Our existing kitchen is  rather awkward space – in fact, the best term anyone’s used to describe it is ‘dysfunctional.’ Because the house was raised up so that the ‘crawlspace’ (I use that term loosely because as a house built in what used to be (before the levies) a flood plain, the original ‘crawlspace’ was actually probably about 5 or 6 feet high) became a full height, separate flat, and because at some point that separate space was re-integrated back into the whole house, they put the staircase in the kitchen. In the defense of whoever did this, it was really the only logical place to *put* a staircase, without having to build on an attachment on the side or rear just to house a flight of stairs. But what this does is effectively cut off about half the space in what would otherwise be an extremely large room for a kitchen. Behind the staircase there is a narrow little area where the previous owner installed a wonderful floor-to-ceiling bank of pantry cupboards, which has helped tremendously, because the rest of the kitchen is pretty horrid.Based on the issues of a staircase that cannot be moved, there isn’t a lot that can be done to the kitchen as it is. Luckily we also have a little enclosed porch area right next to the kitchen. I suspect that this was the original back porch, before the house was raised and the huge (rotting) raised wood deck was added out back.  It’s a cute little porch, and I had vague thoughts of maybe using it as a tiny little sun porch one of these years, but the floor slopes significantly (made sense for water drainage, but not so much for putting a chair out there) and we’ve pretty much just been using it as storage for random stuff we haven’t figured out a home for.  There’s big empty space above it in the attic, which means raising up the roof to the same height as the kitchen won’t be an issue, and while yes, there is a load-bearing beam to deal with, knocking down the wall into that porch is our best option for kitchen improvement.

As I expected, our kitchen designer called while I was off at Stitches, to say that the rough sketches were ready. Luckily, however, he wanted to meet on Wednesday evening instead of that weekend. And considering we already had something planned for pretty much every other night last week, Wednesday fit perfectly into the schedule.

The designer gave us two different sketches to look at, and while we liked them both, Richard and I both immediately pointed to the second one and knew that was exactly what we wanted. By simply knocking down two walls, we get a nice open space large enough for a lovely little island in the middle – perfect for extra prep space, or eating breakfast, or sitting and pouring over cookbooks. As for that enclosed back porch? We’ll use some of it for kitchen, but the rest will be closed off and turned into a nice, large walk-in pantry.  The only modifications we made to the sketch were to separate the range and oven by doing a built-in wall oven and microwave right where the existing pantry cupboards are located, make the window over the sink a pass-through (so that when we finally replace the deck flooring on the back porch, it’ll be more convenient for food prep) and to add a cookbook shelf to one side of the center island. It’s going to be wonderful.