Planning the new Great Room

I am really looking forward to having a big kitchen where family and friends can hang out and everyone can relax, enjoy good food, wine and company. My husband and I like to cook and entertain, and have been doing it in our small apartment kitchen with no problem. But now that we own a house, I am suddenly so fed up with the smallness of our galley kitchen where two people can hardly pass.

We have big plans for the kitchen of our new house. Currently the house has a smallish kitchen with an eat-in section, a separate formal dining room and an adjoining window screened porch. We will knock down the dividing walls and make this into one big open great room, which will combine kitchen, dining and family room areas. The room will have lots of windows as both the current porch area and the formal dining room have walls that are almost all windows looking out to the greenery of the back yard. This will be the heart of the house and the space where we will probably spend most of our time in. It's a major renovation waiting to happen!

Below are pictures of the current state of affairs. I am hoping that I can post the after pictures in early July...

This is the current kitchen. We will most likely keep these cabinet doors, just replace the pulls. However, the kitchen will be gutted out, the dividing cabinets will be removed and there will be an island with a hybrid induction cooktop (more about that later). We will redesign the spacing of the cabinets and all appliances will be changed. I have found a gorgeous fridge, and a double wall oven. I am still looking for the dishwasher. The countertops will be granite, and naturally the wallpaper is history. I have not decided on the back splash yet. The floor tiling will be changed.

This is the eat-in section of the kitchen. The wall that divides the kitchen and dining rooms will be demolished.The windows will be floor to ceiling panels.

The dining room windows will be replaced with sliding doors opening up to the deck on the back yard. Both end walls will be demolished.

This is the probably the most challenging part of the whole renovation. This area will be our TV room, joined to the great room. The area needs to be insulated, it needs new flooring, windows, and walls. We will install a wood burning stove to this space as well to have the cozyness of a fireplace without having to actually build one (there is a built in fireplace elsewhere in the house). We already bought the couch for this room from the fabulous ABC Carpet and Home store (it's the creamy white leather couch that I featured previously on this blog). The door to the back yard will be removed (or closed if for village rule purposes it cannot be removed).

Here are a couple of pictures of great rooms that have inspired me, both are contemporary but not too modern, very warm and welcoming with a neutral to warm color palette: