Built-in seating gets you more out of your kitchen

Before: This common 1970's kitchen/dining setup is efficient; yet, clients often report the kitchen is congested, the dining area cramped, and people rarely sit at the bar because there isn't room between it and the table.

Brent Murray, Renovation Design Group

Last week, we started our kitchen remodeling series in honor of Thanksgiving the holiday with the most time spent in the kitchen.

Beyond Thanksgiving and other holiday gatherings, modern families are actually spending more time in general in the kitchen. The kitchen has become command central. It is not only a place to store and prepare food, but also serves as a place to gather, visit, eat, do homework, sort mail, pay bills, surf the Web you name it. More and more activities are being crammed into a space not originally designed for such a workload.

If space is tight in your kitchen or if you would just like a change for the fun of it, one solution to consider is a built-in seating area. These come in a variety of options and may be just the answer to create more gathering space in your kitchen.

A common built-in option is counter seating. Originally, this was only a support area to the more formal dining areas in the home. It was considered "kids" seating a place to serve a quick bowl of cereal or a peanut butter sandwich. But in some situations today, with the trend toward eliminating the dining room altogether, counter seating has become the main family eating area, mom and dad included.

The traditional height for counter seating is 36 inches. You can also raise the seating portion to 42 inches, leaving the rest of the counter at the lower height. This configuration may help you screen less-than-perfect work areas of the kitchen.

The chairs that serve counter seating have also evolved. Simple stools have long been available, but now you can get a variety of dining chair styles with longer legs. You should plan a minimum of 2 feet per chair when determining how many your counter will seat.

Counter seating is not conducive to great dinner conversation if the family or guests are just lined up in a row. If you have the space, counter seating can also wrap around two sides of the counter. Or you can even extend the end of the counter so you have seating on three sides sort of a hybrid of counter seating and a table.

Another option for built-in seating is a banquette, which is essentially booth seating. This feature was popular in the 1940s and is fashionable again today. The banquette can have a table with built-in seating on two opposite sides, or have a bench against one wall with chair seating on the other side, or it can be some other variations such as an L-shaped or U-shaped benches.

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Built-in seating gets you more out of your kitchen