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As the owner of a 20 foot wide townhouse from the 1890's in Brooklyn, the size and layout of our home renovation design was mired by the issue of packing in all the amenities and appliances we wanted into such a small and narrow space. Here are some ideas and tips on how we turned a small, parlor floor kitchen space into a chef's kitchen with all the fixings.
1) Planning (aka-Know what you are using your kitchen for)
The biggest consideration in our kitchen design was space. Since our house is only 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, we often found ourselves trying to design in tight places. Two of our biggest challenges in the kitchen came with working around the duct work for the central air conditioning and working around the newly installed steel framing. I worked closely with our architect on designing a kitchen with the classic triangle between the sink, stove and refrigerator, as well as making sure there was plenty of counter space from every location in the kitchen. Another important factor was the ability to put a long, skinny 6 person table in the dining area. Plenty of storage was another big consideration, as we needed a lot of room for my boyfriend's huge collection of Belgium beer, martini and cognac glasses. Additionally, I was dead set on a 48" storage and a large French-door style refrigerator so we had to get very creative. Make sure you know what you have and want you want to go into your kitchen, and put that all in to the planning stages
2) Ducting and HVAC
Even though you won't see it once the walls go up, the HVAC and ventilation setup is extremely important in your kitchen and must be taken into account. Most high powered ranges need special ventilation considerations, so before purchasing that pro-style range, make sure you research its ventilation needs. Additionally, if you want to put a washer/dryer in your kitchen, or at least vent through it, you will need to plan for that as well. You central air conditioning would most likely vent to the same place as you range, so you will need to take the space that the duct work uses into consideration when designing your kitchen as well. In our case we needed to custom make the venting for our range hood because it was such a tight squeeze behind those walls.
3) Get creative with Space
Maximize nooks and crannies for as much storage as possible. In our case we turned an unusable, shallow section of our wall into the perfect place for a pantry.
4) The classic triangle
Pages and pages have been written about the kitchen triangle, the idea that your refrigerator, range and sink should arrange themselves in a triangle shaped patterns with countertop space in between. Ideally your dishwasher would also incorporate into that triangle as well, making it more of a rhombus.
5) Researching Appliances
I took months to decide on my appliances and I had a basic idea of what I wanted. I knew I would wanted a 48 inch, pro-style double oven range and a 25 cu. french door, freezer bottom refrigerator, but there were many brands to chose from. I relied heavily on Consumer Reports for information about all my appliances.
6) Cabinets
Custom made cabinetry was the only choice for us given the oddly shaped, small dimension space we worked with, but cheaper options exist from places like Ikea. The most important part about planning for cabinets is knowing the amount of things you want to store in them and the general size of your items. There would be nothing worse that designing a brand new kitchen only to discover that your plates are too wide to fit in your upper cabinets. Measuring is key.
Other choices like countertop material and floor will also need to be made, but they are usually easily customized to a small space. I hope this helped out anyone designing a kitchen in a small space!
(August 2007) (
