Tag Archive for 'one kings lane'

HOLA!  We’re picking back up where we left off last time with Karrie & Tim’s new digs and rapping about the interior layout… I had gobs of down time over the holidays (whilst I was slamming salted caramel cake in my sweatpants) to fiddle with the walls & such and try to figure out how to work everything they want into the space.  As a reminder: space needs to be opened up, we needed to carve out an office somewhere AND a home for the washer & dryer, and some architectural interest needs to be thoughtfully added.  Our Pinterest board for their house is running about 340 pins deep, so I had Karrie choose her 10 favorite kitchens, and kind of used that to drive the layout/design.  Funny enough, they’re all literally by the designers whose work we’ve been fawning over for years:

KARRIE’S 10 FAVORITE KITCHENS

{Brooke Wagner Design}

{Luigi Fragola Design via Desire to Inspire}

{Gracias Madre in West Hollywood, via One Kings Lane }

(…Look familiar?)

{David Karp’s Kitchen via New York Times }

{Megan Rice Yager via One Kings Lane}

{Katie Hackworth of H2 Design & Build}

{Jessica Helgerson Design}

{Suzanne Kasler}

{Tia Zoldan’s kitchen… she’s an artist and has about the most amazing taste of anyone we’ve ever seen}

{via vintage Domino}

{The It’s Complicated Kitchen.  Because duh.}

I gave Karrie & Tim 2 rough scenarios to think about this week – not the be all / end all – but just a jumping off point to get their wheels turning.  (PS: we aren’t even touching the back master bedroom yet – just the front kitchen / family / dining scenario).  Not to confuse you but they’re labeled #3 and #4, because #’s 1 & 2 totally sucked and I scrapped ’em.  Ready?!  And just as a reminder….

EXISTING LAYOUT

LAYOUT #3

{ Built-in Entertainment Center, French doors at rear, Informal Dining }

A few things happening in this one…  I basically:

• Removed the piddly smaller walls and two load-bearing walls in the existing kitchen and family areas.  This will not be inexpensive because they’ll have to bring in support beams, but it’s vital to achieving the kind of open layout they want.

• Added a defined entry and flipped and enlarged the coat closet

• Peed on marked my territory in the front bedroom (bjfd;sjafhahfdhjshfajha)

• Closed off the existing bar area into an office – which also gives Karrie & Tim a long wall to plop a big custom built-in entertainment wall… the absence of which was a problem.

PS: this is the kind of entertainment scenario we’re thinking of:

And on the OTHER side, the sofa will be in front of the kitchen island, like this shot from Lauren Leiss.  See whatta mean?

• Relocated the washer & dryer into the office area…

I’m envisioning a front-load washer & dryer centered on that wall, basically flanked by tall built-in cabinets – almost that look like armoires – with a countertop installed over top of them, and cabinet doors to conceal them.  Maybe with a dry bar above and/or a big a$$ piece of artwork with sconces on either side.  So it looks like one big built-in unit.  Comme ça:

• Moved the existing kitchen window over the sink to the back wall and popped sconces on either side… Karrie wants a sink with a window above it vs. having the sink in the island (plus when the sink is in the island, then that’s where the dirty-dishes-mess is, and that’s not a pretty place for it).  In a previous layout I didn’t show, I blew the existing window up to like, 6 ft wide, but it was overlooking the side of the neighbors’ house.  Meh.  I might resurrect it just for S’s and G’s.

…PS we kinda wanna use these sconces.  Could you DIE?!!

 

• Added an informal dining area in the front window – we can do either a built-in banquette (the only reason I did this is to save precious space… I wanted to take the perimeter cabinets down as far as possible, but peeps gotta be able to easily get into that corner banquette vs. slide/crawl)…. so the closer I can get the table situation to the front window, the further down I can finagle the cabs.

• Or instead of a custom built L-shaped banquette, we could also just do a long bench or settee against the wall with chairs around the rest of the table.

• Added built-in bookshelves (floor to ceiling) between the dining and entry for architectural interest we got from looking the many designs done by architects from archute.

I’m also thinking about keeping the entry side a bookshelf…

…but making the dining space side a shallow built-in china cabinet of sorts – in this style.  How fun would that be?

• Last but not least, added big ‘ol leaded glass French doors to the back patio/deck.  We’ll likely do a style like this regardless of the layout we choose or size of the door:

LAYOUT #4

{ Fireplace with French Doors on either side | Kitchen in Front | Separate Laundry }

Karrie and Tim are already leaning towards a scenario more like #3, but I wanted to throw them this one as well, just to see another option.  They also mentioned wanting a fireplace to cozy up in front of, and the only place we could potentially really add one is on the back wall.  This image, which is in Lauren Leiss’ living room, is a good representation of what Layout #4’s back wall would look like.  Lauren (she writes Pure Style Home) is an all-time fave of mine (also a blogger turned designer, and also just wrote an amazing book – get it girl):

Some other things that differentiate Layout #4:

• Separate Laundry Room negates the need to enclose the washer & dryer inside built-in cabinetry.  So we can kick it old school there.  It won’t be quite this large, but ye know – like this:

• The corner of the kitchen / cabinetry is in front of the front window, which I love for light’s sake, but I do not love for the fact that we can’t do cabinetry or open shelving above, so we’re losing some storage space.  K&T’s windows are much larger and I hadn’t planned on the sink on an angle like this, but we could do it.

• If anyone was into formal dining rooms (if you ask me they’re a smidge passé, but potentially important for resale), we could convert the existing bar area into one, and semi-close it off with sliding barn doors (Karrie and I talked about doing seeded or obscured glass, like this)… to keep with the open feeling.  I originally wanted to make this bar area into the office and use the sliding barn doors on it to keep with the open feel, but in Layout #3 we needed it walled off so we had a place to put the built-in entertainment wall..

The likely case, if they opted for Layout #4, is that this would get a regular door and be converted to a bedroom, since we’re down 1 bedroom after having converted the front bedroom (aka my room) into an office.  I thought I could get away with potentially making the bar into a dining room because there’s an upstairs area that’s currently unfinished (it’s REAL special and 70’s like) that could be turned into a magical guest room or kids room, but that is a ways down the road.  When we get there, we’re thinking something like zeese:

• Back to the office – it’s moved to the front in this scenario and took the place of a bedroom.  I plopped a reading chaise or long settee / recaimier in here too.  Ignore the fact that I forgot to bring the wall in far enough so the pocket door would reach.  This is a rough draft, ‘member?  You get the idea.

• I added a wall of shallow built-in book shelving in the entry… because the house needs a little architectural interest added fo sho.   Naturally we’ll plop a pair of bad a$$ sconces somewhere on this wall or library lights at the top of the shelving.

All that said… here’s my biggest problemo with Layout #4:

You REALLY only need about 36″ or 3 ft for walkways…  more so in the kitchen (at least 42″ or 3.5 ft).  But there’s about 10 ft of “walkway” / empty space in this layout. So it doesn’t mean we have to scrap this totally; just means I need to re-work it some.  If I’m allowed to move anything around in the Hall Bath (Karrie?  Tim?) then that changes a lot of things and I could rework that whole right side of the joint.  In any case, that’s where we are!  What do you guys think??  What did I miss?!

Happy New Year and we’ll check back with more progress in a week or so!

xoxo,

Photo Credits: Click on images for sources unless otherwise noted