The Great Debate

What's amazing to me is how many different factors must be taken into account when designing the layout of a room - or, at least should be taken into account if the room is to maximize the space and provide livability and functionality.  Plenty of homes were not designed with actual use in mind and they are dysfunctional - see, for example, the houses that sit on the market with no buyers, or the rooms that undergo wall removal and extensive renovation to make them functional. Clearly these flaws were not evident until after the building was complete - who would purposefully build a dysfunctional space?  That is, in fact, exactly what we are working so hard to avoid; we don't want to regret our decisions.  Actually, we've done this enough times to know we'll always regret a few or wish we had done something differently - that's a normal part of the process and we can live with that.  But, the kitchen is one of our main hang-outs when it's just the two of us as well as the family gathering place when everyone is visiting....so we really want it to be right.

I struggle to visualize things that aren't right in front of me, so when it comes to the need to take into account every possible item of impact on livability (furniture, sightlines, doors opening, room to walk, and on and on and on) and make sure the design has accommodated for all of them I, quite simply, suck.  Give me a non-space related situation for a person and I can catalog every possible thing that could go wrong, every possible disaster that could befall him or her, and every possible ramification in minutes.  Give me a bunch of studs and plywood and the need to work with actual objects...nothing.  The neurons just don't fire across the synapse that way.  I stare at the studs and plywood and struggle to imagine how these remotely correspond to the lines on the blueprints.  Luckily, there are people who are very good at this - Rob, for one, and our various sub-contractors, and our cabinet builder.

So, Great Debate Number One was the layout of the kitchen (I am numbering this as "one" only because I am quite positive that this will not be the only subject of great debate in the months to come).  We have detailed kitchen plans that we painstakingly revised numerous times and finally agreed upon back at the blueprint stage...and they made imminent sense a year ago.  But when it is time to have the cabinet maker actually come in and measure, the plans need to be revisited, the specifics determined, and crazy detailed decisions about pull-out shelves, drawers vs. cabinets, size of the kitchen sink, soffit vs. "dust-collectors" (otherwise known as display areas), types and sizes of appliances and on and on ad nauseum have to be made.  But, before you can even get to that point, you have to confirm the basic layout and because our layout is a bit funky (unique?) we had to play with it all the more.  So, Rob and I spent the better part of an afternoon talking, walking, visualizing, and laying out boards to represent cabinets and counters in advance of us spending the better part of the next morning with the cabinet maker to repeat the exercise.  If you are like me, you are in dire need of some pictures at this point, so here goes - the first plywood boards down represent the counters/cabinets at the back of the kitchen (the easy part):

The next set of pictures are our varying attempts to get the angled "peninsula" countertop at the right angle and in the right place:

Because I want to be able to "see" into the keeping room while I'm working in the kitchen and invite people to sit at the counter, (and I wanted to be able to use table height chairs, not bar stools) the peninsula had to be at just the right angle to allow for 2 levels of countertops.  It was so frustrating we briefly considered scrapping the idea entirely in favor of a more traditional island, but we soon determined that was not going to work, either.  We decided to call it a day in hopes that the cabinet maker would have some fresh thoughts on the subject.  And, he did - knowing exactly what angles the soapstone countertops could be cut eliminated many of the options.  After a bit more debate, and lots of decisions about the kitchen that I hope I don't live to regret, he quickly sawed a few boards by hand and had the layout finalized:

That put an end to The Great Debate (number one).  I'm sure number two is right around the corner.