"...island (peninsula, to be exact)..."

Peninsula or island?

Since no one else has responded and your thread is dropping, I thought I'd at least give you some information even though our peninsula is only one level.

We have a peninsula with two seats b/w our DR and Kitchen. Yes, we lost the cabinets that used to be on the wall that used to be there, but we also gained cabinets when we added some on the sink wall (used to be a very small eat-in bay and now has counters).

Do I wish we had more cabinet space instead of the peninsula? No. I like having the peninsula for two reasons (1) it opens up the kitchen to the rest of the house b/c there's also a doorway to the LR & Library/Den right there and (2) I like having a place to eat or work on the computer or the kids do homework w/o being isolated in the Den and not having to move work off the table at meal time. It's actually become my work-at-home place since I have a work laptop (our home computer is setup in the quite small Library/Den).

Oh, and it also still gives us some separation b/w the Kitchen & DR....something I didn't want to totally lose. I had seen another house in our neighborhood with a similar layout where the owners had taken down the same wall but did not put anything in its place...and it looked like a bowling alley b/c it was long and fairly narrow (11' wide). The peninsula prevents that look.

Other questions: Peninsula Dimensions: 62" x 41-1/2" (with 15" overhang)
Prep Sink is in the corner where the peninsula meets the wall run
Seating for two

Now, my question for you...are you sure you want a bi-level surface? Even though our peninsula isn't very wide (only 5'), it still provides us with a great place for: Science fair projects - two years running now & so nice to have a place where the kids could work and not worry about ruining the DR table or having to shut everything down at meal time
Decorating Christmas Cookies with 3 sides available for all of us to gather round
Buffet-style eating when we have a large group and no worrying about dishes being pushed off a higher level as people serve themselves and low enough that even children can serve themselves. If they're too short to serve themselves from counter-height (36"), then they're too young to serve themselves (the same cannot be said for bar-height).
Appetizers, etc. when I host Bunco (and other social events) and room for us to stand around the peninsula and eat!
Work place for girls to work when the Girl Scouts are over for a large project (like cooking...I had 16 12-year old girls working in our kitchen last year...twice!)
Place for me to scrapbook and not have to put it away for meals...granted I haven't done it that often, but when I do...(I'm so far behind on my scrapbooking *sigh*)

Now pictures, although I'm sure you've seen them before:

View from the DR:

Long view from FR side (opposite side of kitchen):

We had a dual-level penninsula - bottom level 24" with cooktop, top level 18", 5' long - room for three bar stools. Don't know why but we seldom ate or snacked there. Perhaps becuase the table was right next to it. My children did sometimes use the upper level for homework while I cooked dinner. Mostly we used it as a junk surface. We just tore it out today. We will replace it with a very small single level island. (I think one of the reasons I never liked the penninsula was the cabinet and exhaust fan over it felt a bit claustraphobic.)

Agreed with Shannonplus. We're doing an all counter-surface island with seating for 3. Unless your space is so incredibly large that you can squander useful counterspace for a bar height surface that will likely rarely be used as such, it makes no sense. Our island will be a large rectangle with one of the corners "cut" off to create seating that wraps around 2 lines. (Trying to avoid the lunch counter thing.) That way people on the seating side can see each other. On the working side is a prep sink, undercounter icemaker, a 3-drawer for prep tools, bev fridge, and liquor cabinet at the end. That way the island serves as prep area, plus a bar for entertaining. But without the "bar height" surface.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our bungalow and kitchen remodel blog

All great points as usual. I'm so glad I found this site. Shannon, thanks for the links. I did search previously but didn't think to use "tiers" as a term. Our space isn't huge and I was only thinking we had about 4' wide and 6' long to devote to a peninsula.

Is a island with seating still the standard 34.5" height like regular lower counters?

So much depends on how you use your space. We use our bar area every day -- we usually eat breakfast and lunch there, but dinner at the table. We also like to have people over several times a year, both large and small groups, and that area gets used for every gathering. So for us, the bar area with a lower level for prep works out great.

The height of ours is non-standard: we are tall and I hated my standard height counters. So all our counters--bathrooms and kitchen--are 39". We couldn't raise the bar area too much higher than that because it would have felt weird to sit at, so we lost the room to have outlets at the back of the prep counter. (They are on the sides now.) If our prep counter was lower, I would have liked outlets at the back of it instead.

Prep counter is 24" deep; bar counter is 15" deep. Island is 81" long.

Because of the way our kitchen is arranged, the drawers open in 3 directions: warming drawer plus 2 drawers for pots and pans open toward the wall with the fridge and stove. Multiple drawers with flatware, napkins, and random kitchen stuff like tape open toward the area where the table is. The end by the sink has a pull out for garbage/recycle and a shallow drawer for foil, sandwich bags, etc.

The side view shows the amount of the step-up, which as explained is not much on ours:
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View of the bar side, seen from the FR (the benefit IMO is that from the FR you don't see any kitchen mess; just the pretty wood panels):
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Chicagoans- I love the stain on your cabinets. Can you tell me the brand, wood and stain name. Your kitchen is very nice.

Hi corgimum - thank you! I like them too. The cabinets are maple and were custom built. The cabinet maker called the stain "Pacific Koa" but I don't know if that's a standard color or just his name for it. He used a brown glaze over the stain, which gives it a bit more depth in the details - like around the panels and in the molding.

He mixed the color for me based on a picture I sent him, and then stained a sample door for me. I carried that thing around everywhere! Tile store, hardware store, granit place...

This won't help unless you happen to live in the Chicago area, but here is his website:
http://www.northstarcabinet.com/index.asp

Here are a few pics of our bi-level island, which I love.

Like others, I love my bi level peninsula. But I also have a one level island for spreading a project out, decorating cookies with DD and DS, etc.

Our peninsula has our slide in range on the kitchen side. And the raised bar helps separate the kitchen from dining area. We did something a bit different than other posters so far. We installed cabinets back to back along the peninsula. So from the raised bar side we have two large, tall cabinets that are 12" deep for storing canning jars and other items.

Our kitchen side is a normal counter depth of 24" and the raised bar is 22" deep (12" deep cabinets plus 10" overhang). The peninsula is 79" long not including the "message center" on the end.

Here are photos.

View when standing in dining area:

View when sitting down at dining table:

Kitchen side: