If you’re frequently bumping your elbows, knees and hips into doors, drawers, and other people in the kitchen, it’s time for a bump-out. Just having kids grow bigger can change adequate kitchens to small kitchens. Adding to a family or accommodating someone’s walker or wheelchair are other reasons a kitchen stops working well. Then it’s time to do some stealing!
The knock-down, drag-out kitchen remodel
Expand your kitchen by stealing some adjacent space. Fortunately, this kitchen remodel won’t incur a criminal record. Here are possible candidates for space theft:
- Exterior wall: Bump a kitchen wall out into the yard. The good thing about this is that it doesn’t steal space from adjacent rooms. Since many building supplies come in eight foot increments, maximize supply expenses by creating a two, four, or eight foot addition. Even adding two feet of counter, cupboard, and drawer space to two sides of a kitchen can relieve congestion.
- Dining room or living room: Can your dining room or living room spare a foot or two? Knock out a wall between that room and the kitchen and gain some room to maneuver. This may require going from a round to a long table, putting a hutch on a different wall, or getting a different sofa. Or you can gain needed storage by eliminating bar stools and filling the space under the breakfast bar with drawers and cabinets. Fortunately omitting a wall between rooms makes furniture and cabinet layouts more flexible. It makes all the rooms look larger. It lets you enjoy guests while you’re cooking. (It encourages their assistance, too, especially if you sigh now and then.)
- Garage: Yes, this probably requires (steel yourself) cleaning the garage. But when reducing the amount of stuff stored against the adjacent kitchen wall, you can hang some overhead storage units from the garage rafters and store remaining items up there. Or heartlessly get rid of about a third of your garage junk…errr…treasures, and you will have room to expand. An outside storage unit can help this process. Bump out a wide, shallow kitchen pantry that will absorb the overflow from existing cupboards.
- Laundry closet: Side by side clothes washers and dryers eat up kitchen space. Replace them with water-wise stacked units and built a small floor-to-ceiling pantry. Or crate a laundry area in the garage.
Fortunately kitchen remodeling is tops among home improvements that provide a good return on investment when selling a home. So knock down a wall, drag out unused items, and enjoy your expanded kitchen.
