Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How are your great room and kitchen connected?

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

To see photos, look on our website, www.rosewind.org and link to  
common house photos.

On the kitchen end of our dining room we have two long counters. The  
main serving counter includes about 4 feet that borders on the  
kitchen. The "beverage" counter includes about 1.5 feet that borders  
on the kitchen. Between those, there is a walk-through space.

Visually, our kitchen is completely open to the dining area, with just  
counter-high division. This works well for us. The serving counter  
part is just by the convection oven, eliminating carrying heavy hot  
pans across the kitchen. Below the kitchen side of the counter is a  
drawer for serving utensils, and shelves for serving dishes.

On the beverage counter side, the short end that borders the kitchen  
connects with the dirty dish area by the kitchen dishwasher area.  
During serving times, this end of the beverage counter may hold  
containers of silverware, or condiments, or dessert for moving over to  
the serving counter later. A small removable panel makes a division  
between clean-stuff and dirty-dish area.

We like the connection. After meals, maybe 10 of us are in and out of  
the kitchen, with dishes, brooms, rags, leftovers, laundry. At that  
point, that IS our common activity. After-dinner meetings happen after  
clean up, so there isn't a noise issue.

Lynn at RoseWind, Port Townsend WA
where the daffodils are full tilt, and the garlic is up about 4 inches.