Kitchen Work Zones, Whole-Home Remodeling, and Designing Spaces That Work
Host:
We are primarily going to talk kitchens this week, but we are also going to get to some recent projects at a house you guys just completed work on.
Real quick, before we start talking about kitchen work zones, which is a really interesting topic, we were talking about this project and one of the things that jumped out at me was that you guys put in an egress window.
I am looking at the forecast, and I think most of the time we think of this as late-spring or summer work.
But you guys are able to do some of that work if the weather is right and if it needs to be done.
Mike:
This was kind of a special case.
Usually, this is one of the things we sub out because we have a company that does it. They are fast, and they probably do more of these than anyone in town.
They do waterproofing for us and a couple other outside things, and they cut in these egress windows.
This one was an older house — a beautiful house — and we were trying to get a bedroom, kind of a guest room, in the lower level.
If you look at the before photos, you can see where we snaked it in there.
When I went there and the designer said, “You know what?” I thought, “What? We have to do what?”
It was kind of an angled-out, half-octagon or hexagon kind of space, so it was a real challenge.
We did this one ourselves.
Long story long, the company we usually hire shuts down for the year when it gets cold. They will not do them from when it gets cold until it starts to get wet again.
That one we did ourselves. Otherwise, it probably would not have happened in the time period that it happened.
We dug down. Our guys have all the equipment to do it, so we dug down and cut the concrete.
Like I said, it was kind of a special case anyway.
This company had put drain tile on the inside of the house as part of this project, so we were able to tie the drain tile underneath that old foundation into the new drain tile out of that egress window.
That is a best practice, by the way.
You want to have a drain that drains down into your drain tile from your egress window.
So that was how that all happened.
Host:
That is fascinating.
That is the lower level in the whole-house remodel.
We will talk more about the lower level, the kitchen remodel, and other parts of the project later in the program, including the kitchen and primary suite.
Speaking of kitchens, I think it was the first show you and I ever did together.
Do you remember me sweating and stuttering?
Mike:
It is weird to think there was a first day we did this show.
I was being very nervous.
Host:
It was like 10 years ago this spring.
It has been fun.
We still have a ton of fun.
But you did not let on that you were nervous at all.
It was really enjoyable.
I think one of our first conversations was about kitchens.
I remember talking with you about how, when I was younger, I had taken some drafting classes. You had to fill those boxes in high school, and those were fantastic classes.
In one of them, we had to design a kitchen.
One of the rules we were graded on was this triangle as far as the layout of the kitchen, measuring the distance between the refrigerator, stove, and sink.
That stood the test of time for much longer than I thought.
There is a newer way, and you guys do this, when it comes to putting together and designing a kitchen, which is kitchen work zones.
What is the idea there?
What is a kitchen work zone?
Mike:
First, I have to quiz you on your high school CAD.
Well, it probably was not CAD, right?
Host:
It was pencil.
It was lined paper.
Drafting.
We had a drafting table that we used.
Mike:
Pen and paper.
So you did that in the kitchen.
Do you remember the idea behind the triangle?
Those three elements: fridge, stove, and sink.
That is the workspace, the heavy lifting.
The idea was that you add those up.
If it was five feet on each side, you would have 15 feet.
Do you remember what the maximum was?
Host:
The number 12 is in my head, but I do not think that is right.
Mike:
I think I remember maybe 16 to 18 being maxed out.
Then maybe five or 10 years ago, it went to 21.
Now, nobody really talks about it anymore.
But I like the idea of quantifying this work-zone thing.
When I talk to our designers and even homeowners, this comes up.
I say, “Listen, all design now is trying to figure out what this space is going to feel like when it is built.”
We build it in CAD. We draw it.
There is no more graph paper.
I think I actually gave away my big drafting table. It took up too much space, and I did not use it.
In CAD, you get that top-down look.
That is where we start rearranging things.
It gives you a different perspective when you can design like you are standing above that space and looking right down on it.
You do not have that perspective when you are standing in the space looking sideways.
The renderings changed things.
We do have some rules of thumb.
We want a certain amount of space between things.
We have minimums in our head that we like to do.
I really like the idea of the zone thing.
