Her 143 sq ft kitchen couldn’t fit more than 2 people, until she removed the one thing everyone else adds

If your kitchen is small, you already know the drill. Two people trying to make coffee at the same time is a full-contact sport. Someone always ends up eating standing at the counter. And the dream of “the whole family around the kitchen table” quietly dies the first time you have guests over.

That was Kevin Brost and Ian Hampton’s cottage in Door County. Their kitchen was 11 feet by 13 feet (about 3.4 by 4 meters). Just 143 square feet (roughly 13 sq m). Old cabinets, patterned vinyl floor, barely enough room for two people to move around each other.

The cottage sleeps six. The kitchen could barely feed two.

They wanted it to seat all six. In a room that small, that shouldn’t be possible unless you knock down a wall. They didn’t knock down a wall. They didn’t move the sink, the stove, or a single pipe.

They made one move almost no homeowner would agree to. And the whole room opened up.

The math that didn’t add up

143 square feet (13 sq m) is smaller than a lot of walk-in closets. Once you fit a stove, a sink with counter on each side, appliances, and enough room to walk, there’s nowhere left to put a table.

That’s why the usual advice is to knock down a wall, take space from the next room, or just eat somewhere else. Kevin and Ian didn’t want any of that. No moving pipes, no moving gas lines, no changing the shape of the room.

So how do you turn a kitchen that size, without moving a wall or a pipe, from a two-person squeeze into a six-seat spot?

The trick nobody talks about

Most small-kitchen advice is about adding the right things. Pull-out shelves. A little counter that sticks out. Shelves that run all the way up the wall. Hidden drawers under the cabinets. It’s all about adding.

Kevin and Ian did the opposite. Their whole plan was taking things out.

• First they pulled the upper cabinets off the walls and put simple open shelves in their place. The room instantly felt taller, and your eye stopped hitting a wall of wood at head height.
• Then they ripped out the old vinyl floor. Underneath, the builder found asbestos (a harmful material once used in old homes), which cost extra to remove safely. Once it was gone, the floor was leveled and a new stone floor went down, bought at a big discount from a local stone yard.

Both changes opened the room. Neither made space for people to sit.

Where most people get stuck

This is where most homeowners start shopping for smaller appliances. A slimmer fridge that doesn’t stick out as far. A skinny European model. A little fridge that hides under the counter like a drawer. Wooden fronts to make the fridge blend in with the cabinets.

All fine ideas. All pricey. And none of them frees up a full wall.

Kevin and Ian did the math on the smaller-fridge route and it didn’t work. Even the skinniest fridge you can buy still takes up about two feet (60 cm) of wall. Two feet of wall is where a bench goes. Two feet of wall is where four people sit.

So they stopped trying to shrink the appliance. They asked a different question: what if the appliance doesn’t need to be there at all?

Most homeowners would say no in about three seconds. Every design magazine, every real estate agent, every kitchen showroom pushes the opposite idea. The fridge belongs in the kitchen. End of story.

The rule assumes the fridge is part of cooking, not part of putting groceries away. It assumes your fridge is pretty enough to sit in the room where you have guests. In a lot of small kitchens, none of that is really true.

Kevin and Ian broke the rule.

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The one thing they took out

They took the fridge out of the kitchen.

Not into a pantry. Not into a hole cut into the wall. They moved it out of the room entirely, into the mudroom (the little back-door room) a few steps away.

“Getting a few extra steps in is a good thing at a vacation home where you’re treating yourself,” Kevin told The Kitchn.

The wall where the fridge used to be became the wall where the seating went.

What went in its place

With the fridge gone, they had room for a tall wooden bar table and a bench with hidden drawer storage in the base. The bench and bottom cabinets were painted Benjamin Moore Cottage Red. The wood-paneled walls, Benjamin Moore Cloud White.

The table came from a slab their architect, Joy Sheilds, pulled from her own yard in Door County. Three sides were cut straight, one edge was left rough with the natural curve of the tree.

The bench and bar seat six. Exactly as many as the cottage sleeps.

What this means for anyone with a small kitchen

The standard advice for a packed kitchen is smaller appliances, smarter storage, or knocking down a wall.

But there’s a quieter option most homeowners never think about: what if the appliance you’re planning the whole room around doesn’t need to be in the kitchen at all?

A fridge in a mudroom, pantry, or hallway nook adds a few steps to your day. In return, it gives you back a full wall in the room where you actually cook and hang out.

For Kevin and Ian, those extra steps got them a table their whole family can sit around. In 143 square feet (13 sq m). Without moving a single pipe.