Kitchen Planning & Design: Walls, Islands, and Living Without a Kitchen

Most kitchen remodels start with a wish list and end up as a series of practical decisions about walls, walkways, and where you're going to make coffee for the next few weeks. This guide walks through three of the questions that come up in almost every project: whether that wall between the kitchen and living room can go, how much room an island actually needs, and what to do about eating and cooking while your kitchen is torn apart.

Can I remove the wall between my kitchen and living room?

Sometimes — but it depends on what that wall is doing structurally, not just what it looks like. Some walls between a kitchen and living room are simple partitions that separate space and carry nothing but drywall and maybe some wiring. Others may be carrying structural load from the floor or roof above.

Structural changes to a home require professional evaluation before any work begins. A qualified contractor or structural engineer needs to assess the wall in question, and structural changes typically require a permit, though requirements vary by municipality. It's worth confirming what your local building department expects before you commit to a design that assumes a wall is coming out.

This is also where sequencing matters: opening a wall affects electrical runs, HVAC, flooring transitions, and sightlines into adjoining rooms, so it's a decision that needs to get made early, not halfway through demo. If you're weighing this kind of change, our team can walk through what's feasible for your layout — start planning at /kitchen-planner/ to get the conversation going before you commit to a design direction.

How do I plan a temporary kitchen during remodeling?

A remodel that touches cabinets, countertops, or plumbing usually means your kitchen is out of commission for a stretch, and having a plan for that period makes the whole project less disruptive to daily life. A few things worth sorting out before demo starts:

• Pick a spot for a temporary setup. A dining room, basement, or garage can work if it has access to an outlet and isn't in the path of construction. A microwave, toaster oven, electric kettle, and a mini fridge or cooler cover a surprising amount of ground.
• Box up what you won't need. Pack pantry items, small appliances, and cookware you won't use during the remodel, and keep a working set of dishes, utensils, and a couple of pots separate and accessible.
• Plan for water access ahead of time. If your kitchen sink is out of service, figure out which sink in the house you'll rely on for dishwashing and food prep, and talk with your contractor about how long that fixture stays connected during construction. For longer remodels, some homeowners plan a stretch of disposable dishware or low-wash meals to reduce reliance on any single sink. The goal is to settle this before demo starts, not improvise it mid-project.
• Expect the timeline to shift with sequencing. Cabinets are ordered first, then installed, and countertops are templated against the installed cabinets to get a precise fit — which means there's a natural gap between cabinet installation and having usable counter space again. Knowing that in advance helps you plan how long the temporary setup needs to hold up.
• Keep a folder of takeout menus and a grocery plan that doesn't rely on a full kitchen. It sounds minor, but it's usually the thing that wears people down fastest.

The better your temporary kitchen plan lines up with the actual construction sequence, the less friction you'll feel week to week. This is a conversation worth having with your contractor early, not something to figure out the week demo starts.

How much clearance does a kitchen island need?

Island clearance is really a set of related questions: how much room do you need to walk around it, open appliance doors, and cook comfortably if the island includes a cooktop or prep sink.

The one dimension with a clear industry benchmark is cooktop clearance. According to the NKBA Kitchen & Bathroom Planning Guidelines, the recommended minimum distance between a cooktop and an island or parallel counter is 36 inches in a one-cook kitchen, increasing to 42 inches in a two-cook kitchen. This is a design recommendation rather than a building code requirement, intended to allow room for appliance doors to open fully and for people to move through the space safely.

Beyond that specific figure, island clearance planning also has to account for your appliance door swings, whether stools will be tucked under one side, and how traffic moves through the room during meal prep — these are layout-specific decisions rather than fixed numbers, and they're exactly the kind of thing that's easier to get right on paper than to fix after cabinets are installed. If you're sizing an island for your space, running the numbers through a planning tool before you finalize cabinet orders can save a redo — /kitchen-planner/ is built for exactly that step.

Bringing it together

Wall removal, island sizing, and living without a kitchen for a while are three separate problems, but they all come back to the same principle: decisions made early, on paper, cost less than decisions made mid-project. Renovation by Design is based in Broomfield, Colorado, and works with homeowners across the Denver metro area to plan projects around scope, layout, materials, coordination, and construction sequencing before a single cabinet gets ordered.