The Before Photos: Justifying a full-blown kitchen renovation

"Oh, how the existing kitchen sucks!  Let me count the ways!"

There are a few different levels to kitchen renovations.  The quickest and most inexpensive renovations really revolve around giving your space a facelift, from changing the paint color and decor, to possibly getting as involved as repainting cabinet doors or replacing a backsplash or countertop.  The next level up includes changing out multiple surface materials (flooring, backsplash, countertops) and getting new appliances, but retaining the original footprint of the kitchen.  The most expensive renovation you can do involves changing the footprint of the kitchen:  Moving walls, gas, water, and electrical lines.

Of course, I want the most expensive kind of renovation of all.  But I actually planned for that when we purchased our home.  It didn't take me long at all while house searching to realize that I'd much prefer to buy a home with the kitchen and baths needing updating, rather than paying a premium for these rooms to already be updated, but to someone else's tastes.  As much as I don't like granite, I can't justify tearing out a countertop that was just installed 3 months prior.  Buying a home with a new kitchen was not for me.  Sure, that means not having a move-in ready space, but this trade-off was well worth getting what I really wanted in the end.  As long as it was functional, I figured I could like with anything for a little while.

As much as I didn't like it, our realtor gave us some good advice:  Don't do the kitchen renovation right away.  Live with the current kitchen for at least a year and you'll have a much better idea of what you really want in the new space.

Before Photos:

View from the back bedroom / home office.  The yellow drum shade was pinned up temporarily for the sake of measuring the placement of the new pendant lights.

View through the kitchen from the dining room.  The size of this kitchen was one of the things that really sold me on this house.  This photo was taken the day before demolition, hence some of the drawers were already removed.  

Realtor's photo of the kitchen from the back door.  (Why is there a swan on the shelf above the stove?!)

I know what you're going to say: "It doesn't really look so bad.  Plus, look at all that space you have!"  Aesthetics aside, the kitchen still was in usable condition (for the most part).  So let me really tell you about everything that was wrong with this kitchen and why this space was in desperate need of a major overhaul.

The Work Triangle

Back in the 1950's, I think, someone got the bright idea to observe how housewives utilized the kitchen.  Then, they set out to improve efficiency in the kitchen and Voila!  Born was the concept of the kitchen work triangle, the area delineated by the sink, range, and refrigerator.  Side note:  There's a foreign film called "Kitchen Stories" about the Swedish researchers who actually sat in Scandinavian kitchens in the 1950's and took observations of housewives going about their work in the kitchen.  It's a quirky film, but I can't help wonder now if those Swedish researchers worked for Ikea.

The kitchen work triangle is the single most important space in the kitchen because it's where the most work happens.  A good work triangle allows for efficient use of the kitchen.  Here in the States, the kitchen industry recommends that the perimeter of the triangle should be 12-23 ft.  The current kitchen's triangle is 9 ft, and that's being generous, measuring from mid-point to mid-point of each appliance. Solution:  Create an adequately sized work triangle with as much counter space between end-points as possible.

Lighting

The single "pendant" light in the existing kitchen.  I don't know what the last homeowner was thinking.  Is this a "handyman's special" attempt at the industrial/minimalist look??

If the awful work triangle weren't frustrating enough, the lack of sufficient lighting made up for it.  The entire 10'x16' kitchen came with all of two lights.  Two!  Both the bare-bulb, dangling precariously from a ceiling junction, and the single flood light above the sink are visible in one of the "before" pictures above.  (Seriously, people.  A flood light?!)  Forget about ambient lighting; these things didn't even provide task lighting.  Solution:  Design a kitchen with (1) ambient, (2) task, and (3) under-cabinet lighting.

Health & Safety Concerns

As I have mentioned, the kitchen was in mostly working order when we bought the house.  I loved that the home already had a gas range (finally, something on my wish list!), but the the range itself was sub-par.  One of the things that drove me nuts on a daily basis was the fact that two of the gas stove's igniters had died.  Only two of the burners actually worked correctly.  The gas lines to the other burners still worked, but to ignite the flame you had to hold a match to the burner and turn on the gas.  Eventually the thing would light up like a flambe. I got used to this little gem of a trick over time, but I was always afraid I was going to sear off my eyebrows, too.

The rotted-out sink base cabinet.  Alas, a water leak is not something to be ignored.

 We knew there was a water line issue before we bought the house because we discovered the rotted-out sink cabinet during our home inspection.  After moving in we discovered that the majority of the problem was caused by the fact that the garbage disposal was never properly connected to the sink!  The sink drain was sort of aligned with the mouth of the garbage disposal, but not actually attached!  Thus, water was spilling out every which direction.  The previous owners had even left a mixing bowl in the base cabinet to catch the spilling water. But, seriously, I ask, who is that irresponsible?!  It's really quite sad and pathetic.

You can see in the photo that there was so much water damage that the particle board had turned black with mold, the mold and mildew were leaching up the drywall, and the particle board had completely disintegrated in one spot down to the subfloor.  This had to have been going on for quite some time because the water damage had even started to destroy the wood floors in the adjacent dining room.  Replacing the existing garbage disposal with a properly functioning (and properly attached!) disposal was one of our first fixes upon moving in, but that didn't fix the leak that was occurring at sink faucet too.  Sadly we didn't figure out that slow leak until a month before demolition.  Solution:  Rip out and replace everything.

Junction box missing a proper cover plate.  At least this was hidden by the fridge., offering a tiny bit more protection.

A non-GFI electrical box that also isn't properly anchored to the stud.

One of the things we did appreciate about our old home was the fact that all the electrical had been updated recently.  At least we weren't worried about having to replace old aluminum or knob & tube wiring that still hides in many Depression-era homes.  With that being said, there were some disturbing discoveries, like uncovered junction boxes, or junction boxes that pull out of the wall when you try to unplug something!

While there was no question we were eventually going to do a kitchen renovation, we teetered back and forth about when we would actually do it.  On one hand I was ready to rip the whole thing out immediately, but on the other hand I reasoned I could live with it for a while longer, if getting what I really wanted meant waiting and saving our money.  The final straw for me, however, came in December, when the weather finally turned cold and all the woodland creatures wanted to find cover for winter.  Because of all the patchwork repairs done over the years, there must have been holes in the walls.  These made wonderful access points for the rats that wanted to get into my kitchen!  For quite some time I thought I was losing my mind because I swear I could hear something in the pantry, but never saw any evidence of pests.  But when the cat chased a rat across the kitchen counter one evening I lost it.  Somehow it had found a way into the kitchen from behind the stove.  We were able to do enough to keep the pests from getting into the kitchen, but we could still hear them in the walls and behind the cabinets.  I told my husband that I'd had it.  The kitchen renovation on the fast track now!

Storage (i.e. lack thereof)

A base cabinet with no shelves.

The only base cabinet that had a shelf wasn't useful because it was catching the  drawer with a broken track from completely falling in!

The 3-ft. deep pantry closet.  Who wants to dig for pantry items?

Those same kitchen researchers who advocate for efficient working triangles also say that good kitchen design includes a minimum 10 feet of upper cabinet storage and an equal minimum 10 feet of lower cabinet storage.  Technically, the kitchen had 10 feet of base cabinetry, but only one cabinet had shelving, and that was preoccupied with broken drawers.  It only had 6 ft. of upper cabinets, but  thankfully this was plenty for our daily dishes.  Storage for small appliances was still lacking.  While the pantry was technically spacious, there were too few shelves, those shelves were too deep, and you had to rummage around the pantry because there was no good light to find anything in it.  Solution:  Plan for adequate, well-lit, easily-accessible storage space.

Prep Space

This kitchen has all of 12 inches between the side of the range and the corner of the sink!

As is the case with most American homes, our kitchen is the heart of our home.  We spend a lot of our time in this space.  My husband and I probably spend more time here than average because we love to cook, especially from scratch.  Furthermore, we enjoy cooking together.  Dinner in our home is more often a joint affair than not.  It's one of the ways we spend our time together and we like it that way.  Therefore, having a prep space big enough for two cooks in the kitchen is really important to us.

Good kitchen design calls for a minimum of 2-ft. counter clearance on either side of the sink.  Also, the best place for prep work is between the stove and the sink.  The kitchen industry recommends no less than 2.5-ft. between these two points.

As you can see in the photo, there's only 1 foot of counter space on either side of the sink.  The only real prep space is on the other side of the range, outside of the work triangle.  This means that the two of us trying to cook together in this space is like doing the tango.  One of us will be working at the range, while the other flits around the other, trying to get between the sink and the prep space. As a result, we both get frustrated because we're in each others way.  Plus, the sink is only big enough for one person at a time, so we're constantly fighting each other for access.  Solution:  Get a bigger sink, place it between two separate prep spaces, and make sure the prep space between the sink and range is also big enough for two cooks to work side by side.

