Serious Business: Building a Dream Kitchen

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Many food bloggers are serious foodies -- and blog readers and other food bloggers have learned to rely on us for great recipes, cooking tips, kitchen shortcuts, ingredient sources, cookbook favorites and more. So no surprise: while many food bloggers could whip a five-course meal off a hotplate without breaking a sweat, when given the chance to build their dream kitchens, well, they're equally serious about creating kitchens worthy of dreams.

Building a dream kitchen is serious business. For many families, the kitchen is literally and figuratively the 'heart' of the home: the single room where family gathers one, twice, three times a day; the place where much 'living' and conversation takes place; the room which must most adapt to changing family circumstances; the room which opens up to neighbors, friends and other visitors; and -- oh right -- then there's the business of storing and preserving food, then cooking and eating it.

For many families, building a dream kitchen happens just once in a lifetime. It may require professional help, significant planning and a major financial investment. At minimum, it requires soul-searching about the dynamics of cooking, eating and living. The kitchen is the most complex room in a home (think, what does a bedroom need, just a place to sleep and a place for belongings?) with competing priorities of three dimensions plus budget, utility and aesthetics. It's difficult and often expensive to fix mistakes. Budget trumps dreams.

With the experience of seven of my fellow food bloggers, let's take a serious -- and seriously practical -- look at what to expect when considering a dream kitchen. This will be a series of posts. Three are in the can. But if there's one thing I've learned from these food bloggers is that they love-love-love to talk about their kitchens. So if you have a burning question about a dream kitchen, if you can't seem to get a straight answer anywhere else, please, ask away. I'm willing to bet they'll be happy to provide their perspectives. (For practicality, please pose questions in the comments. I'll coordinate answers in future posts.)

We've got a good mix of food bloggers here -- three recently finished their dream kitchens, two others some years ago, one is mid-construction, another is ready to break ground soon. One made a smaller kitchen and added a wall while others made the more usual moves of removing walls to create larger kitchens. Several employed professional help. One is an architect, himself and uses a recent client project as an example. Some stayed within budget, others went way over. What's it like to build a dream kitchen? Let these food bloggers share their range of experience.

Married with Dinner

Anita and her husband Cameron completed their San Francisco kitchen in 2007. Their project was "... somewhere between a remodel and a renovation. We moved all the plumbing and electrical around. All the walls were taken down to the studs. We added a window in the kitchen and opened up the back wall of the house. All the doors and walls stayed where they were, but we actually added a wall and made the kitchen smaller to create a hallway between the kitchen and the master bedroom. Our clever architect made the space seem larger and definitely more useable." The result "... certainly isn't a big space full of lots of fancy appliances, but it's a little more than 'simple and inexpensive'."

YEAR: 2007

PROJECT: Extensive remodel of a single-family house

PICTURES: See the new floor plan and photographs of Anita's dream kitchen.

PROFESSIONAL HELP: "Do work with a design professional – you will get what you pay for and more. We’ve planned three kitchens by ourselves, but this time around I knew our job was big and complex enough that we needed help with space planning and project management. Despite knowing this, we were VERY reluctant to pay what our architect wanted for the design. It seemed like we were taking so much money out of the construction/materials budget to hire him, and we were beside ourselves with second-guessing. We pulled our hair and fretted for weeks over what we’d done. But in retrospect, we both agree that it was the best money we ever spent on the house — or on any house."

PLANNING TIME: "Years!" says Anita. "We’d