Another Kitchen Redesign Idea

I've had a lot of imaginary friends helping with the redesign of the kitchen....ahem

Here's a slightly modified floor plan for the kitchen.

What's different here is that we've moved the fridge to a new wall and recessed it into what was originally going to be some sort of broom-trash storage closet.
We also flipped the DW and the sink because EVERYBODY says you can't have a sink at the end of a run of cabinets....

I like this idea because it frees up space around the stove...but now I'm not sure where the broom closet stuff is supposed to go?

Where can we put the mop, broom, trash and recycling bins?

We Still Need Help With The Closets-Pantries.

Here's a different shot of both closets and the appliances we need to fit.

How can we best utilize the space in the pantry closet for bulk storage and small kitchen appliance storage...and now possibly broom closet stuff also?

Pretty Pictures.

Here's what this current design looks like if you are standing at the stove and looking back at the rest of the kitchen.

Sorry about the odd color walls...but the granite and cabinet colors are spot on for what we have now....yes our kitchen has a silly amount of granite...

Here's how it looks standing at the corner by the fridge and looking back.

Yep, lots of granite....

Here's how it looks from the dining room entryway looking into the kitchen.

And here is how it looks if you are standing in the entryway and looking through the breakfast bar opening and into the kitchen.

So, whats everybody think?

Realtors, WTF Is Up With This Practice?

You know that because I am a Real Estate gadfly that I'm always looking on Craig's List for interesting houses for sale in Alameda. Something that I've noticed with the listings recently seems really uh, odd to me.

The vast majority of listings on Craig's List for houses for sale in Alameda are posted by a Realtor who is not the listing Realtor??? Now everybody who reads this blog knows that I don't have the highest regard for the integrity of the average Realtor....ahem....but this, to me, seems pretty reptile realtor-ish.

Here's a screen shot of today's listings for Alameda CA.

Just about all the purple listings are from the same realty company listing other agents houses....
I'd guesstimate that 60-70% of the listings are like this?

If you click on one of the links you get this.

This is for the most expensive house for sale in Alameda....no price mentioned...AND they misspelled luxuriant.....just the kind of impression you want to make with folks who can actually afford to buy a $1.8M house....

Clicking on the link in the CL add takes you here.

Which has a bunch of properties listed and really, you're not sure which one they are talking about in the add are you? Because I know the house I know its the top house for sale.

Click on that link and you get this.

Wow, lots of pics, and data and stuff that looks like its all taken from other sites.
Except that when you look at it there is no link to the official website for the house or a link to the selling Realtors web page about the house??? You have to look REALLY hard to even determine who the listing Realtor is. I'm sorry but the screen capture isn't super readable...

Sneaky or No?
To me, this looks like one Realtor trying to pass off another Realtors listing as their own?
This just seems really, really well, reptile-ish to me.
I actually spoke with the listing Realtor for the house in this example and she was NOT happy about this, especially with the incorrect English...

So, Realtor's WTF is up with this practice? Is it a legitimate uh, sales technique or what?

For me, as a potential house buyer scanning the adds this practice is a HUGE PITA. You have to weed through a bunch of crap and half information just to figure out if you're even interested in the house.
To me personally, I'm super annoyed about this practice and would never use a Realty company that practiced it.
Potential buyers, how about you?

We Need Range Hood Help!

Arrrrrgh.....anybody ever look at what high end range hoods cost!?!?!
Holy freaking mackerel they are expensive...
What I love is, often you have to buy all the parts separately..so that $1600 for the hood is just for the shell of the hood...its another $1000 if you want a quiet motor option.

Because we have no common sense we want to install the 36" wide pro style stove that we've owned since 2000 in our new super tiny kitchen..don't bother trying to knock some sense into us we're doing it.

Our stove is Wolf model# R364C which you can see below acting as the worlds most expensive cookie sheet storage rack.

We are going to shoehorn it into this space currently occupied by a 30" wide stove.

The Specs
According to the manf I need a 27" deep range hood that's rated at 900cfm.
I can only use a 36" wide hood because of space issues.
I would like it to be as quiet as possible also.
The research I've done so far is pointing me to a remote mounted fan-the type that's mounted externally to the house and has the motor in the wall cap.

Because of the length of the exhaust and one elbow I will need a fan rated at more than 900cfm, 1100cfm seems to be correct.

I've been doing web searches for a while now but I'm not really finding any good hard info to help me with this. Most of the manf sites point you to a brick and mortar authorized dealer and they don't exactly tell you what its going to cost.
I also can't seem to find sone ratings for the different hoods?

Or, the range hoods you can buy online seem to be off brand (at least to me) and I have no idea if they are any good.

Can anybody help me out?
Thanks,

Chez Neumansky 3.0 Is Sold!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes that's right folks!*

Chez Neumansky 3.0 Is In Contract!!!!!!!!!!

We were not planning on selling this place ever but we got an offer we just couldn't refuse!!

A friend of a friend knew a couple who were looking to buy a big Victorian in the Gold Coast.
The crazy thing is, the husband is a Facebook millionaire and the wife is a Twitter millionaire!!

