Kitchen v1.1

Around the end of February we decided to tweak the downstairs kitchen a bit. Nothing major, but we found that the arrangement of the sinks, cabinets, and worktop weren't optimal. So we took a few weeks off of work and made it all better.

Initially, we'd located all the major kitchen appliances -- sinks, hood vent, refrigerator, etc. - exactly where they'd been before when there was a restaurant here. We figured (a) that a professional restaurateur would know the best place to put everything, so we'd just follow their lead, and (b) that health codes and/or city ordinances might limit our options. Those both turned out to be untrue. The arrangement was awkward, as we discovered over a few years working in that kitchen. Not terrible or anything, but not ideal, either.

Before...

Turns out, we can swap the locations of a few items and make a big difference without costing a lot of money, changing the plumbing, or needing a permit. In actual fact, the changes we made were small, but they paid off in increased efficiency. We're really happy with the result.

Our downstairs kitchen is basically divided into two rooms, one larger than the other. The small room used to have the main work surface and a small sink, while the large room had the big sink. Swapping the two sinks was pretty straightforward: just reverse the sinks and leave the plumbing in place. Same drains, same hot/cold supplies. Just swap the hardware. Simple!

...and after.

Same goes for the under-counter cabinets. Instead of a small L-shaped work space in the small room, we now have a much larger, straight counter in the large room. Much better! And again, no structural modifications required. Just unbolt the cabinets and move them a few feet to the right.

The photo above shows the old L-shaped counter top and cabinets. The problem we had with this arrangement was that the sink cut the work surface in two, so there was never a large place to roll out dough or to place a full-size sheet pan. After the change, this space became the triple-basin sink.

In the bigger room, the space that was occupied by the big sink is now one long butcher block counter. All the cabinets that came out of the small room are now lined up under the new work surface. Same cabinets, just arranged differently.

The one tricky cabinet was the L-shaped lazy Susan that used to be in the corner. I disassembled it and made it into one straight cabinet using all the same pieces. Corner cabinets have funny hinges, however, so we had to source new hardware for the cabinet doors, but that wasn't a huge deal.

Here's a look at the new work surface, where the big sink used to go. It's a hard maple Boos Block, made to commercial NSF-certified quality. (There's even an NSF logo "tattooed" into the side of the wood.) Strangely, it's about the same total size as the old L-shaped maple counter, but it's far more useful because it's not broken up into smaller pieces. I love it.