Our Open-Close Kitchen: Where Maximum Enjoyment Meets Minimum Chores
1378
- Minimalist
- HDB (Resale)
- ~1,000 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living
Hey everyone! Welcome to our hybrid open-closed kitchen, a part of our home that we have chosen to revamp almost completely :) The kitchen was originally closed off from the rest of the home. We wanted more connectedness between our kitchen and living space, yet ensuring that the cooking fumes are kept within the kitchen — this was how the idea of a hybrid open-closed kitchen concept was birthed! 🙌🏻 
Before we begin our kitchen tour, here’s the skeletal colours of our kitchen 🤎🤍 
This was the original kitchen view from the living area. The wall (highlighted in brown) made both the kitchen & entryway feel claustrophobic, and we decided to hack it away to create more openness :) 
TADAAA! This is how it looks after hacking 🥰 Upon deciding to hack this wall away, we had multiple ideas of what we could transform this space into. Let us take you through each of them, in case any of them works better for you! ✨ 1. Half wall, half glass ✅ Pros -Visually: more openness & connectedness ❌ Cons -Physically: There is still a permanent separation between the spaces -Auditory: Voices will still be contained in the kitchen, limiting conversations across spaces -Not maximising countertop & storage space 2. Change kitchen entrance to this side instead, then build a full wall or half-wall, half-glass at the original kitchen entrance ✅Pros -Enhance connectedness between kitchen & living space -Do not need to cut through entrance walkway to get to the kitchen ❌Cons -Limits what we can do with the space in front of this new kitchen entrance, as we would ideally want to keep it clear of any obstructions -Removes option to include bar chairs in future as they will be obstructing the entrance walkway -Not maximising countertop & storage space 3. Extend kitchen countertop such that it is parallel to the bomb shelter wall instead ✅ Pros -A nice cosy pantry nook against the wall -More countertop & storage space -Enhance connectedness between kitchen & living space ❌ Cons -Removes option of having bar chairs in future -Limits what we can do with the space in front of this new kitchen entrance, as we would ideally want to keep it clear of any obstructions 4. Peninsula with doors/windows ✅ Pros -More countertop & storage space -Enhance connectedness between kitchen & living space -Option to include bar chairs in future -Keeps our options open on what we can do with the space along our bomb shelter wall ❌ Cons -Still need to cut through entrance walkway to get to the kitchen After much deliberation, we went with option 4 as we felt that this matched our needs most closely & keeps the space relatively versatile for any changes! 😊 
The peninsula has got to be one of our favourite features of our home 🥰 Before moving in, we never expected ourselves to use it so much, but it has become one of our most-used spaces at home! Here are a few ways that we have utilised it thus far: 1. Drop off groceries/bags/parcels once we enter the house 2. Unpacking/unboxing station for groceries/parcels 3. Craft/DIY station 4. Standing desk 5. Bar table to enjoy our meals & drinks 6. “Serving station” for dishes to be brought from the kitchen to the dining table 7. Charging station for items that we can pick and go easily before leaving the house e.g our phones/portable chargers/earbuds/handheld fans 8. Storage - the other side of the peninsula are cabinets :) 💭 If you are wondering about the bar chairs, we are taking our time to find them as we want to make sure that they spark enough joy for us before we bring them into our home! We did also consider not getting them at all because we have been doing fine without them thus far, so we are adopting a “let’s see how things go” mindset for this potential purchase! ✨ About the kitchen doors: -For the full height door at the kitchen entrance, we opted for 𝙨𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 & 𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙚 to minimise the space required for the door’s clearance. -For the doors above the peninsula, we went with 3-𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙡 𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙚 & 𝙛𝙤𝙡𝙙. Bonus Tip: Our ID recommended for us to let the doors fold inwards into the kitchen (see photo) instead of across the peninsula, so that we do not need to remove everything on the peninsula before closing/opening the doors, which we’re so thankful for because we wouldn’t have considered that! And true enough, we cannot imagine having to shift things off the peninsula just to open & close the doors 🥹 
Here’s the other side of our peninsula! 🙌🏻 
We absolutely love the extra storage space that we get to enjoy here! 🙆🏻♀️ 
Before we head into our kitchen, here’s a before photo of the kitchen 🙌🏻 Originally, there were only bottom cabinets. We wanted top cabinets to maximise storage in the already-small space while keeping the items dust & grease-free. We also prefer keeping our countertops clear as much as possible! The original fridge location also made the kitchen space feel tighter as it was placed in front of this un-hackable wall protrusion (see photo), making it protrude out even more into the kitchen walkway. 