In theory, most people come in with groceries from the garage door.
Host:
I was going to say front, but no, it is the garage door.
Mike:
Right.
So you are coming in.
You need a place to land with that stuff, load the fridge, and maybe load the pantry.
So that is kind of an area.
When you cook, there is prep.
We hear this kind of talk from homeowners. A lot of people are into cooking, not just the utilitarian side.
There are people who are very much into gourmet-style cooking.
They use words like prep.
Do you know what prep means?
Host:
Yes.
Mike:
He is getting ready for something.
Host:
Cutting up stuff.
Maybe cutting up some veggies.
Mike:
So that is another zone where you are prepping.
That is probably close to where your pantry is, where you are storing stuff, and near your fridge.
Then you get into where you cook, and that tends to be a cooktop, oven, the combo, the stove, or maybe a microwave in my case.
Or a toaster oven.
I love the toaster oven.
Host:
Do you have an air fryer yet, Mike?
Mike:
I do not.
Note to self: I am not allowed to buy any kitchen appliances.
Host:
This reminds me of fast food.
As you know, I am a big fan of fast food, and there is a certain one with a couple of golden arches that really revolutionized food preparation and design.
They created a workflow for the space.
If you are designing a kitchen or a restaurant that is serving a bunch of people, you want everything to flow smoothly.
This reminds me of a version of that for the home consumer.
You are thinking, “Where does this stuff start? Where is the storage area? Where is the cooking area? Where is the serving area?”
You put this all together in a logical way and group things based on a typical workflow.
Mike:
Right.
There are some loose rules or guidelines you should keep in your head.
You do not want the cleanup area — and sometimes I have thought this early in my career — why is the trash always next to the sink and dishwasher?
Well, you have a zone that is really for cleaning up.
You do not necessarily want to mix that zone with the area where you are actually cooking.
There are logical reasons to keep those apart a little bit.
Not every kitchen is big enough.
Mine is probably not big enough to have all these separate zones, so you do have some overlap.
But they should make sense.
Your prep zone and your cooking zone may bleed together, but when you are designing, you should have these things in the back of your head because it does start to make sense.
Then it influences the kind of cabinets you put in because maybe you are going to store different things in those loosely defined areas.
Host:
You and I are not the big cooks in the kitchen.
If we had to cook for each other, I would make you mac and cheese and you could make me pizza.
Or breadsticks.
Frozen ones that I throw in the oven.
But a lot of folks are bakers or have very specialized needs.
That is another area when it comes to zoning.
If you are going to be doing a baker’s kitchen, it is going to have a different setup or feel than your typical family kitchen.
Lifestyle comes into that design as well.
Mike:
Yes, and it is not everybody.
I kind of equate it to the tech side of things.
When we started the show, we probably still did some installs of tech things.
We would help people get set up.
The truth is, it has gotten too specialized.
When it got to the point where we could run wires but our specialty was not high-tech, high-level sound and video, homeowners knew more than we did.
They could kind of steer us, but it got us to a point where we sort of stepped out of that.
When you are going down that road, there are a bunch of reasons to use somebody who does that specifically.
The kitchen side is the same thing.
A percentage of homeowners say, “I am a ham-and-eggs cook. Normal stuff. I want a well-designed kitchen, but I do not have a lot of specific thoughts about where I want things.”
On the other end of that scale, there are people who say, “These are the things that are really important to me.”
They have a picture in their head.
Now it becomes, “How do we make it work, make it pretty, and still make it able to entertain and do all the other things we do in the kitchen?”
If you had to take a stab at what percentage of an average cook’s time is spent actually cooking in a kitchen, what would you say?
Host:
Out of the day or out of the whole preparation?
Mike:
Like when someone is in the kitchen, are they cooking?
Host:
Fifty percent of the time?
Mike:
You are really close.
It is just a little bit more than that.
Kitchens have to do more than just cooking.
A lot of people eat in their kitchen.
We eat in our kitchen a lot of times.
When I am not in front of the TV.
I am just kidding.
Right now, my mom is going, “Sure, sure, you eat in the kitchen.”
But we entertain, kids do homework, and there are a lot of things that happen in that room.
