Three months into the year, and about 17 weeks since we had our first builder visits we finally are ready to start the design process. We got both the survey and the as-built drawings on Friday. Let the fun begin!
The fun is the kitchen.
If you recall this whole thing started with a kitchen reno. We need to take down the rotting deck and addition and replace the addition with a larger one to give us room for a bigger dining area in addition to better cabinets, an island, and a range hood. Dining is important to us. After puttering around with the drawings and MS Paint I came up with the following as a guide for the architect. I was quite proud.
I am sure the architect can do better. Sarah took one look at it and rejected it outright. Table isn’t big enough. Call off the entire reno.
For Christmas and Thanksgiving we have anywhere from 8 to 12 people and our current solution is to setup our kitchen and a spare table we keep stashed in the basement in the living room. It is inconvenient, crowded, awkward, and a heck of a lot of fun. There is no point in going through the hassle of the reno if we still couldn’t fit everyone around a proper dining table.
I panicked
I spend the next hour or two shopping for tables that could seat 12 and learning about the required amount of space.
“They” say that you need 36″ between the table and each wall to give room for people to circulate. The tables I looked at were from 35″ to 39″ wide meaning we need at a depth of at least 9 feet. We checked the spacing by moving our current kitchen table to be exactly 36″ from the counters and that seems reasonable. We could likely shave an inch or two off the space without anyone being inconvenienced. (the ‘dining space” in our living room is only 7′ 4″ so actually this extra 20″ would be palatial. Table would be wider though, so maybe not?). The current “eating area” on the drawings is 7’3″ deep apparently but that measures to the inside of the cold cupboard along the west wall not to the little keylines they have on the original drawing. I have this about 1/3 of the way through the fridge in my current hack and the addition area (which is what we think of as the dining area) is only 5′ 7″ So we need about 3′ 5″ more feet on the back at a minimum so people can circulate and we can open the fridge while someone is at the table. And of course we have to allow for walls about 8″ thick too. We (I ?)would love to have a bit more room as it would be great to have a sideboard or something (storage!) but from the looks of the survey we only have about 3’ 1″ total that we can extend the house. Dammit.
I am not sure what the chances are of getting a variance or if this will add greatly to the cost. Ideally we would like to keep the counter space in the kitchen and in my dreams i would love to have the sideboard so my goal was to extend 5′. We’ll have to see what the architect says. We can make the minimum width by losing a bit of counter space and maybe crowding the fridge a bit, but a variance would be ideal.
As for length of the dining area we will straighten the west wall and extend the east wall. The 12 person tables i looked at were 100″ to 110″ and you need to add 72 inches to have the recommended space around both ends. That adds up to about 15′ if we want to play by the rules. Yes this will block the back door when extended (2 or 3 times a year) but it will still be way more convenient than setting up in the living room. That will require the east wall to move 3′ 9″ allowing for the 2 inch inset we have now. That would put the east wall all the way to the window trim in the back bedroom. Again, we can fudge that a bit by reducing the space at either end, or getting a slightly shorter table.
If we can afford a table when we are done.
[If you have been paying attention our scope document specified a dining area for 6 with an extension 3+ feet north and 3 feet east so we are still pretty much in scope with what we described was needed, if not with what we said we wanted. Learning Curve. Not sure how Sarah agreed to a 6 person dining area a few months ago but now insists we double it.]
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