They made us an all-cash offer for just slightly over twice what we paid for the place!!!
Cash!!! Can you believe it?

It all happened so fast that now we have to scramble to find somewhere else to live as they insisted on a 30day close!!!

We've decided to leave Alameda and move to one of those wondrous, glorious McMansions in a very upscale gated community in the Danville hills. You know the type of place, where only the 'right sort' of people are allowed in...

Hello Conspicuous consumption, here we come!!!





















*April Fool

Kitchen Redo Ideas Part 2

Okay after much internal discussion here's where we are at.
The new hallway idea under the stars is out.

Right now we like the 'most reasonable square foot' idea.

For reference here's the existing kitchen

Several people have been confused about whats around the existing kitchen so here's a slightly bigger version of the floor plan around the existing kitchen.

We're still up for different ideas for folks who want to try their hand at moving walls.

Here's the blank slate version of our current fav wall layout.

We would love it if someone wants to take a stab at completely redoing the kitchen layout.
I think we are having trouble seeing past the existing to what could be.
The only design constraint is that those are our actual appliances and they have to fit and we want to keep a breakfast bar kinda thing roughly where it still is.

Help Us Design Our Pantry
The big pantry is kinda weirdly shaped and we are hitting a mental roadblock on how to best utilize the space.

Pantry

I can not for the life of me figure out how to make a room in Chief Arch with a sloped ceiling...so you get the above for now. The slope of the ceiling in the pantry is not ideal.

We envision the use of this as a place to store all of our bulky items, all of our small kitchen appliances and other infrequently used kitchen stuff. 

Anybody have any ideas?

Now, More Pretty Pictures.

Here's what the breakfast bar looks like from from the entry looking back towards the kitchen.

Here's a shot standing in the dining room and looking into the kitchen.

You can see the pull out utility pantry on the left.

This shot was taking standing at the stove and looking back at the breakfast bar.

This view is what you would see sitting at the breakfast bar.

Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated.

Kitchen Redo Ideas

With the code enforcement permit being signed off for the basement my near term priorities have changed. We need to get the kitchen up to code and the deck also.

For the kitchen we've decided to install our big (6" wider than the existing) Wolf stove now. This means we have to at least change the base cabinet to the right of the stove, the hood, the cabinet above the hood and the wall cabinet immediately to the right of the stove.

Because we are extra crazy we're thinking that we should plan out our 'dream kitchen' now so that we don't have to end up buying cabinets twice. Of course, now this means we're under a huge time pressure and we're going to attempt to design our 'forever' kitchen.....no problem....

Enough with all this text stuff...on with the pictures!!!!

Here's what the kitchen looks like and the surrounding area.

From above you can see the family room, the entryway, and unfortunately I cut out most of the dining room that is where the entrance to the kitchen is. We don't want to push into the family room as we love the idea of a separate sound proof space to watch movies in. We don't want to push into the dining room as it's all original and well, we actually use it.
That leaves the entryway we think...

Here's what the existing kitchen looks like now.

For the record I F'ing hate the existing kitchen. It's waaaaaay too dang small and poorly laid out. We have to put our baking stuff, most of our small appliances and all our Costco overflow in the dining room.

Here's what we're calling the biggest space possible idea.

It's a bit funky but hey this is just a first rough draft.
Love turning the old stairway down into a decent sized pantry.
Also, the smaller closet at the entrance is possible because we don't need this area as a chase for the HVAC exhaust.
In this initial idea the small closet becomes a pull-out pantry to store our brooms, vacuum cleaner and possibly the trash and recycling.
Not sure about the wacky acute angle in the lower left.
How can I get a corner cabinet into that space?
Also, we lose that doorway into the dining room if we do this. To get to the kitchen you will have to go through the door on the left and then through the dining room, maybe an extra ten steps compared to how we do it now.
This idea adds over 4' of counter space and upper and lower cabinets.
That, plus the pantry and the broom pantry, seems like it should be plenty of space for everything.
Using this idea the kitchen grows from being 130sqft to 165sqft (not including the pantries).

Here's the bare kitchen idea.

Just in case someone wants to take a stab at designing a kitchen from scratch.

And Finally, Pretty Pictures.

Here is what the new long wall with the acute angle could look like.

Here is the stove wall.

Here is looking at the pantry corner from the opposite corner.

A straight on view of the pantry, counter area.

What do y'all think?
We're basically only changing the lower left corner and wall of the kitchen.
Would love to hear any suggestions people have.

Initially I think that maybe I am trying to reuse design features from the existing kitchen too much. But blank slating it right now feels impossible.
Also, I'm not sure about the stairway to breakfast bar clearance. In this design there is 42" between the two.

Update:
No one likes the crazy angle idea...so, here's the non-angle version.

It's bigger now and I think bringing the pantry into the kitchen is worthwhile. As you can see with this probably more sensible version we lose 2'-4" along that wall.

Update #2
Here's an interesting idea from one of my imaginary friends.

The new hallway created has a sloped ceiling. It is only 6' on the one edge...
Could that be enough?
What do y'all think about this?

Screwy Framing Part 2

Or as I like to say...
Screwy Framing Part 2, Electric Bugaloo!