The trick in design is not forgetting about those things.
Host:
When I think of traditional kitchens — those tucked-away back-room kitchens that really were not a showpiece or a gathering place — the traditional triangle makes sense in that space.
With modern kitchens, that triangle does not apply as much anymore because of all the different uses for the space.
It is more than just a place to cook meals.
It is also a place to gather, serve, eat, and do homework.
The modern kitchen is probably driving this shift in design.
Mike:
Yes.
Up until once we got past the 50s and 60s, kitchens were seen as a lesser space.
They were not a place people put a lot of design input into.
Even into the 70s and 80s, it was utilitarian.
How many kitchens had that one small window?
You could watch the gang in the backyard, and it gave you a little outlet to the world, but it was still pretty utilitarian.
Now the doors have gotten blown off that thing.
You still have to do all these certain jobs, right?
The zones we are talking about still need those elements there.
But it is much more about how it feels and how it looks.
It is meant to be an inviting space.
Host:
It is really cool.
The old triangle was simple: measure, measure, measure, and it checks out.
This requires a lot of understanding and knowledge to make everything work together and function properly.
We are going to talk more about kitchen remodeling and design, and a little more about these zones and establishing that layout.
Host:
We are in the zone this week.
We are talking about mapping out those kitchen zones, what goes into the design, and why this has become so popular as far as the way to design kitchens and kitchen spaces.
It is usability, and “form follows function,” right?
Or is it “function follows form”?
Mike:
I think form comes first now.
Host:
That is part of this as well.
A significant part of it is understanding how this space is going to not just work to work, but also aesthetically work and tie everything together.
That is where really good design comes in, isn’t it?
Mike:
It does.
I just know from the things homeowners tell us upfront that it is not necessarily the nuts-and-bolts stuff.
It has a lot more to do with how that space is going to look and feel.
Entertaining and cooking are the big two.
But if you look at our projects the past few years, in probably half of them we are putting in a bigger window because it makes the space feel different.
We are giving up some upper cabinets for that.
We are giving up upper cabinet storage for open shelves because people can display things.
Yes, you can store a few things up there, but it makes them feel better.
They like the space more.
Taking out walls is another one.
People say, “We want to take out this wall so it feels more open.”
I have this saying that most of the time when we remodel a kitchen, one of the big goals is to get the kitchen to join the rest of the house.
Can you quantify that and make a bunch of rules for it?
Probably not.
But we know what that means.
That is the place to start.
The great thing about CAD is that you do not have to erase all your lines on graph paper.
When you draw that kitchen and accomplish some of those things, then you go back in and start on the function side.
You ask, “How much space do we have around the stove? Do we have a landing zone near the fridge? How much work is this island going to have to do? Is this going to be everything — prep, homework, and cooking space?”
Host:
Speaking of kitchen remodels and islands, on the website you recently did a whole-home remodel, and one of the spaces that was part of this project was the kitchen.
You mentioned the windows.
This is probably a prime example where you got some really nice-sized windows in that kitchen.
The other really cool thing is the island.
Am I seeing that right?
Is the stovetop on the island?
Mike:
The stovetop is on the island, and it has a downdraft fan.
I happened to be in there when the homeowners had something cooking on it after things were done.
I was amazed at how well the downdraft fan worked.
I think that world is improving.
If we would have had to have some kind of fan coming down out of the ceiling above there, it just does not look like it would fit in that kitchen, does it?
We have three pretty cool light fixtures hanging up there.
I think it would have been too imposing to have that fan hanging down.
That was a cool thing.
That stove in the island is surrounded by great counter space to do work on.
Host:
It is.
I can see how they probably use it as they are preparing food.
There is also a nice place for kids or family to pull up and have face-to-face conversation while dinner is getting ready.
It is absolutely beautiful.
The thing that stood out most about this remodel is looking at the before-and-after slider and seeing how much more space you were able to provide for that kitchen.
The before picture has an interesting design, I will leave it at that.
It seemed like a hallway where somebody put some cupboards and countertop on each side and said, “All right, that is how we are going to handle the kitchen.”
Then you slide the slider over, and it seems much more spacious.
