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?