Before & After: How To Make A Small Kitchen Work Like A Big Kitchen

We work on small kitchens a lot. They can be great to work in, with enough storage and work area, if done well. But often basic layout mistakes make them almost non-functional. Sometimes we are able to make a variety of small adjustments that solve the problem. In this case, we were able to reuse a lot of the existing kitchen, without making radical changes in the layout.

BEFORE - Lazy Susan cabinet in center corner

This isn't a great “before” picture of Jim and Phyllis's kitchen, but it shows the basic problems. The larger issues are that the sink work area is very awkward, and there is almost no base cabinet storage. As a result, stuff piles up on the counter, eating up the workspace. The upper shelves work pretty well; they hold a lot of stuff.

We thought a lot could be done with this, though, without tearing everything out.

BEFORE - no counter space left of sink

Looking at this from left to right, we come to a standard 33” double sink, right at the end of the counter. That's the first problem; you really need counter on both sides of a sink. It also shows the beginning of a solution. If you have a small kitchen, you need small appliances. A smaller sink opens everything up. We often use something known as a D sink. It's only 24” or 25” wide, but very big front to back compared to a standard single. You get a big sink in a small space. We're looking for inches here. This gives us about 11” of real estate we didn't have before.

Next to the sink cabinet you'll see a 24” dishwasher. We use a lot of smaller 18” dishwashers. They work fine for a small household. Now we've got another 6” to use for storage space.

To the right of the dishwasher is a lazy susan. The idea of the lazy susan is that it accesses the storage in the inside corner, potentially 4 square feet of storage that might otherwise be wasted. It sounds like a good idea, but the trouble is that to get to this space, you have to take away a foot of base cabinet left of the corner, and another foot to the right. The result is that to get 4 square feet (in plan view) of storage that is mediocre at best, you sacrifice 4 square feet of potentially much more convenient storage. And it's actually worse than that, because the susan has two levels of round shelving, whereas drawer cabinets could have up to four levels, a net loss in volume of probably 50% or even more. We almost always want to take out the lazy susan.

It's often the case that we end up ripping out everything from the existing kitchen. But, aside from reasons of cost, there were some good things about the existing setup. Those nice shelves. The workspace between sink and stove. And that nice set of perfectly good birch full extension drawers to the right side. And there was nothing wrong with the cabinetry to the right of the stove, another nice set of full extension drawers.

AFTER - new sink, new drawers, smaller dishwasher, better use of space

That's Jim Campen modeling the new kitchen. Jim and Phyllis are old friends, and Jim and I have gone on many bicycle tours together. Again moving left to right, we've used that D sink, bigger than it looks. This is made by Franke, who I believe originated the design. The smaller sink makes room for some much-needed counter to the left. There is a nice trash pullout below that. Pat Garrett and Shane Thurston carved “runnels” in the counter on that drain board side. Very nice. Putting the drain board left of the sink, liberates the counter on the right for cooking.

The dishwasher is 18”. Actually, 17 3/4” because it a Bosch, which is metric. Next you'll see a shiny new 18” set of drawers by the dishwasher. Except it isn't. It's the old set that used to be between the lazy susan and the stove. We made the new cabinets out of birch, and Steve Grunewald, who installed this with me, was able to restore the shabby and dirty fronts of those drawers to new condition.

Then, next to the stove, is a new set of matching, wide, 30” drawers. Some thought went into what was going to be stored where, so that the drawers could be the optimum depth. This more than doubles the available base cabinet storage that was there before. If kitchen design theory was going to be reduced to two words, they would be “big drawers.”

Planning what goes where, and how, means the drawers can be just the right size, and hold the maximum amount.