You can move around.
I can tell you guys moved some walls and opened some things up.
It is hard to believe, without that slider, that this is the same space.
Mike:
It was a sign of the times.
There was a time when people would have seen the old kitchen and thought, “Wow, this is really nice.”
It had a lot of stuff in there.
It had a double oven, a cooktop off to the side, and a little pantry on the corner.
But it had clearly gotten dated.
When you look at the pictures, it really benefited from gaining some space, opening things up, and getting that island in there.
Right-sizing this stuff is a real trick.
That island, if you saw it top-down in the design phase, is a little tighter in there than you think.
We would have loved to have even more space because it is a significant island, and we were trying to get four chairs in there.
That really spreads out and lengthens that island.
On one end, we have the fridge that we are trying to stay away from.
On the other end, we built a little custom bookcase.
We did not really know exactly where we were going to end up on all those things before we started tearing everything apart.
It turned out good.
We are super happy, the homeowners are happy, but there was a lot to consider.
Host:
That built-in bookshelf is beautiful.
It really ties the space together nicely.
One of the things I also notice is that one of the photos looks like it was taken while things were still being installed, and I see a protective covering over the wood flooring.
With that wood flooring, you had a project on your hands: adding on to it, tying it in, and making it all look like it was always together.
That is a big part of these remodels as well, isn’t it?
Mike:
Right.
We took out a wall, so now we had flooring that started and stopped on either side of that.
Beyond the wall did not have this beautiful maple flooring before, I do not think.
So we had to feather in, which means we cut individual pieces out.
You do not want a line where your wood floor takes off from.
Ideally, you do not want to notice where the new floor gets feathered in or added.
It is a lot of work, but the reason you do it is so you do not pitch out the 300, 400, or 500 feet of wood floor that is already in there.
It is an older wood floor, but it still had a lot of life in it.
It feels wasteful to tear that old stuff out.
Sometimes our guys are like, “It would be so much easier if we could just start fresh.”
But you have to work with the old house.
I will give you a fun one on this house.
In those in-progress pictures, you can see where we tore out the wall at the end of the oven cabinet.
There is crown coming in there, and that crown was there when we started.
It was there before we got into the house.
That crown is actually metal.
Host:
Really?
Mike:
It is.
It had metal lath, like a heavy steel mesh, attached to each side of that crown, and it was plastered in.
In order to tear that out and start fresh, which is usually what you would do if it were wood so you could match up to the crown in the kitchen, we would have had to demo pretty much all the plaster in that area.
We were not really touching that.
So our guy, Kyle, did an amazing job.
We came into it with a modern wood crown and actually used body putty, like you would use for fixing a dent in your car, and made it all come together.
It is a cool custom touch and a neat way to make it all come together.
Host:
That is really amazing.
We were talking about the floor and being able to preserve the wood that is there and not create more waste.
Of course, that floor has so many years ahead of it.
Is it hard to color match with that kind of thing?
I asked you before the show because I noticed, especially with a light-colored floor, that it has to be tricky to find the right color.
But you guys do have ways of doing that, don’t you?
Mike:
We do.
When you are sanding that existing floor, it would have had what looks like a natural finish.
But I kind of half-joke that there is really no such thing.
You get pretty close with the new water-based stuff because they do not yellow the floor over time like the old oil-based finishes.
The UV light would yellow it.
Those old oil-based finishes were tough and really penetrated, which was good for durability.
But when you are going to sand that and try to get new floor to match, it does make it tougher.
If you look at the finished product and really poke around, you can see areas where we filled in.
We did it right in the middle of the island, so the island kind of cuts it, and there is a rug over it now.
The homeowners knew this.
They knew it was not a perfect system.
You are matching maple from now to maple from 100 years ago.
There is going to be a difference.
It is impossible for it to be perfect, but they were okay with that because they liked the idea of preserving the floor that was in there and that the house was built with.
Host:
That is really cool.
You mentioned the island and the pendant lights.
They are really cool.
They draw a lot of attention and match nicely with the handles on the cabinets.
But they are not stainless steel, even though the appliances are.
It seems like we are seeing more and more mixed metals and other things in kitchens and other spaces of homes.
