Kitchen Configuration?

[Manalto]

When presented with a new place to set up for ourselves to live in, we have ideas, and those ideas evolved and get refined over time. But, I must admit, I'm baffled by the puzzle presented me by my "new" kitchen.

First, the sink is in the butler's pantry so, if someone is rinsing out a wine glass, anyone coming from the dining room will smack him or her in the butt with the swinging door. (I wouldn't mind a tiny bar sink in its place, but moved to the left, away from the door.) I'd like to locate the sink in the room that is the kitchen, but where? The current sink won't fit under the painting between the butler and storage pantries. (By the way, the storage pantry is huge.

The stove has to go underneath where the cabinets (the only cabinets) now are, to the left of the window, because there is a chimney on the outside for the flue.

A refrigerator will fit in the butler's pantry, but that would seriously restrict the amount of space remaining for cabinets and shelves, which I feel, instinctively and aesthetically, should go there.

Would anyone care to help me solve how this room can be laid out?

20170422_111440_resized by James McInnis, on Flickr

20170422_111450_resized by James McInnis, on Flickr

[Manalto]

Here's a view of the butler's pantry, a term I use with some chagrin in such a humble house, but to distinguish it from the storage pantry.
Butler's Pantry by James McInnis, on Flickr

[Lily left the valley]

Your humble home may have had a baking pantry, and not a butler's pantry. I'm willing to bet there used to be a hoosier or similar baking cabinet opposite the sink wall. From the images, there may have also been a door into what you're calling the storage pantry.

We recently lived in a 1918 multi family where each floor had an eat in kitchen with a baking pantry. All the baking pantries had the sinks in there, not in the main kitchen. There is evidence of a door prior (as there was between the kitchen and living room), but they were long ago removed.

You can't see it in images I'll share in a minute, but there was also a built in china cabinet to the left of the fridge which likely held plates and such before the later addition of the newer cabinetry in there. (It's where we kept most of ours, actually.) Now, in our case, the sink was opposite the plumbing for the bath. To the right of the pantry was a bedroom. You can see in the images that both were updated at various times given the dated look of those cabinets in that room. Now the one in the basement, though, does not have the same later added cabinetry. It looks more like the usual narrow baking with plain open shelves, and on the right hand side, the shelves do not start until half way up the wall, inferring a table or half hoosier in the past. Unfortunately, zillow doesn't have an image of that apartment.

I would gander a guess in your case that if the baking pantry is a pass through to the dining, and the storage pantry does not have a similar pass through, then the assumption would be that no one would be washing dishes during meal time. If anything, used dishes would be left on the drainboard or in the sink. Since it's not a well to do home, maybe if they had a housekeeper that cooked, she would have been the only person to use that door when the family was in the formal dining, so less likely to hit anyone in the behind in such a case.

Here's an image of the kitchen (before we lived there. I think this image was taken when the former homeowner still lived there before she sold it to our landlady who did not live on premises).

And a closer shot of the pantry.


The second floor had a completely different layout for where they put the stove. It's quite possible if the apartment we were in still had a stove like that, ours would also be on that wall.

And the second floor baking pantry:


I forgot I had taken a picture of a stepstool in front of the china cabinet. You can't see the (now plexi)glassed doors for the upper portion, but you can see the lower wood doors in this image. The top was as tall as the bottom.

[Texas_Ranger]

The first two simple options that come to my mind are:
- moving the sink to the opposite wall of the baking pantry
- limiting the swinging door to opening into the dining room by putting a stop on it

The first option would limit your options for putting shelves or cupboards into the baking pantry but you could still have base units below the window and uppers above the sink so that doesn't seem too bad. The latter would make walking with hands full of dishes a bit tricky.

The third possibility would be putting an old sink with built-in backsplash in front of one of the kitchen windows, that would be a fairly typical 1900-thing to do.