Other structural changes we made: 1. Change louvre windows to a fixed glass panel for a cleaner look & easier maintenance 2. Hacked & installed new tiles in both kitchen & service yard. We chose to level the kitchen & service yard for a cleaner look + let our robot vacuum transit between the spaces smoothly. 3. Change service yard door opening to the right instead, to accommodate our fridge door’s opening in its new position (see below). Doors to separate our kitchen from our service yard are a must to keep our clothes free from the cooking odor 👃🏻 Structures we kept: 1. To reduce costs, we kept the kitchen wall tiles since only a small portion will be exposed after installation of top & bottom carpentry & backsplash. We plastered & painted over the exposed parts, a much more labour & cost-saving option suggested by our ID :) 
Here’s the 3D Render of our kitchen! 🥰 We opted for drawers for all our bottom carpentry and this is a top up that we absolutely have no regrets for! While there are stick-on pull-out drawers in the market now, we decided that we wanted to have them in place once and for all, instead of having to go through the trouble of sourcing for ones with the right dimensions 🥹 We also believe that these built-in drawers are a lot more sturdy & maximises storage space compared to the stick-on ones. Of course, the stick-on pull-out drawers still have their place in the market, but if you are overhauling your entire kitchen, you can consider opting for in-built drawers directly! :) 
This side of the kitchen houses our fridge and is also where most our appliances goes, hence we installed a power track to ensure that we can flexibility shift our appliances around 🔌 
This is the busiest part of the kitchen, where we do most of the preparation, cooking and washing 🙌🏻 We opted to install our switches on a pelmet below our top carpentry. The pelmet also helps us achieve a more even look for our top carpentry, as our dish rack is intentionally dropped down (see below for more details). We have a comfortable amount of space on both sides of our induction hob, which makes food preparation much more comfortable 🍳 
Here’s a closer look at our trusty water dispenser, also the very first appliance that we purchased! There’s so many brands out there, but Happie Joy stood out to us because of the following reasons: 1. Able to fit our tall water bottles without having to slant them — this feature was the biggest buy-in for us! 2. Does not take up any precious bottom carpentry space 3. Relatively affordable compared to many other brands 4. It’s a local brand - support local!! We have a story of why our water dispenser is placed diagonally but the short answer is because we didn’t account for the un-hackable wall protrusion here 🥹 That said, we love its unique look now and the story we get to share with all our guests! Making use of that little nook created as a result of the water dispenser’s placement, we placed 2 coasters here, which we use to place our bottles/cups from time to time ☕️ We initially chose induction hob over gas stove for the ease of maintenance but here’s other benefits of an induction hob that we have been enjoying: 1. Extra countertop space for preparing food 2. Doubles up as additional dish drying area We chose komoacplus for both our countertop & backsplash for the ease of cleaning - there are no grout lines, so wiping them down is a breeze! 
We are using the trusted Blum mechanism for all our kitchen hinges as well as our spice rack :) 
We have suffered the pain of having to wash dishes in a small sink, so getting a huge sink was a must-have for us! We chose this stain & scratch-resistant honeycomb sink, which has been pleasantly easy to maintain thus far :) A pull-out kitchen tap is a common feature in most new homes now, and there’s really no doubt why it’s here to stay! 
Contrary to popular opinion that we have been seeing, we actually love our overhead dish rack! It frees up our countertop space by default ✨ We also opted to include a dish rack door — It is open most of the time to ensure our dishes can dry efficiently, but we like to have the option to close it when we want to :) Important tip: Our ID meticulously ensured that the dish rack & dish rack door are customised to the shortest person in the household. This is why the dish rack has a drop-down from the rest of the top carpentry! This way, we can reach the dish rack door comfortably & see everything on the lower rack clearly 😊 We use these ceramic canisters to dry our utensils 🍴 They are easy to maintain as they do not have any parts that could potentially rust. Sometimes we have guests over, we carry these canisters out to the dining area to serve the utensils as well :) 
We wanted a dustbin with a lid that was not too small, not too big, and fits our home aesthetics. We searched high and low before coming across this that checked off all boxes! Bonus: it has a soft-closing feature 🤩 
And that’s all for our kitchen tour! We hope you you enjoyed reading about the journey of how our kitchen came together 🥰 We also hope you found some of these tips useful! 😊
- 11 October
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