How we got to where we are now!

In my last blog I said I was going to give a little background on the design of our Sammamish remodel for Ryan and Jennifer. When I first met them they were disgusted with their kitchen, in fact the whole downstairs.

The kitchen was directly behind the living room with a wall separating the two, not the open plan we all like to live in these days. Plus there was huge space off the the right of the dining area that was unused. In the picture below you can see the shape, the living room isn't on the plan but you can imagine it in front of kitchen.

They had been thinking about this for quite awhile and wanted someone to guide them through the design process. Ryan's dad is an architect, Ryan and Jennifer are both designers in their own right and they had talked to some other kitchen designers. They wanted to remove the wall bewtween the kitchen and the living room and maybe bump out the back two feet to create more room.

As a designer working with clients that have a limited budget I try to come up with ways to use the existing space in a more efficient manner before adding more square footage. Here a few different ideas we seriously talked about.

 

After looking at these and a few others we decided that the best use of the space was to have the dining room behind the living room and have that flow into the kitchen. This way you enter the home in it's most formal area and transition back to the least formal. It also allowed us to add a huge amount of glass. The house backs up to a greenbelt that features wildlife and a lovely pond. This way you could view it from the whole downstairs. Here is the design they settled on. The wall is gone and the kitchen is at the other end.

Next time, more about how the remodel is going. It is looking great, the new windows are all in, what a difference.

Demo Day Continued!

Well it is really Demo Day 1, Demo Day 2 and Demo Day 3 with a little bit of Demo Day 4. To back up a bit none of these days would have been possible without this!

How exciting to have one of these delivered to your driveway. Uh, maybe you had to be there. So as you know our ever fearless homeowner, Ryan, has decided to tackle this enormous task all by himself. After the first day we went from this-

 

To this-

See that wall, that is the wall that started all of this. To go or not to go? It was unanimous "It Goes". So now what? More on that in a later blogpost.

A work in progress but we are on our way.

Looking through the wall that is coming down after some electrical and tricky plumbing are rerouted.

Ceilings too.

Can't wait till the closet is gone! Do you think it's in the way when you enter?

The easy way to remove lots and lots of underlayment. David giving Ryan some hints.

The foreground of this picture is where the new kitchen is going
 and the rest of the downstairs will all be open to it.

Old kitchen, new dining room with two sets of French doors and big new picture window at the end.
Now you know why we needed a structural engineer.

He is getting there.



One corner where the walls and ceiling aren't coming down.



 

So now you can see the blank canvas that we need so we can create the kitchen and downstairs that this house deserves. Good work Ryan :)  I am going to start looking back at the design process in my next post so you can see how we got to this moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen is finally moving!

 Wow, I have been writing about moving this kitchen from one side of the house to the other for months. D Day is finally here, D is for Demolition. Our fearless owner has decided to tackle this task himself. One very large dumpster delivered to his driveway and lots of work ahead. His task is to remove all the cabinets, appliances, sheetrock on walls and ceiling, trim and flooring, not to mention an unsightly closet in the entry. here are a few before photos.
 

Existing kitchen.

This is the wall between the living room and kitchen, it is coming down.

Here is the unsightly closet!

Now that I have refreshed your memory, let;s have a look at Demo Day One. This was at noon so I am sure we have more to come.

Cabinets and appliances are gone.

This picture shows the demo of the wall that has the
plumbing that needs to be moved so we can
 take the wall down and open up the whole downstairs.

The structural engineer needs these photos to see if we
 can move this wall back 6 inches so we have more
 room between the wall and the island.

Keep watching, lots more to come. You can see the empty living room in the backround. It is so exciting to start this project after all the work we have done leading up to this moment. I have great clients and a true craftsman for a contractor. It doesn't get much better than this!