Pocket doors are a good solution, especially for the closets, because you never want any two doors inhabiting the same swing area. Actually, that's a safety issue and may be covered under the local building codes. So put the W/D upstairs, and put a TV in that room. Gorsh, another TV isn't all that expensive. Go online and meander through some of the sites for 'closet designs.' The reason small walk-ins aren't very good is that they are small walk-ins. They usually bear a strong resemblance to a crowded cave and are extremely difficult to adapt to useful, convenient, usable storage. You also lose the visual openess (means that the whole bedroom looks smaller) when you enclose a space that used only to stand in while reaching for a hangar. A single-use space isn't too efficient. And I know from experience that not many children are going to go into that cave to get and/or put away shoes. It doesn't seem to matter that they are small enough to bend over without putting their butt through the back wall, it's just that they WON'T bother. Their viewpoint seems to be that shoes and socks belong in the same armreach, and socks are usually in drawers so drop the shoes near the sock drawer. Uh, huh. This doesn't apply to those folks who walk in the door and immediately remove their footwear -- and I'm one of 'em. [I keep houseshoes and yard shoes by the most-used door; dress shoes are stored on the wall in the dress closet.] Okay, we appear to have a difficulty with tactile use of a 4' wide space. Go to your present bathtub; hang some hangars from the shower curtain rod. Measure the space -- it'll probably be real close to 4' from the far shoulder of the hangar to the wall. Now get into the tub and walk up and down with the wall on one side and the hanging clothes on the other side....that's what you are planning to allow for the closet.

I think a more accurate term for the island would be bowed. I just went and measured it, and it only comes out 2 inches at the center and that's stretched across a 3 foot width. It just softens it a little and adds a little interest without being too obvious or taking up much room. The fridge wall is all 24" deep. We have a utility cabinet (step stool, dog leashes, dustpan broom and hand vac) with a divided cabinet above for trays and cutting boards. The second cabinet is a 24" pantry with rollouts and a shelf in the upper portion. The one on the right is a 12" pantry pullout tower with wire baskets. I really love this pantry arrangement. There are 2 27"high storage cabinets above the pantry/utility (one cab with doors made off center to match the cab below) and the fridge. You can see the bookshelf turned sideways over the end pantry. We didn't think anything that narrow and deep that high up would be very useful, so I have a row of cookbooks on the bottom shelf (I can just reach them, so these are not the most used books) and display above. We have about 44" between the fridge and the island. I think we barely had enough to push a fridge in before (can't remember if we had to take off the door), so it feels like a huge space to us now. I wasn't sure exactly what you were asking about the cabinets, so I hope that covered more than you needed to know. ;-)

So we started moving in. The countertops are not in yet. But I found myself thinking we have too much wood. We have wood everywhere in every room. I found myself feeling like we are in a cabin. How can I lighten it up? A friend suggested rugs for under the dining table and under the furniture in the adjacent living room. But what else can I do? Maybe the walls are too dark. Maybe the island should be more of a cream.

The stairs are a downstairs to basement. It's a walk out basement & there's a screen porch below the deck. We are planning on insulating the basement, but not finishing it so it will be a comfortable away space for the children. (Couch, TV, area rug, ping pong etc). If those stairs went up, I would think that suggestion brilliant. I'm seeing that as a command central type space, mail, bill paying, printer, charging, kids on computer that I can check on them easily but give them space for homework. And being able to close it off will enable me to not see the clutter that my family will leave there. :-)