From the first time we walked through our new place and I saw the kitchen layout, I knew exactly how I would transform the space.

I have no idea what I’m doing in some other areas of the house, but I am very clear on what is happening to this space, and it’s a good thing since we ended up getting started with this part of our renovation a wee bit {a lot} earlier than we had initially planned.

So what are we doing in there?!

Here is the plan of the space when we bought it. The kitchen is pretty small, well, I guess our whole space isn’t that large so there’s that… there wasn’t a lot I could really change… Right off the bat I knew that the wing wall and knee wall that kind of enclosed the space had to go. Why are we trying to keep the kitchen separate when it’s an open plan? No, they had to go…

I also couldn’t figure out why the peninsula was so short. I mean, there’s this big area of pretty unusable space right when you walk into the unit, which is extra painful when you don’t have a lot of square feet to begin with. But really, it was probably just cheaper for the developer to do it that way, which is often why a lot of things are the way they are in buildings. Two extra feet of cabinets and counters across a hundred units adds up, for better or worse.

When I first imagined what I would do with the kitchen, I wanted to extend the peninsula and also add shallow cabinets on the back of the peninsula at the bar seating, for more storage.Having the extra cabinets would mean having an even wider counter, which I was fine with. Since we got rid of the fireplace I was less worried about things feeling too crowded, but once I started to tape it all out to really see where everything was going… it was a pretty big counter, and it went pretty far into the living space. Would the proportions be off?

Unfortunately two things quickly derailed that dream ~ first, the costs for everything we are trying to do started coming in and whoah were things getting expensive quick, we had barely started anything and were already past what I thought the whole project would cost {more on my ballpark pricing for this project vs. reality soon}. And second, when I talked to my counter guy about logistics he pointed out two things that I hadn’t considered yet {because real designers never get caught up in pedestrian things like these, lol}:

1. You are limited by the size of the stone slab, and if you go over that size, you have to order another slab, there’s no ‘I only need a little bit more’ here.
2. Will what I want fit in the elevator. Elevators and stairs {and narrow doorways and hard turns} have been crushing design dreams since the dawn of time. If the slab doesn’t fit into the elevator, we would have to crane it in through the balcony doors.

Taking those very real things into consideration made it a lot easier to let go of those design hopes… at least for this project. So I still get my long and luxurious peninsula counter, and a bit more storage with the additional lower cabinets, but no storage on the flip side, and I can live with that.

Here is where we landed with the layout for the new kitchen. Honestly, the biggest changes are getting rid of the walls around the old kitchen, getting some more, much needed counter space, a bit more storage {although not as much as I was hoping}, and creating a more seamless connection between the kitchen and the living room. The might be small, but I think those few strategic changes plus my plans for the new finishes and color palette are going to make the biggest difference.

Here is the original and the new plan side by side {also, doesn’t the living room just look huge without that fireplace?!}

What do you think of our plans for this space, would you cook in this kitchen? Better, right?!