Kitchen Addition in Bethesda, Maryland
Crossing Creek Road, Bethesda MD
A Small Addition With a Big Impact in Bethesda
This kitchen was impossibly narrow, almost like a runway. I could practically touch the countertops on both sides of the room at the same time. So when the homeowner, Summan, told me she wanted a kitchen island, I had to suppress a chuckle. The width was only part of the problem, though. The kitchen was also 24 feet long, which meant getting from the refrigerator to the oven felt like a trip in itself. That kind of long, narrow layout is not unheard of in DC-area homes, but usually “long” means 10 or 12 feet, not twice that. Add in the fact that this was a California Contemporary home built in the early 1970s, with the peak of the roof rising just above the kitchen and ceilings reaching nearly 14 feet, and the whole room felt more like a cavern than a functional galley kitchen.
Looking Everywhere for a Way to Widen the Kitchen
Our first instinct was to find a way to make the space wider, but the kitchen was surrounded on all sides. Running along one side were the dining room and family room. On the other side was the garage. At one end was the foyer, and at the other was the only exterior wall. When we explore home additions and kitchen expansion options, that outside wall is usually the first place we look. In this case, though, pushing out there would have only made the kitchen longer, and that was the last thing anyone wanted. The challenge was not how to add square footage. It was how to add the right square footage in the right place.
The Solution Was Inside the Garage
The garage turned out to be the answer. There were no rooms above it, and the cathedral roofline began just before the garage wall. Because the roof had to continue down from that point, the garage ended up being deeper than you might expect. Even with both cars parked inside, the homeowner had enough room to line the entire back wall with shelves about two feet deep, with bikes, toys, and storage boxes filling the space between the cars and the shelving. That is when the solution became clear. By borrowing just three feet from the garage, we were able to transform the proportions of the kitchen and create the space needed to make the layout work.
Sometimes you just have to think out side of the box. Other times you have to think in the box!
