Kitchen Planning: Where Do I Start?

Great kitchens - the kind that look good, work hard, and stand up to constant use - don't just happen. They're carefully planned. Before you shop for cabinets, decide on flooring, drive the first nail, or call a contractor for an estimate, take time to consider how your family uses the kitchen.

Make a list of all the features of your present kitchen that you couldn't live without: the view, the garbage disposal, the convenient door to the garage so you can easily carry in the groceries. Next, list all the problems: Not enough counter space? No place for cookbooks? Outdated appliances? Traffic through the work area?

Space Considerations

Think about how you would rather use the space in your kitchen. Here are some things to consider:

• Would you like to prepare a meal in 20 minutes and clean up in even less time, or do you enjoy spending your weekend cooking dinner for dozens?
  
• Are all family meals consumed in the kitchen, or just a few?
  
• Is there more than one cook?
  
• Do you need a desk or planning center? A place for the kids to do homework?
  
• Is there sufficient workspace near each appliance and plenty of accessible storage?
  
• How's the lighting - on a bright day, a rainy day, and at night?
  
• Would the space function more efficiently if a doorway or a window was moved or eliminated?
  
• Schedule a family meeting to get everyone's input. Shorter, taller, older, or younger family members may be having problems you're not aware of.
  

Getting Started

Clip photos from magazines with ideas you like and keep them in one place in a folder or shoebox. Circle the part of the picture that attracted your attention.

Take accurate measurements of the space, noting the location of doors and windows, electrical and plumbing connections. Make copies of the floor plan, or use tissue overlays. And don't expect to design the room in one sitting. Try many versions to arrive at one that uses the space efficiently.

Work Triangle

Start with the basics - the sink, range, and refrigerator. Arrange them to form a work triangle, the accepted standard for residential kitchen design since the 1920s when engineers, home economists, and motion study experts first began to plan them.

The industry standard is for each leg of the triangle to be between 4 and 7 feet long, with the total of the three sides between 12 and 21 feet. Plan the work triangle so that traffic moving through the kitchen doesn't cut directly through it. (The National Kitchen and Bath Association offers consumers a free planing guide with more than 40 similar measurements and recommendations at http://www.nkba.org/.

Once you've positioned the three points of the triangle, plan the work centers around them. At the sink you'll need minimums of 24 inches of counter space on one side, 18 inches on the other. Allow at least 12 inches of counter (measured along the front edge) on each side of the cooking surface.

Plan at least 15 inches of "landing space" adjacent to or across from the refrigerator. Note that these measurements are the minimum allowances. Ideally you'll have more.

Be sure door and drawer clearances, including those for appliances, don't interfere with each other. You don't want to discover after the kitchen is installed that you can't open the oven door because a drawer handle blocks it.

If you plan to purchase and install the kitchen yourself, consider having the plan you've devised checked by a professional kitchen designer, your cabinet manufacturer, or a remodeling contractor who specializes in kitchens.

Be prepared to make some compromises. Plan your new kitchen carefully and make intelligent trade-offs that suit your lifestyle. The reward will be a new kitchen that's a joy to work in.