“Your Kitchen Is Weird.” – A Craftsman Bungalow Kitchen Renovation

“Bungalow implied a one-story or story and a half dwelling of between 600 and 800 square feet. Bedrooms were only bunk spaces. The kitchen, fitted like a ship’s galley, accommodated a single person.” – Gwendolyn Wright. From Building the Dream/MIT Press.

That pretty much sums up what our kitchen is like; a ship’s galley that accommodates one person at a time. Or, to quote a friends child, “Your kitchen is weird!”

Tiny kitchen before Rock and Nest blog.jpg — Before: “The Sink Room” – a closet sized kitchen that only has room for one person at a time. The appliances are in another room.

As with a lot of old houses, our kitchen was too small to accommodate modern appliances. At one point there had been a wood-burning stove in the room in the middle of the house. Off of that was a tiny room that housed a few cabinets, sink and counter space. Times changed and people started cooking with ranges and using refrigerators, and in some houses there was no room in the kitchen proper to house these big appliances. That’s how you end up with a weird kitchen, like ours!
The middle room of the house is quite useless. There are 6 doorways, so there isn’t a way to configure it into a normal sized kitchen. The biggest thing working against us is the back porch bump out. It is enclosed and divided by a wall into two small rooms. Plus the ceiling is much lower than in the main part of the house. The only foreseeable way to remedy our useless room with 6 doorways is to remove the back porch bump out all together and rebuild it into one larger space that will become the kitchen.

This plan seemed like a long, long, long way off. Adding an addition on to our house is not something we can afford. Or can we? Interest rates are low…a perfect time to remortgage and get some cash back to make the remodel happen. And that’s exactly what we’re doing!