The past few weeks I’ve been sharing with you my son and daughter-in-law’s, Aaron and Melissa’s 1970 redo. So far I’ve shown you how they changed the fireplace to a farmhouse style fireplace, how they changed the main floor to a farmhouse style open concept, and how they created a DIY faux exposed brick chimney in the middle of the main floor.
Today, I’m going to share with you the drastic change the kitchen went through in the kitchen redo!
But as our lifestyles change, our house plans change to accomodate it.
In the 70’s it would not have felt very nice to have a kitchen open to the living room… We liked to keep the ‘kitchen mess’ separate from the entertaining space back then.
That was a huge improvement for ‘open-ness’ compared to a few years prior when kitchens still had doors completely closing them off for the rest of the house.
But for how Aaron and Melissa wanted to use their house, this was not going to work.
Like most people in this current society, at least in the USA, we like our kitchen as part of the overall living space. We like to share the food prep and cooking with our guests now.
Therefore, pretty much all the walls enclosing the kitchen needed to come down!
And if you look back at the picture of the kitchen looking towards the dining room, that wall came down too.
Where the fridge sits now, is where the wall used to be. Just a couple extra feet made all the difference to make this kitchen plan work. There still was plenty of room in the dining room for the table and chairs after a couple of feet were used for the kitchen.
Their new kitchen has a huge peninsula now and is the center ‘hub’ of the main level!
The flow of the main floor space is so welcoming and inviting now, and the floor plan of the kitchen works great, giving multiple cooks space to prep, cook and set up.
The only thing that remained where it was from the original floor plan was the kitchen sink placement. The did need to replace the old window, but the plumbing stayed put.
In the picture below, you can see from the front entry how the space feels now, instead of being greeted with a tiled floor and narrow hall, the main floor openly welcomes you into the home.
There are so many great details on this space I’d like to talk about but this post is getting too long, so I’ll have to go over those details next time.
Be sure to check back as I continue to share details of their house, and check out this page to read everything I’ve written about it so far: Aaron and Melissa’s 1970 redo.
One thing I did highly recommend was the cabinet selection.
The cabinets in Aaron and Melissa’s kitchen are the same cabinets I used in my 100 year old kitchen, and the same cabinets my friend used in her Modern Swedish Farmhouse Condo kitchen, and they are the same cabinets I’m installing in our current house project!
Needless to say, I love these cabinets! They are solid wood, quality built, come with a beautiful white finish and classic shaker styling, all at a relatively reasonable price.
This post was featured on HomeTalk!
Sounds like it’d be worth it to have a reliable contractor and possibly plumber in to brainstorm a bit of the possibilities for your space. So much depends on what’s going on in the basement and second floor as well.
I am totally enthralled with this post. I’ve seen many that I admired but this one – WOW!
Barbara, Thanks so much! It did turn out really beautifully, and was such an amazing transformation. Thank you for stopping by!
Well done–Just gorgeous!!! I love everything. The microwave shelf is so cute and seems to fit so well aesthetically into the entire scheme. The countertops are lovely. They look like marble– or are they granite?
The counters are quartz meant to look like marble. They’re gorgeous!