So how does one design a kitchen? We need to go now because we’ve already moved out of the house. Spending two years picking a designer, an architect, and agonizing over cabinet pulls is not in the gantt chart.

What can we do overnight?

Step 1. Assemble design team

Step 2. Draw kitchen layout

Step 3. Pack kitchen contents

Step 4. Demo

Step 5. Cross fingers 📿

Design Team

Fortunately my dad happens to be an architect. In a past life he was AIA president and had a design build firm that built resorts and high end homes across the Pacific.

My budget probably doesn’t align with dad’s design concepts… but we will have to work with what we have here.

For a more modern touch, I enlisted a friend that ran product design at a software company that we both worked at. He and his wife started an Airbnb real estate empire in a nearby town, so he has lots of experience designing interiors and IKEA kitchens.

We will do IKEA cabinets because it is fast and flexible. Hardware is great. Designer software is DIY.

Kitchen Drawing

So we whipped up a couple options.

Option A. The architect recommended relocating the kitchen sink to the bump out windows to take advantage of the view. This would enable us to demo the walls around the basement stairs and open the space between the living / dining rooms and kitchen.

Option B. Creates a cozy eat-in kitchen space with functional work triangle close to the entry points. Kitchen still remains separate from the rest of the house.

One consideration for Option A is that in order to put a counter by the picture windows, we would have to change 5 custom windows to accommodate counter height.

But clearly Option A connects the spaces better and takes advantage of the view. So let’s do it!

Pack Kitchen

So how do I pack an entire kitchen with two little boys while my husband is traveling?

Thankfully the crew helped put everything into boxes. It went in in a jumble, but it got done. And if I tried to sort and purge and pack, it would have taken months, I would have lost motivation, and hated my husband for not helping.

Demo!

Goodbye labyrinth kitchen! (Aren’t these time lapses fun?)

After day 1 we are looking pretty bare.