floor plan set up so that we had to add a 16′ by 16′ space onto the back right of the home. Just seems kind of ridiculous when there is quite a lot of space! We went with it for the time being and then came up with this version of a layout (after enlisting the help of an architect of course!)….
As you can see in this plan, we would have to move the stairs! That opened quite a can of worms….second floor bath issues, master bedroom issues etc etc. We are not even going to talk about the master bedroom in this post. All I’ll say is that I did not like having it on the left when you walk in the front door… Throughout this process we spent a lot of time on Houzz. Thank goodness for that website/app! Every time we were stuck we would look at it and get ideas. We didn’t like moving the stairs the way they are in the above drawing BUT we needed a pantry. This photo changed everything:
No, I don’t love EVERYTHING about this kitchen but what I DO love is the overall layout. Those symmetrical cased openings on either side with the transom windows above them, the large island, the school house lights, the long run of countertop near the sink… The one thing my husband noticed from this photo is the depth. You don’t just look at the kitchen, you see beyond it into a pantry and some other room. That inspired us to head in this direction:
Hey! Don’t peak at the other parts of the house that changed too…I’ll explain all of that later, focus on the kitchen for now. 🙂 I want to call this layout the “final” one. I truly think it is. We haven’t touched it in quite a long time. We’ve even framed out the pantry/cooktop wall.
THE ISLAND
The photo below inspired the kitchen island. I just love the way the island became a breakfast table. We live in our kitchen and I want a comfortable area for the family to gather, work on crafts or homeschool projects.
While I’m on the island I might as well address the lighting and the veggie sink. First of all, I picked up the veggie sink at a Habitat for Humanity Restore. Brand new for a FRACTION of the cost. I am so happy about that!! A prep sink is one of my dream options for a kitchen. How great would it be to be able to wash and chop your veggies WITHOUT having to wash a bunch of dishes to make room in the sink?
The lighting was so ridiculously difficult! I wanted something other than a bunch of recessed can lights. I never knew it would take me as many hours as it did. WOW. This photo became my inspiration:
I love all of the lighting in this kitchen. I even like the sconces over the sink windows. At this moment I don’t think I am using those. Right now I selected three schoolhouse pendants for over the sink run of countertop with oil rubbed bronze finish. I also have two schoolhouse lights going in where you look through the cased openings into the pantry on one side and the back route to the stairs on the other. Over the island I have two lights very similar to the ones in this photo in an oil rubbed bronze finish. I love them and found an amazing price as well! That made buying them much more stress free.
THE KITCHEN SINK WALL
For the kitchen sink area I wanted a place where I have plenty of room to do dishes and layout food. Since we purchased this property with several acres of woods, I wanted to be able to look out over the property while I wash dishes. Some sort of large window was a must. We are ordering a combination of two casement windows which will flank a large picture window for above the sink. I’m in heaven. There were so many pictures for inspiration but I love this one with the windows that almost disappear. I don’t quite live in the right climate for these windows.
Don’t you just love the little pendants over the sink in this photo? I am excited about the ones I selected. Don’t worry, I’ll post photos!
Did you notice that we don’t have any wall cabinets on the sink wall? Our plan is to flank either side of the large window configuration with open rustic cedar shelving. I’m not looking for it to be incredibly functional. I have no intention of dusting my everyday dishes ever time I want to use them. I’m planning to place more decorative and useful kitchen items on those shelves. Another exciting feature! This photo gives you an idea of what I’m referring to.
THE COOKTOP WALL
Let me remind of you of the inspiration for the kitchen:
The cooktop wall is going to have a GE Cafe Series vent hood with a 36″ GE Cafe Series 5 burner LP gas cooktop. I was trying to go with a fancier range or cooktop but I decided I really wanted a screened porch. No, for real, that is how much money some of those things cost! The GE Cafe Series cooktop even has a griddle option. How cool is that? The big burner in the middle is great for large pots too. I’m happy with the “downgrade”.
Slimming down on the range/cooktop option gave me some room for the double wall oven too. Check it out in this picture below. Love it. SCORE!
While we are in the kitchen I might as well tell you a little bit about the dining area. Three words: SIMPLE, FUNCTIONAL, CASUAL. I have no intention of having the fancy table that can’t get scratched. A big part of the design for the kitchen/dining area involved planning for an 8 foot farm table. My hubby is making one for me! We even bought this special tool to make it easier! I’m excited about this project. It will pretty much look like this one…
What would you like me to tell you about next? The master bedroom craziness? Kids bath? Family room? Basement? Every room has its own story. 🙂 Subscribe to my blog to get the latest posts! I promise, no spam, no junk!
Thanks for reading!
I realize it sounds cheap, but I recently found a beautiful classic outdoors lantern on
a hard rubbish collection over the weekend! At this
time I am trying to find wrought iron outdoor chairs to match.
You know just what they say, one mans trash is another mans treasure!
my blog post beds