The Best Country Kitchen Layout Ever
The country kitchen stands out among other kitchen styles in that it exudes a homespun warmth that springs from a large, well-designed floor plan. Generally, the country kitchen is a large room, but its size never overwhelms the occupants.
Rather the design makes good use of the space because the country kitchen is more than a place of cooking and cleaning but is also as an area for family gatherings, preserving food, entertaining friends and neighbors and storing vast quantities of household supplies. The best country kitchen design juggles the needs of the occupants with a functional and attractive country design.
Weigh the Needs
A country kitchen hosts multiple activities beyond the basic food preparation and cleanup duties. The best kitchen layout accommodates for these additional functions.
Before attempting a design layout, the homeowner should consider her needs and expected uses of the kitchen, making storage and preparation space for such activities as canning and baking, storing food in bulk and growing and drying herbs and vegetables.
Storage space is prime real estate in any kitchen, but a country kitchen needs a roomy pantry or multiple cabinets for large cookware, storage boxes, bulk items and more.
Also, the country kitchen needs a functional and comfortable area in which to sit, where mother can hull the peas or guests can chat with the cook over a cup of hot tea. Most country kitchens have a wooden dining room set or small cafe table with benches nestled into a cozy corner of the room. If the kitchen is exceptionally large, a rocking chair or small wooden settee are inviting additions. Continue reading
Hiding Kitchen Lighting
Perhaps your kitchen is already so cluttered, adding one more decorative element could push the room over the top. Or your design sensibilities may be such that you’d rather not see a ho-hum globe, fixture or bulb amid your world of pots and pans.
Problem identified. But don’t dismiss this serious issue: If you don’t provide enough illumination, you or any other cook in the house could wind up with a nasty cut or worse. The secret is to hide lights in plain sight, using clever tactics to cover all lighting bases.
1. Install light bars designed to contour to the underside of your cabinets. Use double-mount tape to secure the prefabricated units to the cabinet bottoms or screws that are long enough to thread into the wood but not so long that they protrude through the cabinets.
Add a strip of wood that’s stained or painted to match the cabinet finish if, after the light bars are installed, you can spot any of them.
2. Mount interior lights in the kitchen cabinets if your door fronts have glass inserts. This will allow light to spill from the cabinets into the kitchen.
Use a drill to create a wiring channel from cabinet to cabinet if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, and then mount a series of small fixtures manufactured for interior cabinet illumination at discreet locations in the cabinets. Make sure that your plates, cups and serving pieces don’t obstruct the lights.
3. Replace your ceiling fixture with string lights wrapped around a hanging pot rack. Remove your ceiling fixture, and replace the stationary socket with a string of lights. Hang a pot rack from the spot where you had your ceiling fixture. Continue reading