How to Get a Bigger Kitchen

Sketch your ideal kitchen as the starting point. Define the exact reasons you need a certain amount of cabinets, sitting space or a work island bar. Plan the bigger kitchen to serve a specific purpose or purposes. Design a bigger kitchen, especially if yours is cramped and reflects little light.

Look at surrounding space you might incorporate. Figure out if you can borrow 2 feet across the width of an adjoining bedroom, for example. Consider using porch space, a hallway or one end of your garage that adjoins the kitchen. Don't overlook adding a pantry and storage cabinets in a back entrance or laundry room next to the kitchen, so you can take out one or two cabinets in the existing kitchen.

Use overhead space for maximum benefit to free up floor space. Install upper cabinets that reach the top of the ceiling to replace shorter upper cabinets. Add taller upper cabinets so you can take out a floor-base section of cabinets and transfer items stored there to uppermost shelves. Take out a base cabinet section on a wall next to a family room, for instance. Remove this wall, so you can open the kitchen to the family room; relocate a kitchen eating table to the family room floor area.

Enclose a back porch into kitchen space. Construct the new back porch as a sunroom that is actually part of the kitchen. Utilize appropriate insulation and energy-efficient windows, or purchase a premade sunroom structure to assemble on site. Hire an expert to open the home's exterior kitchen wall to include the sunroom.

Bump out the kitchen's exterior wall to the edge of the house overhang. Move the exterior wall to gain an extra 200 square feet or more. Incorporate this 18 inches or so of space to make room for a long wall of floor cabinets. Because you have new cabinets now, remove some existing kitchen cabinets. Make room for a larger range and larger refrigerator.