More problems with the layout

Another thing I hate about the current kitchen configuration is the placement of the sink with respect to the dishwasher.  They aren't next to each other!  There's 3.5-ft. between the two, meaning that whoever's doing the dishes is dripping soapy wet water onto the floor, and creating a slip-n-slide in front of the range!

The laundry and water heater were also located in the kitchen, opposite the wall with the counters and storage.  Notice how the dry wall never even got painted!

It's a toss up whether the awful work triangle and lack of an adequate prep space, or the presence of the laundry in the middle of my kitchen, is more aggravating to me.  But having the laundry in the kitchen definitely drives me insane.  There's no where to put laundry baskets, no where for wet laundry to air dry, and I hate it when I'm trying to make dinner and having to negotiate laundry baskets in the walkway.  Though I don't think it's ever actually happened, just he thought of lint in my food makes me snarl.  Furthermore, the closet space where the machines are meant to go isn't actually deep enough, which means that the machines stick out of the closet -- you can't actually close the lever doors to hide them.  They are so loud that I can't here the kitchen radio, or my husband calling from the adjacent home office, when they are running.  I wouldn't mind having the laundry adjacent to the kitchen, but in the kitchen is not okay!  Solution:  Create a dedicated laundry space, preferably with a utility sink, drying rack, and space for laundry baskets.

 On one hand, I like that the original plaster walls that are preserved in the hallway.  On the other hand, I don't think the "diarrhea brown" wall color jives with the rest of my decor.

The only hall in the house provides access between the two downstairs bedrooms, the downstairs bath, and the kitchen.  Though tiny, it's been a convenient place for the cat dishes, and would be a good place to put a coat rack, given the lack of closets in this 1924 home.  The walls and door placements seen in the photo above are original to the house.  Maneuvering through the door that leads to the larger bedroom is difficult because there's a wall in the way (!) and the tile floor is about an inch higher than the original wood floors, causing the door to jam on the tile.  Solution:  Move the walls to allow all doors to open full, install more lighting, paint the walls a lighter shade, and either lower the tile or shave the door.

Poorest use of closet space ever: It's more like a hall to nowhere with some piddly little shelves at either end.

One of the most minor things on my "fix-it" list was the closet space in the 4th bedroom.  This space currently serves as our home office.  It's just an odd layout.  The entire closet is 10.5x2-ft, and if shape of the space weren't bad enough, it is accessed by a narrow 28'' door in the middle.  Thus, it's more like a hall to nowhere with shelves at either end.  There's actually lots of space there, but it's extremely inefficient.  Even if you squeezed in a hanging rod, you'd never be able to reach beyond the immediate access of the door!  Solution:  Find a way to maximize the storage space without actually losing any of it.

Further Design Issues:  I tried really hard in my design to carve out enough space for at least a teeny-tiny laundry room, but I just couldn't make it work.  First, I tried to create a 5x6-ft. laundry room on the second floor -- just big enough for two side-by-side machines, a hanging drying rack, and some laundry baskets thrown in.  But doing this meant I had to compromise the size of the future mater bedroom -- only 11-ft. wide.  By the time I finally came around to accepting this compromise, my husband figured out that we couldn't get the machines up the narrow stairs without dismantling that banister.  So back down to the first floor the laundry would have to go.  Overall Solution:  Reconfigure the hall walls to include a dedicated laundry closet, allowing the cramped door to the lower bedroom o open fully and the oddly-shaped yellow closet can become a square walk-in closet with more shelving and a hanging rod.

Broken Features

Broken hardware and drawers with broken tracks.

Missing paint and toe-kick molding under the sink cabinets.

At last, we get down to aesthetics.  While it's not noticeable in the photos here, the floor tiles are cracked due to poor installation techniques.  Some of them are also cut so short that the base molding doesn't cover the gap between the floor and the wall.  There are drawers with handles falling off,  drawers that have been nailed shut

Ventilation

Finally, there are two problems with air flow in this kitchen:  the first is the lack of a ventilation fan above the range; the second is where the hvac duct is routed.  If you look back at the first two "before" photos you'll see that the only air duct comes up through the floor and is underfoot at the prep space.   When we moved in we replaced the floor grate because it was completely bent up from so much traffic.  11 months have passed and the new floor grate is just as beat up as the old one we threw out.  The floor grate is annoying as hell and it has got to go.  Solutions:  Add an exterior ventilation fan and integrate the duct into the toe-kick or build a new soffit.

So now it's time to hear from you!  What do you think of the existing kitchen now?  Not as fair as you once thought, I bet!  What are your personal kitchen hang-ups?  Am I just being too picky, or am I a saint for making due for so long?