Floor Plan | It's Great To Be Home

Kitchen Cabinets at the Flip

March 14, 2012 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 16 Comments

Woohoo!! Since this flip is shorter on space than our past flips we’ve made a few changes to the layout to make it more functional. You can see the original floor plan that we started out with . . .

. . . and below you can see how we made some big changes to the full bath, 1/2 bath (now the master bath), a bunch of closets, and some interior walls.

But the area that might have seen the biggest changes of all is probably the kitchen. Some of the improvements are obvious from the diagram above, but some are a little more subtle so I thought I’d lay them out for you here. So far, we have:

made use of a seriously weird space at the end of the kitchen to create a laundry room
moved the washer and dryer hookups out of the kitchen and into the laundry room
moved the water heater out of the kitchen and into the attic
closed up a doorway between the kitchen and what is now the home office (allowing us to add more cabinet space)
widened the doorway between the kitchen and the den
created a peninsula for casual dining
moved the fridge so that we had room for the peninsula
reconfigured and reused 90% of the existing cabinetry
had our cabinet guy make a fridge box (reusing existing doors), an undercounter box for the microwave with a drawer beneath, a peninsula, small shelves for cookbooks, and floating shelves for either side of the range hood

But enough chatting. Ready to actually see the changes?

This is now the view from the front door:

Much better than the solid wall you used to see:

And this is the view from the den looking into the kitchen:

As you can see from this photo from the listing, the kitchen used to be totally cut off from the rest of the house:

And remember how I said we closed up that door between the kitchen and office (and also removed the furrdown)?

That was so we could make that wall of the kitchen look like this!! The range and range hood will go right in the middle, and that empty box to the left of the range is for the microwave.

Here’s another angle for your viewing pleasure. All of that cabinetry on the wall with the window (and the lower cabinetry in the inside corner) was already there when we bought the house. Score! This is the first time we’ve ever had kitchen cabinetry that was worth saving.

All of these cabinets were there, too. However, we did rearrange them a bit by removing a box for an above-counter microwave and a cabinet above that (if I’m not making sense you can see what it looked like in this post) and then scooting those last 3 cabinets to the left to close up the gap.

Here’s a view from the kitchen into the new laundry room (which has a pocket door):

This house totally needed that laundry room. The makeshift laundry area that was previously in the kitchen was beyond whack. See what I mean?

And with the water heater, washer and dryer all moved out of the kitchen, we were able to relocate the fridge and add this peninsula:

I thought it was important (although maybe a little unorthodox) to have the space for the bar stools on the kitchen side of the peninsula. You see, the den is on the small side and I didn’t want a counter top overhang and then bar stools stealing even more floor space from the den. Since the kitchen is plenty wide it just made sense to put the knee space on that side!

I’m really happy with the way the kitchen is shaping up, counter top drama aside. What do you think of the new layout in there – do you think it will work for future buyers?

The Kitchen Floor Plan

June 8, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 15 Comments

The last time you saw the kitchen at our third flip it looked like this:

But now it actually looks more like this!

That’s right my friends, that outdated kitchen is gone!!

Hopefully before too long that empty shell of a kitchen will look like this – but in 3D of course. :)

Here are the changes to the kitchen floor plan that we’re planning on making:

Move the fridge and water line to the sink wall (it’s currently on the bottom wall that is blank on the floor plan sketch above).
Move the door to the office/formal dining room down to make room for an L-shaped run of countertop.
Get rid of the crazy vent hood, switch out the double oven and electric cooktop for a slide-in gas range, and move the whole shebang to that left-hand wall. Luckily there were already gas lines so it will be easy to switch from electric to gas!
Make the island a more manageable size – we’re thinking 48 x 32.
Nix the half bath off the kitchen (oh I can’t wait to hear the opinions on that one, ha!) and move that wall in about 2 feet to create a larger dining area. What remains of the bathroom will become extra space in the laundry room that will be a built-in pantry.

I think that’s it! I went through some really horrible floor plans before our contractor helped us come up with this option, and I’m really excited about it. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Take a “Before” Tour of Our Third Flip

June 3, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 20 Comments

Are you guys ready to take a tour of our newest flip? I figured I should hurry up and show you some photos – demo has already started so the flip won’t look like this for long!

Here’s a quick little floor plan that I made, using our survey as my cheat sheet for loosely filling in the layout of all the rooms. Take it with a very large grain of salt. :)

Let’s start in the entryway, shall we? These are the two closets I was talking about, and they are directly across from the front door. You can see a bit of the den and the hallway to the bedroom wing on the far right of this photo.

It has a great tray ceiling that will look lovely once the popcorn and plaster molding are removed (my apologies to those of you that love 70s plaster molding).

To the left of the entryway is the formal dining room / potential office, which also has a bit of a vaulted ceiling.

It leads into the kitchen, which has some seriously insane features . . .

. . . like the enormous view-obstructing vent hood and 45 degree angled peninsula.

But it will actually be a pretty big space once we fix the layout.

This laundry room is right off the kitchen, and connects to the garage.

This little half bathroom connects to the laundry room. It’s in a really awkward location in the house – I can’t imagine anyone would use this bathroom except someone cooking in the kitchen.

I like this mirror, though – this is the one that I plan on stealing and painting for our own house.

Between the kitchen and the den is this huuuuge breakfast room. It’s something like 14.5 feet by 10.5 feet. Remember how we talked about making it the only dining room? Well, we’ve decided not to block off the doorway between the kitchen and the formal dining room (even though it makes me sad to lose my vision of how the kitchen would work without that doorway) so that buyers would have options. By the way, I love that built-in hutch.

Now we’re in the family room! Don’t you love the beams? You can see the entryway and the breakfast room through those two doorways, and the patio is through the French doors.

The family room is enormous, and has these great built-in bookcases.

Just off the family room is the bedroom wing, with all 3 bedrooms off of this long hallway. (This house has 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths.)

This is the first bedroom, and it has a ginormous closet (or at least it’s ginormous considering that it’s serving a secondary bedroom).

This jack ‘n jill bathroom connects the two guest bedrooms and also opens to the hallway.

Here is the second bedroom.

And now the master bedroom! It’s a great size, has a doorway out to the patio, and has a vaulted ceiling just like our last flip.

It also has a similar layout to the master bathroom at the last flip (although not exactly the same) – and we plan on keeping pretty much everything where it already is and working with the existing his & hers scheme. This is the “his” vanity and closet.

Looking through the shared wet area into the “hers” side of the bathroom.

The “hers” side of the bathroom.

The back patio is huge! I love that the master bedroom opens onto the patio, and that there’s both covered and uncovered options for hanging out on the patio.