Portrait of a Kitchen
History has long depicted the kitchen as the place where food is prepared and families gather to await their home-cooked meal. While food is still the central ingredient to a kitchen, the room itself has dramatically transformed in the last few decades to become not just the place where people dine, but the space where families entertain, study and relax.
Relax in the kitchen? Yes it’s true. The kitchen is often thought as the heart of the home. Home plans are now embracing this sentiment, with designers and architects positioning the kitchen as the central hub with sitting rooms radiating from it. Below is a quick portrait of today’s modern kitchens with several ideas on how to design a kitchen that is both functional and stylish. Complete with serving bars, spacious islands and built-in desks, kitchens are a faint reflection of the smaller cooking rooms that used to exist.
Often overflowing into a great or living room, the kitchen is now a central spot in the traffic flow to and from the home’s leisure rooms. These leisure rooms may include everything from elegant fireplaces and built-in cabinetry to bay windows and screen porches for added architectural interest. Extensions of the kitchen, morning, keeping or breakfast rooms have become ideal places to “hang out” while food is prepared or converse over appetizers without being cramped in the kitchen.
With an adjacent morning or keeping room, children can comfortably watch television, do homework or play while parents are nearby. This grants peace of mind while also allowing necessary work and chores to be done.
Another convenience of the leisure room is the ability to bring people together. Chefs are given room to prepare a meal, while guests can convene in a comfortable manner. In the traditional kitchen arrangement, the cook is often left out of conversation when preparing meals, but today’s surrounding rooms ensure everyone is included without having to raise voices. More spacious than ever, the kitchen itself is also typically large enough to accommodate more than one chef, or with the use of serving bars and islands, includes adequate seating to entertain or assist children with homework while preparing meals.
This sense of togetherness gives the kitchen all the more reason to feature comfortable living spaces and updated amenities. Do you have the ever-popular kitchen junk drawer? Filled with everything from pens to phone books, this “junk” can easily be organized with built-in shelves and workstations to minimize the clutter. Where an expensive hutch was once a popular kitchen fixture for storage, desk or knick-knack displays, a study of modern home plans shows the growing trend of computer nooks/hubs with overhead storage and built-in desks.
Having a computer workstation in the kitchen with its own built-in desk provides endless benefits. Think of how easy it would be to look up a quick recipe, update the grocery list or have a place for kids to surf the Web under your watchful eye. With wireless Internet service becoming a frequent commodity in most households, having the Internet in the kitchen is no longer a stretch.
For those who don’t necessarily need the computer in the nook or hub, there are also those who are substituting computer monitors for television monitors. Being able to watch the weather over a cup of coffee, or have the news on while preparing dinner allows family members to prepare for the day while keeping caught up with what’s going on outside the home. Just as you can monitor children’s Web use, you can also monitor their television use while they “hang out” in the rooms nearby.
Another trend with the computer nook is an overhead bulletin board. Easily visible, this easy-to-install item is the perfect go-to spot for family calendars and coupons. The possibilities with a kitchen workstation are endless.
To implement storage or add entertaining space, the increasingly popular kitchen island is quickly becoming a fixture in every household. Once considered a luxury amenity, kitchen islands now come in everything from furniture-grade cabinetry and surfaces, to cook-top ranges and sinks. Useful for just about anything, the kitchen island is a typical fixture in modern homes, but it’s how you dress it up that makes the difference.
If your house plan doesn’t allow space for a wine cellar, or your personal collection is not quite big enough to need its own room, consider installing a wine rack or cooler in the island. Easily accessible and readily available, the island wine rack ensures you’ll never leave the kitchen for another bottle of chilled wine.
Another use of the kitchen island is as a separate butcher-block counter and food prep area. Perfect for people that enjoy more expensive countertops and don’t want to ruin them with constant cutting, the butcher block provides a separate food area and leaves the rest of the countertops clean.
When you want to include guests in your kitchen for sampling cuisine or teaching a cooking lesson, the addition of a two-tiered island is perfect. With bar stools on one side and massive countertops, range or sink on the other, friends and family can join in on the action in close proximity. Or for those who have the gift of gab, giving friends a space to sit nearby ensures conversation is always in the air even during meal prep.
Islands aren’t just good for breaking up traffic or providing additional seating, they are also functional for cooking. Consider the conveniences of having an additional sink or a cook-top range in the island. For the family that believes there are never too many cooks in the kitchen, having an extra sink provides a place for washing vegetables or dishes as the other sink is used for bigger needs. Having a range in the island allows countertops to serve as a buffet when entertaining and makes cleaning simpler with one quick swipe over a continuous surface. For those who just can’t get enough storage space, an island can also become a cookbook library or spice rack with shelves or storage on both ends.
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