Sketch-up and my new kitchen

It's not exactly a new tool, but I've recently learned how to use Google's SketchUp and have to say how much I love it. It's a basic design program, and takes a little practice, but it's been amazing while doing plans for our new kitchen to try things out and "see" them in our house.

The first few models we did made me realize that our original plan for moving our kitchen would not pan out quite as well as we'd hoped. As I've been tweaking the design, I think I've managed to come up with a plan that will work better, but it involves a much more extensive project...big surprise...moving bathrooms shortening bedrooms and such. It's all in the old part of the house, so we had planned to spruce it up a bit anyways. At least it doesn't involve un-doing or re-doing anything we've already done.

I started with a blueprint of our first floor which 'Chung had scanned and imported into SketchUp. After tracing the lines for the walls, I pulled the walls up to the scaled 8' height and "Presto!" I had a 3D model of our floorplan. Here's the overall view, kinda hard to see (click and the pics. should get bigger), but you get the idea. To the left is our front door leading into the dining room and in the right top is the back door which goes into the living room.

Here's one of the kitchen plans I'm considering from a bird's-eye-view.


What I love about this program is that it allows you to step into the model and see things from different perspectives. You set the height for eye-level and can walk or look around from that vantage point.


I haven't really gotten to details and finishes yet. The only issue I've had so far is, although it's great, the 3D warehouse where you can download models contains a fairly limited selection of items. For example, these are not our actual appliances and finishes, but rather approximately the correct size, and I couldn't even find a standard bathtub when I modeled the bathroom. It gets the idea across though.


Another of the possible plans has the stove and fridge switched. In this one I remembered that 'Chung wants to mount a pot rack over the sink. I actually like how that breaks up the monotony of that cabinet run.



We may end up going with one of these, or we may go in a completely different direction (though we are limited a bit by our pathway), but it's nice to see it before we build it. I wish I'd had this program when we were doing the addition. Did I mention it's free? Love Google.

In other news, we're hopefully picking up our beautiful new range tomorrow morning. Gee, I should go to sleep. It's a 36" Viking with 4 burners and a griddle in the center. It's exactly what I wanted(in no particular order): gas, white with stainless accents (to coordinate with the rest of my appliances), large enough oven to fit 2 cookie-sheets side-by-side, found on craigslist, and costs about 20% of retail (though I think that's still too expensive).

Let me know if you have any ideas for improving our plan!