I’m new to this site (the sewing part was a favorite of mine) but this site is a goldmine. My husband and I are building a custom home and I have looked at hundreds of model homes and have never found what he wants. The family room and kitchen will be a large open area and he wants the kitchen ceiling to be vaulted and in line with the ceiling of the family room. The walls will be 19′ high, with the ceiling peaking around 25′. We are meeting with the architect tomorrow to see the plans he has drawn up. I can’t vision what a ceiling that high will be like in the kitchen, as it seems to me that the cabinets will look like matchboxes on that wall. One friend suggested a mural above the cabinets. Another friend said absolutely not. I’m not big on murals, so I really don’t like the idea. My husband does not want to fur (fir?) down the ceiling, since he wants a clean line throughout this entire area. The area above these cabinets would face the garage, so windows above the cabinets would not work. Has anyone EVER seen anything like this? HELP!
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We just did a family room and kitchen addition. The space is 20 feet by 36 feet, with a sunroom attached that is 20 by 10. We put a regular height ceiling over the kitchen section at one end with a bedroom above it. At the other end we have a slightly higher ceiling and we put a small office for me above that. In the middle, we have a square opening about 14 feet square that is open to the peak. We have a 3 foot wide walkway that goes from the top of the stairs around the perimeter of the opening. The family room ceiling is about 28 feet high, with a six by six foot cupola at the peak. We love how it turned out.
I think having a room with 19 foot high walls will look strange unless the room is huge and will be impossible to heat, if that is a concern. What will you put on the walls to avoid big blank spaces? Don't forget you'll need staging to paint. I don't know if you have any budgetary issues, but you won't get much usable space for your investment.
On the other hand, the Sistine Chapel seems to work. Good luck.
I agree with your comments (walls looking strange, high electric bills, etc.) This idea is my husband's idea. This is also my last house before the "home." I was extremely frugal the first half of my life and now that I'm in the last half, I decided to spend the money I saved. Yes, the rooms will be huge. Don't ask me why. We have an empty nest. My husband is totally against a catwalk. I thought about putting another set of cabinets above the regular cabinets and storing rarely used items in them. We have a ton of liquor (I moved 25 boxes of it from San Antonio to Houston), so I could use the cabinets above to put this liquor. I'm sure you're wondering why we have this much liquor. I'm a flight attendant and I can't pass up a good bargain on unusual bottles of liquor in various duty free shops. I thought about putting a library ladder to access those cabinets. I'm losing sleep over this whole thing and this is the only area that we are having issues. The rest of the house is falling into place very nicely. What is "staging the paint?"
I think by "staging" they meant you will have to put up scaffolds in order to paint. Huge houses with cathedral ceilings look nice, but they are hard to paint (and as someone else mentioned, to heat and cool). The library ladder idea and extra storage sounds good to me. Windows over the cabinets also sound good. I just helped remodel a kitchen that had windows between the countertops and the wall cabinets. I tried to convince the guy I work with to get the owners to either use frosted glass or glass block, but he didn't like the idea.
We bought a 100-yr. old house with 12 ft. ceilings. We also thought standard cabinets would look weird. I built 48" high cabinets, then put a row of 30" cabinets on top of them. Put crown molding on the top cabinets for decoration. My wife stores stuff she seldom uses in the top cabinets (Christmas dishes, etc.) and has a small stepladder stored in the laundry room for access.
I love your idea, since that is the idea that I thought about, only with a library ladder. Do you have any pictures you could email so I could get a visual of that effect? I like the idea of the crown molding, but I'm not sure how that would look with more ceiling above those cabinets. Thank you very much.
Sorry, it took me a while to find the pics. This is my first attempt at cabinetmaking... The two kitchen pics are adjacent walls (one only has one row of cabinets). Also, the ladder is in the library :-)
Wow! I'm very impressed. Thanks to this message board ( a new experience for me), I think I have my problem solved! Thanks everyone for all the input!!
I just spoke with my kitchen designer (wife). She agrees with your use of a library ladder in the kitchen. The only 'gotcha' is a way to park the ladder so it's out of the way. Our kitchen's doors and windows don't allow that luxury. The ladder in our library came from Putnam Rolling Ladders (do a google search) they're custom made to your measurements. Good luck with your project and keep us posted.
