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Figured I should start a thread about our complete kitchen remodel in our 1961 mid century modern house.
We moved into our house about a month ago. The house is absolutely amazing, except for the kitchen, which was "remodeled" in the 80's by a previous owner.
The house has too many cool features to list. Perhaps the coolest of which are the floors. The house was originally owned by the owner of a terrazzo flooring company. So, naturally, the house has 3-inch thick poured terrazzo throughout. More on this in a bit.
For style, we are going for contemporary/modern, but not sterile. The house was very modern for its time and we want to keep that design philosophy.
Here is the before picture. Can't wait to say goodbye to the ugly 80's kitchen!
Here's our current design. We'll be finalizing this in the next week.
We're keeping the basic shape of the room but we'll obviously be removing the silly eat-in booth. Still up in the air are the center island and where to put a microwave. For the island, we're leaning towards doing a bar overhang. one row of those shallow cabinets wouldn't be there, but the counter top would. I couldn't figure out how to visualize this in the design program so use your imagination. :-)
For Cabinets, we're going with Ikea of course! However, we're doing custom walnut cabinet fronts from Scherr's for everything except for the one wall with the red wall cabinets. (Scherr's has been great to work with thus far)
The floors in the kitchen are in pretty bad shape thanks to the 80's remodel. They moved some walls and did a lot of patching. Luckily, we hunted down the terrazzo company whose founder built our house. His sons, who grew up in our house, still run the company! They are going to come out and remove the floor in the kitchen and re-pour new terrazzo in its place! This process will take a full week, but we think the results will be amazing.
The existing floors, which are full of Mexican onyx,have aged over the years. We can't decide if we should try to match the color exactly, or try embrace the difference and do more of a contrasting white. keep in mind that the kitchen floors will butt up against the rest of the floors in two places. Here's an image of our floor samples up against where the floor will transition. Care to help us decide? White or try to color match?
Here are all the surface that we're doing:
-Terrazzo floor (will have mother of pearl, brown glass, some red pebbles and some cream pebbles)
-Scherr's horizontal grain matched cabinet fronts
-Ikea Abstrakt High Gloss Red accent wall
-Silestone Blanco Norte counters
Feedback on our layout/design is more than welcome!
Demo Begins on Monday!!!!!!!! Stay tuned for more!!
Looks great but why not keep the dining nook? It's extremely efficient (underseat storage, etc.) and you can totally bring it up to date in terms of quality and comfort.
Re. floors: I would try to fully match since they will abut and you haven't chosen anything fundamentally different, which would work too. If one is white white and one is sorta faded/tan, the older one will look dirty, which it's not.
This version changes your island, which I thought would create more of a pinch point than a useful feature. I took out 2 of your corners and made a much larger island. The overlapping countertop pieces are an attempt to show a curving counter.
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Originally Posted by mrcysco
Luckily, we hunted down the terrazzo company whose founder built our house. His sons, who grew up in our house, still run the company! They are going to come out and remove the floor in the kitchen and re-pour new terrazzo in its place!
This is just so cool! Perhaps they'd pour you a matching island top.
The island adds back in a lot of the corner storage you've lost + more accessibly.
The 24" base in the corner? I thought you might have been going for a bar area. You could put in a small sink. If not, you could do a pantry there.
Speaking of pantries, you could upgrade the 15" pantry to 18" wide. You'd buy the box for the 15" pantry + 2 18" base boxes. Swap in the 2 larger bottoms for the original top and bottom, and viola - a larger box and some spare parts. (Small price for custom.) Then you buy whatever guts your heart desires.
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Originally Posted by wombat94 I don't know if this works for you, but for best use of space, we decided NOT to use the microwave cabinet, and instead use an under cabinet micro.
Re: Mid Century Modern Kitchen Remodel
The Micro is a GE Spacemaker II PEM31SMSS. It hangs about 1.5 to 2 inches below the edge of the cover panel/light rail, but the cabinet above is a full cabinet that gives us a lot more accessible space than a micro cabinet would.
You have to buy the hanging kit (about $20) to install it as an under-cabinet.