When I was fixing the framing from the earlier post I made a sad, sad realization...
That the wet walls for the master bath and laundry were really, really uh, odd...
So odd in fact that I have been staring at them for a while now and my head is just swimming...
There appears to be soooo much wrong with this area that I'm at a loss as to where to start and how to go about fixing all these issues...or honestly if they are serious issues or not.

To help organize my thoughts and aggravations I'm going to break the issues I see down into two sections. This area we are talking about is the intersection between the old and new and some framing in the addition.

First off,
The possibly unnecessary, definitely undersized and unsupported beam to no where.

Take a look at the picture below of the floor framing of the two story addition.

The floor is framed with #1 2by6's 16"oc that span 11' they are attached with joist hangers at both ends.
The joists are at their max allowable span for #1 2by6's with a live load of 40psf, and dead load of 20psf and a deflection of L/360. (not sure if thats the case here)
The beam in the middle of the span is what I'm confused about.
So officially the joists don't need a beam at their mid-point right?

The PO chose to tile the floor above with large format 18" square tiles.
I'm guessing that they installed this beam because they wanted a much less bouncy floor for the tile job...makes sense no?......well no, wait till you see how the beam is installed...

The Beam
The beam is a Select Structural 4by8 that spans ~11'. Double jack studs on one side and a hanger on the other.

From my CBC span table for interior load bearing girders I get a max span of 4'-1" (for a double 2by8)that's for #2 wood with 2 floors above.
This beam is structural select so it should span farther but I can't seem to find a girder span table that takes grade into account?
From the joist span tables going from #2 wood to select structural gives you about 2' more in span.
So lets say this beam can safely span 6'...yet its set to span 11'!
Maybe they were thinking that the beam isn't really loaded and this long span would still be enough to take the 'bounce' out of the floor to make it suitable for tiling?
The floor above doesn't really bounce and I have seen no evidence of the tile/grout cracking after a year of living here.

If you look at the picture above it looks like the beam is supported at that little wall and farther down at its end...but its not.
Take a look at these pics.

The short wall.

This was built after the beam was put in place and it doesn't actually touch the beam...If they had just built the wall two inches longer (to the right) they could of supported the beam at ~4' in.

Missed it by that much

The wall on the lower left is the wall for the bathroom...instead of just building it under the beam and supporting it (and making a tiny bath a couple inches bigger) they built it exactly to miss the beam?"

Here's My Favorite Part

The beam is hung from an existing (original to the house) ~6by6 beam by a joist hanger.
One side of the hanger is filled with 16D nails (good) but the side pictured looks like its been installed with drywall screws to me! At least they used the heavy grade hangers.
Also, do you see that line at about the mid point on the hanger? That's where the beam ends and the between the joists blocking begins.

So, the hanger is hung mostly from the blocking...is that a good thing?

What we have here is one beam hung off the other and you'd expect there to be at least a 4by4 post under this area right?

Noooope, this is what I meant by a 'beam to no where'.

Check out this shot below

You can see where the one beam is connected to the other and right underneath it is....nothing....
For some freaking reason they decided having a vertical soil pipe in that EXACT spot was more important than supporting this junction.

This pic shows that this junction is supported by a single 2by4!

And its not even under it but next to it? The original beam spans probably 6" past this lone 2by4 'post'.

At the bottom of the soil pipe it even looks like theres an elbow that if removed would probably exactly clear up enough space for the needed post.

Why did they not do this? Arrrgh!

Original Beam and Wet Wall

Check out this shot of the original beam.

Its being supported by another crappy conglomeration of non-plumb, crushed at the top looking 2by4 studs.
They installed the studs tight to one edge. So there is ~2" of unsupported edge on this beam. It looks to me like the beam has rotated down a bit on the unsupported side....
I installed a nice 4by6 post on the one end, but all of this mess??? I don't know what to do about it.
This beam supports the joists for the original back porch area of the house and there's been an addition built on top of that, though, the joists in the 2nd story addition run at right angles to these.

Holy Bowing Studs Part 2

Here's a pulled back shot. Bowing, bent, unplumb studs.
I'd love to just rip out the studs one at a time and replace them with 2by6's to fully support the beam but there is a problem.

They framed a wet wall in the way.

So, instead of using 2by6's to fully support the load bearing header they chose to do this conglomeration of crap! You see that band of double 2by4's along the top? That's part of the framing for the dropped ceiling in the laundry room and its directly in the way of using 2by6 studs!
It seems like I'm going to have to demolish the ceiling and this wall just to fix it.
Or, can it be fixed in place.

This entire ridiculous thing could of been avoided if they would of used 2by6 studs and just brought all the plumbing out to this side and then framed a non load bearing 2by4 wall to cover it. They would of lost a couple of inches max out of the size of this room.

Another shot of the corner.

All that wood just sorta tacked on everywhere...whoever built this sure didn't mind wasting wood...

Questions I need answered

1. Is the beam doing something useful? If so should I be supporting is more along its length?
2. What the heck to do with the beam-beam intersection?
3. Is there a way to rebuild that 2by4 wet wall with 2by6's and not have to totally destroy the walls-ceiling attached to it?

Geez, just writing this made me tired...