Mike:
Yes, and I believe the sink faucet is a brushed nickel or stainless look too.
So we have a couple different things going on in that kitchen.
It has this new, I do not know what to call it.
It is a brassy-looking color, but it is not that shiny gold from the 80s that we do not like anymore.
I love those light fixtures.
This was a homeowner who was getting some advice from another designer too.
They had started these ideas with a designer who roughed out some ideas, and we ended up working well together.
Some of those fixture choices and paint colors came from that side of it.
I think they did a great job picking out the fixtures for that island.
It tied things together.
I am trying to decide what they look like.
I do not know if that is mid-century modern.
They are kind of a classy Austin Powers.
Host:
Well described.
Really, really cool.
One more thing before we move on to other parts of this remodel.
In the kitchen specifically, there are some glass-faced cabinets and cupboards, and there is a nice little lower area to set things on.
That is a really cool feature as well.
Mike:
Yes.
We are seeing that more and more.
All that cabinet space does not have to be strictly utilitarian, like you are trying to pack as much stuff in there as possible.
You still need enough storage.
But I love that people are taking into account how the space is going to feel and look.
That is a fun thing.
If you have any doubts, look at some of the pantry pictures we have online.
Those pantries are works of art, not just on our side, but in how they decorate and display things on the open shelves.
It is really fun to see.
With glass, there are lots of options for different styles of glass, and it is getting pretty common.
If you have enough space and enough cabinets, that is a really cool thing.
Host:
Along with this whole-home remodel, you also did the primary suite.
Let’s talk about this area.
You look at the results, and just like the kitchen, it is hard to believe that is the same space.
It is a really great primary suite.
Mike:
Yes.
We started with a pretty big footprint.
It had a nice bedroom and a funky, sign-of-the-times fireplace.
It jutted into the room about four feet and had this massive marble hearth on it.
At one point in time, I am sure it was the best thing around, but it just fell out of favor.
Host:
It goes well with that hot tub.
Mike:
There we go.
Yes, the bathroom had a massive hot tub.
As near as I can figure, the bathroom was kind of an add-on above a porch-type area on the first floor.
It had an angled ceiling and was kind of short on one side.
It was long and narrow.
It also had a massive mirrored wall.
We actually stole a little bit of room from the bathroom when we remodeled this, which is not usually a thing to do.
But we gave that room to a small bedroom on the other side and created a niche for a desk and a nice reach-in closet.
We started over with this.
They had about 10 feet of windows, which you can see from the picture.
That is cool, but it does not fit well into a bathroom because you have to get these elements in there.
So we took that out and reduced the new window down to about four feet wide.
It still has a separate water closet.
We created sort of dueling vanities.
Instead of a really long double sink, which is kind of where we started with the design, we said, “You know what? There is enough room here to give each person in that primary suite their own spot.”
So now we will see who is cleaning.
Host:
There was actually maple flooring from the bedroom going into this bath, which you tore up and tried to save because you knew you were going to have to use it on the other side of the wall in the primary bedroom.
You mentioned the mirrored sinks across from each other.
One of the things I really liked is, looking at it from the side, they are symmetrical.
There is one on each side, and they are laid out the same.
Looking at it straight on, each has a nice cabinet on one side.
It looks great, but I have to guess there is plenty of storage to put your stuff in there.
If this were the Prebil household, my side included, there would be plenty of room for my wife to put her stuff.
Mike:
You probably do not need that whole cabinet.
It is pretty slick, though.
I would not mind this.
We stacked a reduced-depth linen cabinet on top of the countertop on the side of the sink.
We did it and mirrored it on the other side, so each person has some linen space and six drawers.
Just to give you perspective, I think that is about six feet of vanity on each side.
This bathroom had some space we could work with.
Most people are not likely to have six feet of vanity in one spot, so it was fun to have.
The idea is to avoid what a lot of people have in a primary bath, which is a bunch of stuff sitting on the counter.
Now there are places to put things, hide things in the cabinets, and keep them from being out in the open.
Host:
It is a really great look.
We talked about the kitchen, the primary suite, and the guest bedroom that was added as well.