So we have finally taken the plunge and are ready to start planning a kitchen redesign and installation. At the moment we have a quite small dining room (around 1ft x 11ft) adjoining the kitchen and we want to knock through to make a larger ‘L’ shaped dining kitchen.

The thing is, due to the layout we were struggling with working out how we could have a breakfast bar jutting out into the space where the dividing wall once was whist still having enough space to have a larger table for when we want to entertain (ie, 12+ guests) in the dining room.

I came up with the idea of having a removable worktop (perhaps in a contrasting oak against granite worktops elsewhere) that forms the breakfast bar which we can take out (along with whatever holds it up) when we want a longer table coming into the kitchen space (ie, we would want to put a table topper on our existing 180cm table).

I thought this was a great solution but, despite much Googling, can’t find anything that reflects a similar idea to what I’ve had in order that I can expand and finesse my initial thought.

So – has anyone done similar (or have alternative ideas on how we could solve our problem)?

Cheers

1ft x11ft is very small!!!

Put it on a hinge so it folds down?

A hinge was the first thought but I wanted something more elegant – I was thinking along the lines of two wooden pegs in the worktop so the worktop could drop onto them, or some kind of slide out mechanism.

And thanks Renton. 🙁

The ikea kitchen planner is great for putting in room shapes and playing around with layouts. They use fairly standard cabinet sizes and the 3d walk through feature is useful.

As far as custom joinery is concerned – do you really need a breakfast bar? Would a nice big ‘family’ kitchen table that you put a cloth on to smarten up for dinner parties not give you what you need?

Also, go to a few local design companies and get them to try and solve the problem – they do it for a living 🙂

Not this, but it is getting closer to the sort of thing I was imagining…

waswas – we are going to do that but I wanted to go armed with at least some initial thoughts.

I’ll take a look at the Ikea planner though cheers.

some design stuff and inspiration here

Ohh Klunk – I want your baby! Thank you – that site has the perfect idea for our needs…..

A swing out support and hinged wood surface that we can quickly drop.

PERFECT!

(Until my wife sees it then I will be back to square one, but there you go)….

I was going to suggest the swing out table thing like the pic above, however, breakfast bars are rubbish…how about having it at standard table height so you can use the same chairs with the table, then you have enough matching chairs rather than collecting all the odd ones from around the house for family dinners, and having to stash the high stools out the way somewhere.

(ripped out my breakfast bar, it was in the way and not enough room to stick a paper next to your bowl 🙂

I hadn’t even noticed it was a spammer that woke this thread up 🙂 Reported.

Well the kitchen is finished (as in yesterday) – will take some pics and post up what we’ve done 🙂