Sharing a Small Kitchen as Household of 9

A French Farmhouse Friday post

The farmhouse’s galley kitchen is about 12’-long with a 3’-wide thoroughfare. While the house is from the 1800s, the kitchen’s interior was clearly updated in more recent decades. A smaller, second chimney visible from the exterior, plus a rough, low stone ledge hidden behind the cabinetry + counter leads us to believe that there was originally a small cooking zone on one side of the room, while the opposite wall (the one with the green sink!) is obviously a more recent addition.

We’ll modify this space over time, and have started sketching out our plans. Thus far, however, budget and bandwidth have limited us to merely adding some temporary cabinet curtains beneath the counter, and redoing the electrical (which includes replacing the hideous linear fluorescent light bulbs mounted to the ceiling and over the backsplash).

The kitchen has given us some awkward elements to work around. For example, the route to the bathroom funnels through the kitchen corridor. And, much to everyone’s bemusement, the bifold upper cabinets accordion open atop the main prep counter, meaning that the surface has to be ENTIRELY clear in order for us to access the pantry and kitchenware storage space. We noted these features when buying the home, and knew we’d have to make do with everything as-is for a handful of years.