Planning an Open Kitchen in an Irvine Home: Sound, Smell and Sightlines
The wall between a 1980s kitchen and its family room is usually the first thing a homeowner in Irvine, CA wants gone. It was drawn when the kitchen was a workroom and the cook was expected to stay out of sight. Taking it out makes the house feel larger, and it also sends every sound, smell and sightline from the kitchen straight into the living space. This article goes through the questions that come up on those jobs, in the order a crew has to answer them.
Which walls can actually come out in a Woodbridge or Northwood tract home?
Tract homes of that era mix bearing and non-bearing partitions, and the two can look identical from the kitchen side. A wall that runs parallel to the ceiling joists and carries nothing above it can come out with little more than patching. A wall that sits under a joist splice, a second story floor or a roof beam needs a header, and the header needs posts that land on something solid. In a slab house that means checking what is under the floor at each post, because a post that lands on a thin part of the slab or on a utility trench needs a new footing cut into the concrete.
Crews working through Woodbridge and Northwood homes usually start by opening a small section of ceiling and drywall to look. Drawings from the builder are sometimes on file with the city, but the house as it stands has often been changed since. The opening answers the question in an hour, and it is cheaper than discovering a hidden duct or a gas line after the wall is half down.
What lives inside the wall besides framing?
A kitchen wall holds more than studs. There can be a gas stub for the range, a drain and vent for the sink, a bundle of cable that feeds the rest of the house, a return air path for the furnace, and a switch loop that lights a hallway. Each one has to be rerouted before the wall comes down, and each reroute gets its own inspection at the rough stage. The electrical panel is the other thing to check. Removing a wall often means adding circuits for new lighting and an island outlet, and an older panel with no spare space turns a wall removal into a panel upgrade.
How much of the kitchen noise will carry into the living room?
A lot, and more than most people expect. The dishwasher, the range hood and the disposal all produce sound that a wall used to absorb. Hard surfaces make it worse. A kitchen with tile floors, stone counters and a tall ceiling reflects sound like a stairwell, and an open plan adds a living room that the sound now reaches.
- Choose a dishwasher with an insulated tub and a rated quiet cycle, then ask the installer to pack insulation around it and secure it so it does not rattle against the cabinets.
- Pick a hood with a blower mounted at the roof or in the attic instead of inside the hood body. The motor noise stays outside the house.
- Use a rug or a soft runner under the island stools and in the living area, so the floor does not bounce every footstep.
- Add acoustic insulation in the ceiling above the kitchen if the floor above is occupied.
None of this makes an open kitchen silent. It makes it tolerable to someone trying to watch a program from the sofa.
How is cooking smell handled when there is no wall to stop it?
The hood does the work, and the hood has to be sized to the cooktop and ducted outdoors. A recirculating hood filters the air through a charcoal panel and sends it back into the room, which removes some grease and almost none of the smell. A ducted hood pulls the air out of the house. It also pulls make-up air in from somewhere, and a tight modern house can struggle when the fan runs hard. Some jurisdictions require a make-up air path above a certain fan capacity, and the plans reviewer in Irvine will say whether that applies.
Placement matters as much as power. A hood over an island sits in the middle of the room and meets cross drafts from the sliding door, so some of the steam escapes around the edges. A hood on a wall catches more. If the island has to hold the cooktop, a deeper hood and a lower mounting height help, within the clearance the manufacturer sets.
Where do the sightlines go?
Open plan kitchens are seen from the front door, the sofa and the dining table, so the part of the kitchen people see first becomes a design problem. The sink full of dishes is the usual offender. A sink set into the island faces the living room, while a sink on the perimeter wall faces the window. Many owners choose the window and add a deeper sink and a rinse area that the island hides from the room. A low back ledge on the island, a few inches tall, hides the counter clutter from the sofa without turning the island into a barrier.
The refrigerator is the second object people see. A refrigerator set at the end of a cabinet run, with a panel or cabinet around it, looks like furniture. One set alone against a bare wall in the middle of the line of sight looks like an appliance parked in a hallway.
What does lighting have to do differently when the room opens?
The kitchen and the living room now share one ceiling, and a bright work light that suits chopping vegetables looks harsh from the sofa in the evening. The fix is separate switches and dimmers for each zone, so the kitchen can drop to a low glow while the living room stays lit. Pendants over the island are the part of the room that people see from the living area, so they get chosen for shade and glare. A pendant with an open bottom shines straight into the eyes of someone sitting at a stool. One with a shade or a diffuser keeps the bulb out of view.
Color temperature has to match across both rooms or the join shows. A warm bulb in the family room beside a cool one over the counters makes the space look like two different houses stitched together. Choosing one color for every fixture, then testing it with a sample bulb after dark, settles it before anything is cut into the ceiling.
How should the flooring run across the opening?
When the wall comes out, the floor on each side rarely matches. The kitchen may have tile and the family room carpet or a different plank, and the line where the wall stood shows up as a gap or a step. Most crews either run one material through the whole space or choose a transition that is planned rather than patched. Running one plank through both rooms is clean, but it must tolerate water at the sink and dishwasher. Tile in the kitchen and plank beside it works if the two sit at the same height and a thin metal strip or a grout line forms the join.
The slab complicates this. Removing a wall exposes a strip of concrete that was never finished, often with a slight dip or a ridge from the wall plate. That strip has to be ground flat or filled before the new floor goes in. Floors installed over it without that step crack along the line of the old wall within a season.
What happens to the cabinets and counters at the edge of the opening?
The cut end of a cabinet run is exposed once the wall is gone. The side of the last cabinet was never finished because nobody was meant to see it, so a finished end panel has to be added. A peninsula or an island that replaces the old wall can restore the storage the wall cabinets provided, though it must leave room to walk around it. A path of about three feet is the common minimum. Past that, there is a long list of choices about stools, outlets and overhangs, and each one has a code limit or a comfort limit that the plan should state in writing.
An open plan works when the noise, the smell and the view have each been planned for before the wall comes down.