[Manalto]

Ah, a new term to learn - a "baking pantry" - where no baking is done. I agree with your speculation that a Hoosier or similar cabinetry was in the shallow (~30") niche across from the sink. There is no evidence of a door, however, passing from baking to storage pantry; the shelves of the storage pantry continue along the shared wall and look as though they've been there for some time. None of that kind of refinement - removing a door and blending it into the wall - exists elsewhere in the house, so I'd be surprised if it happened here, but who knows? I'll take a closer look the next time I'm there.

Recently I was up in Worcester, Mass. to pick up a big, heavy Bengal stove with heater for this house (on the third floor of a three-family house - a story for another time), noticed that the sink was in the pantry, thought it odd, and still do. Cooking often involves water; what were they thinking? The stove-fridge-sink triangle, that immutable law of kitchen design, is seriously interrupted here. (Here is a kitchen where the current fad of pot-filler faucets at the stove may make good sense.)

[1918ColonialRevival]

Looking at early 20th Century floor plans, it's not that unusual to find the sink in the pantry, or even for the kitchen to consist of a series of small rooms like yours. I would say the wall in the pass-through between the dining room and kitchen was likely always there and as Lily mentioned, likely had a Hoosier or similar cabinet up against it. Our kitchen had a similar storeroom, but it was converted into a bathroom sometime in the 1970s or 80s. One of these days it will be a storeroom again, as the extra space will be of more use to us than another bathroom.

One thing that most kitchens in 1918 did not have was a refrigerator. Mechanical refrigeration was very new at that point and usually only commercial establishments or very high-end mansions had refrigerators. A lot of people had ice boxes then, which were often kept on a back porch or inside a back mudroom to allow easy access for ice delivery and for emptying water.

Another thing people forget is that the "big kitchen" idea is a development of the second half of the 20th Century. Before that, the kitchen was more of a service room than anything else, much the way people today view a laundry room. If the house had a maid, it was rare for the owner to even set foot in the kitchen. Prior to the Great Depression, many middle class houses employed a maid, though by the 1910s and 1920s it was becoming less common to have a live-in maid. Our house, built in 1918 as well, has a live-in maid's quarters complete with its own bath and at one time small kitchen, but so far we have not found any evidence that the original owners had a live-in maid. There is no maid listed in the 1920 Census for the household.

As for making the kitchen more functional, I like Texas Ranger's idea of making the swinging door one-way. I wouldn't radically alter the floor plan, as that can create challenges all its own. Living with what can be considered unusual features today is part of the unique old house experience. If you need more space in the kitchen, it would probably be easier to expand out the back than to re-configure the space drastically.

[Mick_VT]

I think your "butler's pantry" might actually be a "scullery"

[Manalto]

Terminology is fun, isn't it? Any ideas on how to configure the kitchen?

[1918ColonialRevival]

I'd put a refrigerator at the wall where the artwork is currently and a stove immediately opposite it under where the cabinets are. Maybe a small rectangular table in front of the window with the A/C unit. Use the storeroom for what it was intended and maybe include your larger pots, pans, and dishes in there. In the other room opposite the sink, I'd build a cabinet with a work surface and have additional cabinets on the wall, preferably that go all the way to the ceiling. You should also have room to build a small work surface next to the stove in the main kitchen.

The doorway between the sink area and the rest of the kitchen is more of a psychological barrier than anything, as I don't see a door on it and it might not have had one. Use the wall's presence to your advantage with the additional cabinet space.

[Manalto]

Thank you all for your suggestions; I have much to think about. I do, despite my grousing, appreciate the experience of living with unusual features. (In fact, I sought it out, rejecting, in my search, newer - but boring - houses in better condition.) I see the sink as the busiest part of the kitchen, so I guess that's why I'm a bit hung up on the placement of the swinging door. There won't be a lot of traffic through the house, so it's probably a non-issue. The kitchen and its pantries are plenty big for my purposes, so no expansion is needed. I was just looking for convenience and flow, working with what's there. Thanks again for your input; it was really helpful.