we've had an undercounter microwave (wolf) for 5 years and i love it. no kids, so can't comment on that, but to address some of your other concerns: - i prefer bending down to get the food because i don't have to worry about spillage. i have to say, though, that my husband disagrees. i'm 5'4" and he is 6'1"... - i really love that it is out of sight - personal taste i guess - i have pretty much memorized the keypad by now, and i am usually hitting the "add minute" button anyway. no need to bend over for that. we are building a new home and i will definitely be going with this set-up again. hope this helps

Thanks Nicole....That french door oven has its good points and bad. I never realized that it's actually helpful to have an oven door that catches drippings that might spill while basting etc. With a French door oven, where do you think all those small drips and drops go with no oven door to catch them?? On the floor of course! I think I'll reserve that oven for items that have no tendency to spill or drip or else set up something in the drawer right below it to catch spills. It's these small things that somehow escape us during the design phase that show up later when we actually use our kitchens. Considering your kitchen, If it were mine, I would definitely keep those two dishwashers (no doubt about that one...sorry, I missed that post of yours with the layout for your island). I would most likely consider the following... possibly work towards enlarging the island if feasible (wouldn't worry about one slab or two etc.). think about omitting one of the trash pullouts and then making the island slightly longer to accommodate the micro. I would not squeeze the micro in that corner next to the fridge or ovens. That would drive me nuts. Too squishy....I like lots of elbow room. I don't necessarily think your triple oven stack is a bad idea as long as the micro isn't too high and you other ovens aren't too low. I was looking at my Wolf range, and the oven door is VERY close to the floor (the bottom of the door is approx. 7" off the floor...so pretty low). You could customize your wall oven cabinet to have your bottom oven fairly low and work your way up from there with the micro being at a decent workable height. Do you have a pantry where you could possibly put the micro?

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!

I meant to respond about the dishwasher needing to be where it is because I want the kitchen sink to correspond with the window above it. The dishwasher in its current location will work great for me. The trash cans are in the peninsula on the sink side of the kitchen. There is enough space for them to open there because the cabinet next to them faces the opposite direction into my dining room as you can see in the attached picture. Hallett, my concern about having no cabinets under the back peninsula is that I would then need to have posts which I’m thinking could eat into the seating space - I’ve been told they are 3-4” each and that peninsula is only 57” long. What do you think about me putting an 18” depth cabinet there (one facing inward toward the rest of the kitchen and the other one the back, accessible below the overhang), which would allow a 12” overhang off the back (Assuming I stick with a 30” peninsula depth where the counter edge ends 40” away from the back). you still think I should reduce to 24” for 46” clearance? I was thinking 40” is enough based on the stationary door not being a passage way now...