Guide to Redesigning Your Kitchen

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Good kitchen design starts early, even as early as locating the room within the house. If you're lucky enough to be able to choose which direction your kitchen will face, consider orienting it toward the east or southeast, where morning sun will fill it with light. Unfortunately, in rehab, choosing the southeast orientation is not always possible, although we think it's worth working hard to achieve.

If this simply can't be done, orienting the kitchen to the south or southwest is a good choice. If you go this route, provide some means of shading the room from the hot summer sun, such as deciduous trees or shrubs, awnings or overhangs above windows or even with good window blinds.

Once you get the kitchen oriented, there are some basic design principles that will help you with the layout.

Traffic

A house is not an island; it requires frequent contact with the outside world, much of which is accomplished by car. An attached garage closely adjoining the kitchen or a back door opening on the driveway can reduce the burden of carrying groceries in and the trash out.

A mud room can reduce kitchen traffic by acting as a staging area for trips into and out of the house. It offers a buffer from cold air, storage space for coats, hats and boots and even pantry shelves for items you won't be using immediately. Taking all this activity out of the kitchen provides more room for cooking and eating, which are, after all, a kitchen's main events.

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