The thing I really like about it is how "built in" it looks. It is just about 1/8" narrower than the full width of the cabinet (about 1" wider than a micro that would go on the micro shelf cab - because is includes the width of the side walls of the cabinet). And it is just about perfectly flush with the doors above it on the cabinet - it sticks out maybe 1/16"
Ted
OR
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Originally Posted by personalshopper A possible problem-solver for some kitchen designers? I just stumbled across this over-counter (NOT made for over the range) microwave - a very handsome one, I think. It's more generously sized than the GE Profile that has been suggested quite often in the kitchen planning forum, so if the petite size of the GE model doesn't meet your needs, take a look at this Sharp model. It's available in stainless, black and white, and would fit nicely below a 24" wall cabinet. Sharp R121 1.5 cu. ft. Over the Counter Microwave Oven with 1,100 Cooking Watts, Defrost Center, Interactive Cooking System and Auto-Touch Control Panel
Looks great but why not keep the dining nook? It's extremely efficient (underseat storage, etc.) and you can totally bring it up to date in terms of quality and comfort.
Re. floors: I would try to fully match since they will abut and you haven't chosen anything fundamentally different, which would work too. If one is white white and one is sorta faded/tan, the older one will look dirty, which it's not.
Have fun!
Totally understand your point about the nook, but it really makes the kitchen impossible to work in and it eats up way too much space.
That's some sound logic regarding the floors. I'm starting to lean in that direction. I like the idea of having the white floors, but I don't want the new floors to detract from the old ones. keep the advice coming! thanks!
Thanks so much for the thoughtful reply. You have some seriously good ideas! There are a lot of things to like about the direction you went with. I like the larger island a lot! I also like that it reduces the number of large cover panels that I'd have to have Scherr's make. (as you can imagine, those things would be $$$)
I'll have to mess around with that direction and see if I can make it work. Thanks!
Oh, that second dishwasher isn't supposed to be a dishwasher, it's our wine fridge. :-) I'll throw up another reply outlining the appliances we've purchased.
Just a quick followup. We have all our appliances sitting in our living room just waiting to be installed. I can't wait!
For appliances, I wanted to go for a european vibe. So, where possible we went with euro brands.
Our double oven is from Siemens. They're a big brand in europe that tried to make a go of it in the US but pulled out a year ago or so. What's great is they make Bosch's ovens. So, if you can still find one, it should be dirt cheap and any Bosch tech could service it.
Our Oven
Our vent hood is from Franke. It's kinda different. It's a wall mounted tube style vent. I I know it's probably not going to be as efficient as a larger vent, but it's pretty powerful and is so cool looking. :-)
Vent hood
Our cooktop is good ol' american engineering from Windcrest. Everything I read was that they have the best bang for the buck cooktops on the market.
cooktop
For the dishwasher we went back to the european brands and chose Asko. I've had Bosh dishwashers in my last two places and decided to mix it up this time. I love the seamless front and think it'll look great with the other appliances.
Dishwasher
We chose Kenmore (made by samsung) for our refrigerator. I couldn't resist the gimmick of the touchscreen. (I'm a sucker for those kind of things.)
Refrigerator
Our Wine frige is from Hotpont/Ariston. It's a true built-in style. we chose it because it matches the oven's style and has a real clean look. It was also surprisingly cheap.
Wine Cooler
Finally, our sink is a 24in stainless steel farmhouse sink. It'll take a little work to make it fit the cabinet properly, but seems like a pretty easy mod.
Sink
I still need to find the perfect faucet. Anyone have a recommendation? I'm leaning towards a Grohe Ladylux pulldown style, but have read some mixed reviews.
Now, back to the drawing board on the cabinet layout. :-)
It will be a lot of fun to see this kitchen come together, and I hope you'll give us frequent updates. The appliances and sink you've chosen are all sleek and beautiful. Do consider that sit-down island that tbb suggested. The kitchen is so large and will be so attractive that it would be a shame not to have some seating in there so peope can hang around, sip some wine and enjoy the space. Speaking of wine...what about glass shelves or a glass-front cabinet for wine glasses in the beverage bar area?
Faucet: we chose this oddity because of the convenience of turning water on and off without reaching to the back of the sink. It has "presence" because of its size - 16" high and there's no messing with extendable (stubborn) hoses. We love it. Giagni
If you change the base cabinet to the right of the cooktop to 24" you have about 6" of filler to distribute between the base cabinets on that run -- considerations for those 3" and getting the horizontal cabinets to open.
I'm *kinda* drooling over your floors. Now I want some terrazzo in my house!! Super excited to see the finished product. I really like that you are going out side the box a little bit with your cabinet & appliance selections. Can't wait!
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Luckily, we hunted down the terrazzo company whose founder built our house. His sons, who grew up in our house, still run the company! They are going to come out and remove the floor in the kitchen and re-pour new terrazzo in its place! This process will take a full week, but we think the results will be amazing.
