A 1962 Ladue ranch kitchen opened to the garden

The brief

The owners had lived in the house for eleven years and cooked in a galley kitchen that faced a wall. The dining room next door was used twice a year. They wanted one room, a real island, and a window over the sink instead of a cabinet.

What made it difficult

The wall between the kitchen and dining room carried the ceiling joists for half the house, and the original panel was a 100 amp fuse box with no capacity for an induction range, a second oven or island circuits.

The chimney chase for a decommissioned furnace flue ran straight through the middle of the proposed island location, and the slab-on-grade construction meant no crawl space to run new plumbing through.

What we did

Our engineer sized a 22 foot flush-framed LVL beam so the ceiling stayed flat instead of dropping a bulkhead through the middle of the new room. The beam was set in two pieces and bolted, because a single member would not have made the turn through the front door.

We removed the abandoned chimney chase down to the slab, upgraded the service to 200 amps, and core drilled the slab for the island drain and the two dedicated circuits. The new sink moved to the garden window, which required rerouting the waste line 14 feet to the existing stack.