That's a good point about the location of the ladder. I'll bring it up Friday when we get together with the architect. Thank you.
Actually, I don't think windows above the cabinets would look weird. Unless your garage is also 30 feet high, having these high windows would be like clerestory windows - they let in light but people are too short to see through them. If your garage IS that tall, you might think about a nice stained glass window. You have the room to have a nice large one, you won't see the garage, and the play of light in that giant room might be stunning.
If you REALLY don't want windows there, then the high storage is good.
You might also think about an open trellis like affair over the kitchen to sort of define it. This will make the kitchen feel cozier, and will still have the soaring height above for your husband. If you are the type to hange pots then this can provide that. Something like that might be a good compromise between your husband's desire for giant heights and comfort in the kitchen. The other benefit will be lighting. Lighting a living room from 25 feet above is bad enough, but a kitchen needs light so you can actually use it. Unless you want 12 foot pendants hanging down, you are going to have a chore lighting it. Remember that can lights will be a minimum of 19 feet in the air when you want to change a lightbulb. And under cabinet lighting is helpful to assist with task lighting, but it won't be able to light the room. With a trellis, you can hang lighting off the trellis and have it closer to where the work is being done.
Good luck, and don't forget the pictures.
Thank you so very much for all the ideas. You are a wealth of information!!! I need all the help I can get. The garage is going to be an entertainment area also, with an outdoor kitchen and hot tub. Since we are not taxed on garage space, we decided to utilize it for living space. We do like to entertain a lot and we have a lot of fabulous neighbors and we all get together all the time. We are the ones with the margarita machine! It makes 5 gallons in 10 minutes. I love your idea of the trellis, but I do need more information on accomplishing this. To me, a trellis is live plants scaled up a wall. Correct me if I'm wrong. My expertise lies in front of a sewing machine and not in the yard. THANK YOU.
Linda
I think what the poster (Aimless, I think) meant by a trellis was a horizontal plane formed by a frame with other boards (1x1's or whatever) making a grid of small squares or diamonds. This plane is suspended about 8-10 feet above the floor using chains from the ceiling. Lighting can be put above the grid. Helps define the space, plus, as Aimless said, makes the lighting more efficient (closer to the work) and changing light bulbs is a lot easier.
That's a great idea with the trellis. Is there any place where I can see a picture of this type of arrangement? I get about 7 decorating magazines in the mail every month for ideas, and I've never seen anything that even comes close to the trellis idea. It's a great idea, though. Thank you everyone.
It was really Aimless' idea, maybe he knows, but I would look in your local library for books from "Sunset"--seems like I've seen things like these "trellises" in their books (which are comprised of articles from their magazines). Other books on interior decorating and design may have such things too. (I think the call number under the Dewey decimal system are between 690's and 720's. Also look online at Taunton's offerings--they may have something. I think Sarah Susanka may have something like them in some of her books--I'll look at my collection of her books and let you know if she does.
Thank you. I will go to the library sometime this week and see what I can find.
Just thought--did you get "Inspired House" while it was being published?--back issues may have a photo of such a ceiling. Maybe you could look at articles (they have them on this web site).
I did find a couple "trellises" in Susankas books. The best photo was on page 78 of The Not So Big House. She uses more of a ladder-rung arrangement instead of a square grid ("eggcrate"). Another idea is sort of a tray ceiling--where you have like shelves all the way around extending from the walls at ceiling height. Theres another word for such ceilings, but I can't think of it right now, and I talked about that shelf ceiling idea on Breaktime or maybe it was here--someone asked about defining a kitchen with a wooden ceiling or something. I can't seem to remember much of anything today. I had seen it somewhere in a book or mag, but right now I can't remember where.
Found the ceiling I was thinking of, and it is called a "floating shelf" on page 46 of Home by Design by Sarah Susanka. Good book and has many good ideas.
Edited 5/15/2006 7:23 pm ET by Danno
Thank you very much. I'll go to the library and see if they have that book. Thanks so much for all the ideas. I need all the help I can get!
Danno is right - I was thinking of a wooden grid that is open to the ceiling above.