AJC food writer John Kessler is in the midst of a kitchen renovation at his Decatur abode and is documenting progress in the paper and on his blog Food and More.  Of his old kitchen, he recently wrote…

…the open floor plan of our former kitchen invited everyone to come and congregate between the range and the cook’s work area, turning every dinner party into a frottage fiasco. Like many open kitchen plans today, ours brought too much of the action into the cooking area.

With a pre-World War II floor plan surrounding us, my wife and I find we often have a somewhat opposite problem in our home.  Instead of inviting everyone in, our galley kitchen at the rear of the house – attached only to the dining room – often segregates the cook from his guests, or just his wife, as he hacks up yet another Springer Mountain chicken.  (I figure that one skill as saved us a couple hundred bucks on pre-cut meat at this point)

I guess a kitchen renovation is like anything else.  It isn’s so much about size, but design.