How Hilary Farr Adds Elegant Storage To A Dining Room Without Taking Up Space
No matter how big your kitchen is, it always seems like it's lacking enough storage space. Whether you shop at Costco and buy bulk items that are a pain to store or just have a huge serveware collection that needs many cabinets to house, you can never have enough cupboards in your kitchen. However, your kitchen only has so much square footage, so if you need more storage space, you have to become clever as to where to add it. On "Love It Or List It," Hilary Farr showed viewers just how to do that by expanding the cabinets into the attached dining room.
While adding a row of kitchen cabinets to a dining area might seem cramped, the HGTV designer found a way to seamlessly blend it into the space. She created a dining table that was part banquette with a bench nestled against the wall. On the wall with the bench, she added a wall of upper cabinets on top, carving out more storage without making it feel clunky or forced. Here is a closer look into Farr's design hack.
Add uppers above your banquette to create more storage
In Season 19, Episode 4, Farr renovated couple Dong and Mona's home, which had a cramped and outdated kitchen. To make it more contemporary and less like it was stuck in the '80s, she opened up the floor plan and had the living room, kitchen, and dining room flow into one another, creating a sense of airiness. Since they were all connected, it made sense to extend some of the kitchen cabinetry into the dining room. She included a row of uppers above the seating, ensuring no floors pace was eaten up since there weren't matching lowers. This allowed the space to continue to feel airy rather than crowded. Since it's in the dining area, the couple can store everything from table linens to serveware to holiday tablescape decorations in the cabinets.
However, while this is a great way to maximize space in your cluttered kitchen, part of the reason this trick works is because the table is a banquette. This means that a bench is attached to wall, creating an anchor for the upper cabinets above. If it was a freeform table, the uppers might feel a little out of place since they don't have anything below them to balance them. It's something to keep in mind if you choose to recreate this in your own space.
Other times Farr has created dining room storage
If you don't have a banquette, there is another way you can add extra cabinet storage to your dining area, and that's with a wall of cabinets. Rather than creating uppers and lowers, which can make the dining area look like a second kitchen (or like it's housing a buffet bar,) you can install an impressive wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets that double as an accent wall in the space. That's exactly what the HGTV designer did in Season 16, Episode 4 of "Love It Or List It." She added an impressive nine extra cabinets by installing them behind the dining table.
"The back wall is now all cabinetry," Farr told the family during the reveal. "This is sort of sophisticated but still cozy." She then brought them into the kitchen and showed them how the separate spaces flowed together thanks to the storage units. "It's all about storage, right? But they're all separate. You get the sense of that being eating and living room, and this being the kitchen area." If you have a similar storage predicament, a wall of cabinets can give you an immense amount of space while still looking aesthetically pleasing.