Renovation Spotlight: 123 Richmond Hill Road Kitchen
If you read our post on the 127 Richmond Hill Rd Kitchen Design, you know we recommend starting work on the kitchen quickly. The same holds true over here as well. We finalized our kitchen plan in late August so our Architect could include it in the floor plan. The plan for this kitchen is to expand it by close to 2 feet in both length and width. While an extra two feet of length is nice, the two feet of width is what really makes this a spectacular kitchen. With an additional two feet, there is now a large enough footprint to include an island. To accomplish this kitchen expansion required the relocation of a load bearing wall, so keep an eye out for a Renovation 101 where we discuss the role of the Structural Engineer and how this extra technical work is necessary to support your Architect’s plans.
Here’s what the kitchen looked like when we bought the unit:
And here’s our design. First, from the Bird’s eye view:
And several different elevations of the cabinets:
Here’s what we did to redesign this kitchen:
To set up the room, we relocated two walls to enlarge the kitchen. We will discuss this in our next Spotlight where we share the floor plan for this unit. A common mistake many people make when doing a renovation is to simply update a kitchen in its current location or footprint. Before undertaking a large, expensive renovation, take some time to think grand and explore what is possible. For most people, you a renovate a kitchen once, so make it count.
The other major change in this design is the relocation of the range to the wall common to the garage. By using the garage wall to install most of the kitchen, the wall between the kitchen and dining area can be removed, opening the kitchen up to the other 1st floor common areas and improving the flow throughout the unit.
Since this community is all electric, the cooktop of choice is induction.
A built-in refrigerator sits next to a large pantry cabinet.
And finally, a 7’ island houses the trash bin, a drawer microwave, and two base cabinets for storage. On the other side of the island is seating for informal dining.
At approximately 12’ x 15’ our design at 123 Richmond Hill Rd results in a kitchen that will make any condo owner jealous. This kitchen has it all (island, double wall oven, built-in refrigerator, and plenty of space to work comfortably), so check back with us later to see how this plan becomes reality.