In Praise Of Small Houses - Kitchens

 Kitchens are on my mind because by the end of the month the groundbreaking for the addition will have happened!

We've been talking about this addition for so long. We first started to talk of it in 2009. My dad was 70 and mom was 67. They didn't need to move in with us for any reason than planning for the future.

They even had plans drawn up, but then decided they were not ready to move forward with that plan.

In 2021, 12 years later, my dad had some health issues and since they were living alone, we began to talk again about an in law quarters addition. We also looked at houses closer to where we live, but found that the basic issues of them needing help with yard work, and things in the home would still be the same. Plus, most of the houses had stairs to navigate in some way. 

We all kept coming back to the idea of an addition that could be designed to suit their needs.

We are now in 2023, and while they have lived with us since 2021, it has taken until now to actually get the addition underway!

Today I want to talk about my ideas for the kitchen. Since we are zoned R1, even though we have four acres of land, we can only have one kitchen.

One thing my mom doesn't want is to have to come into our part of the house to access the kitchen, so we made the addition plan to include moving the kitchen to a new space, and the kitchen will be the hub between each of our parts of the house.

This drawing shows the addition. You can see that they will have an door from their living room (this plan shows just an opening, but it will be a pocket door), and an opening from our portion of the house (it has been moved over to the left quite a bit since this drawing). 

We will have our family meals in the dining space, but somedays they like to eat in their rooms and they will be able to still do that. 

The layout of the kitchen has changed to something based on this inspiration photo.

The inspiration photo kitchen is much larger than ours will be at least height of the room, and window size! Our windows will be like 2'x4' one on either side of my 30 inch stove. We will have the sink on the left side of the kitchen like in this photo. It will have two 2'x4' windows over the sink. This will look out to the deck and pool area. The fridge will be on the right wall of the kitchen. I do want a nice table like this in the kitchen, I'm so used to working at a table rather than a island. I do reserve the option of being talked into an island however. We'll see. The new kitchen will be 14'x14', or 196 sq ft.

I thought I'd share some photos of my kitchen over the years. It has been the center of our home!

Tim made our farmhouse table and we would use it for everything! We could sew at this table and cut out patterns at the other end of the table!

The best thing was when I painted the kitchen cabinets.

This is the current look of the kitchen, though the table is turned the other way.

In small houses you learn to make the space work for your needs. We've lived in our home for 21years. Sarah and Kyle have only known this house. Our needs and how this kitchen was used are different now than they were when we had 6 kids living here.

The addition will add about 1092 sq feet of living space to our house. That will make the cottage a 2592 sq ft home. This plan is good, and very workable long term.

One day Tim and I might be living in the in law quarters, and one of our kids living here with their family. We don't know what the future holds, but for now, for my parents this is good. It gives them their own house space to live in. This has been one of the hardest things for my mom - not having her own house to live in.

The blessings have been great, and they are happy here, but as adults they want their own space. I'm grateful it is going to happen!