I'm sorry that I don't remember from your other posts if something like this is impossible:

It has its own problems, I realize, but the shallow counter could hold things like the coffee pot or toaster, maybe, besides offering some storage. Just was trying something else. I don't think that the prep sink location makes workable sense in the first option, but I'd end up kicking that work table out the door in the 2nd option, trying to fight getting around it to get from fridge to sink and sink to stove...But the aisle is SO wide. It's a tough one!

I like Rhome's layout a lot better, but the California cooler can't be moved to the middle of the room like that. I've had an 8' wide kitchen with your arrangement, complete with the movable work table, and it was really inconvenient for everything. The work table had big wheels and I was constantly moving it around because it was needed but always in the way.

Do you use the ironing cabinet for ironing? If you don't, and are just keeping it because it's there, This island plan will work, in general, with a trash pullout where the cooler is shown. You can put pegboard where the ironing board is to make the cabinet more useful if you don't use the ironing board. Great place for skewers and rolling pins.

I'd like to move the dog bowls away from the banquette. It looks to me like someone's going to step right in the dishes sliding out. I'm wondering if you could move them to the other side of room. In the corner near the ironing cabinet would be out of most of the way. Have you looked at feeding stations? Do a search here and you should find a couple threads with cabinetry solutions for pet bowls.

I don't like the flow of your top plan, but the bottom one isn't too bad except for that big aisle.

The thinking around here on 33" fridges is that they're becoming scarce, and 36" is becoming standard, so many people are planning for that. Otherwise, you might be pushed to rework your coat station somewhere down the line, or get a 30" fridge as a replacement.

I think my paragraphs are all out of order. Basically, your second plan isn't all that bad, and doesn't need a prep sink. It might be annoying walking back and forth to the sink, but you have fit a mudroom and a breakfast area, not to mention the ironing zone into the plan, and kept (I assume) a California cooler intact. If you're not working around keeping an antique built in, that is, if you're building a new one, let us know.

Thanks!

A few answers:
- plllog, you're right that the cooler can't move---it's framed into the house, so it could be closed off but not moved. We like and use it, though, so we'd ideally like to keep it. It's only 20 inches deep, though, so we could work around it with shallower counters, potentially.

- Ironing cupboard can go wherever---it's coming out of a wall we're taking out, so it just needs a space where we can tuck it between studs and it can span five feet (which was surprisingly hard to find!) We're okay with losing it, but if we have a blank wall will reuse it if possible.

- I have seen some of the cabinetry dog food solutions, but none that look like they'd work with our very tall dog---he needs about three feet of vertical clearance plus food storage that will hold at least 30 pounds of food, so we actually plan to use the 12" pullout for dog food, with our trash and compost under the sink (no disposal). DH thought the pullout should be next to the sink so that a future owner could use it for trash, though. The dog bowl size is the actual bowl---12" x 24", which is hard to find a place for since he needs continuous access to the water. (Right now it's next to the back door, which is a pain since the dog blocks the doorway while he's eating---the hope was that if we tucked it back by the banquette, he'd be out of the way at mealtime. We only eat in the kitchen for breakfast; other meals are in the dining room.) It could go over by the ironing board easily too, though---challenge is just that the dog then blocks the sink while he eats (but he eats at off hours, and incredibly quickly, so not a dealbreaker). It's also a freestanding bowl so we can play with that to see what works best, as long as there are a few viable options.

The bottom plan B is our current working plan, and we've gone back and forth on the 36" fridge---I can steal the extra inches from either the adjacent counter or the mudroom area (begrudgingly for the latter---DH thought the original 4' was way too much space to dedicate to mudroom uses so it's been slowly shrinking, but we use almost that much now in other nooks and crannies, and one big plus of the remodel is to consolidate all the clutter so I don't want to skimp on space there!) A couple of the contractors we've been talking with have cautioned against sticking the fridge in the middle of the room like that because it will block line of sight, but one reason I like it there is actually *because* it acts as a little wall of sorts to define the mudroom space as distinctly separate from the kitchen. We would have shelves and coat hooks along the edge. (We currently have a partition wall that divides the two rooms.)

Anyway, hope that clarifies a little! Thanks for the feedback---it's a tough space to work with given the door and window placements, so it's been a challenge--good to have a second (and third, and fourth!) opinion. :)

Just a note that an aisle 8'6" wide is pretty far to keep walking back & forth across...

Our aisle is 6'6" and it's a pain to keep crossing when I have to use the trash pullout (dripping across that aisle). We also felt that w/an aisle that wide plus traffic going through the kitchen (like you will have, btw, b/c of the location of the "Mudroom" in relation to the rest of the house), it was too much & potentially dangerous to be carrying boiling water, etc. across that aisle...and too far to constantly have to go back & forth when prepping...so, we have a prep sink on the range side of the kitchen (where the trash pullout should be as well!)

Actually, it will be worse for you b/c all that traffic is going to cut in front of your range...it's the shortest distance b/w the Mudroom & DR (which appears to be the only way to the rest of the house)

Where do you plan to prep? Because you really need a water source close to where you prep...otherwise it probably won't work out the way you plan...especially with the wide aisle.

I guess what I'm saying is that you will...

• Go to the refrigerator

• Go around the island (or move it) and cross the 8'6" aisle to get to the sink

• Prep at the prep

• Cross over again to get to the range

• Cross the aisle again to get some water or empty a pot or deposit a dirty dish, etc.

• Cross back again to the range, etc.....

Forgot to mention...a pot filler will not help that much...you can't empty a pot or rinse a dish at it. Yes, you can add water to a pot from it, but the way I cook, I rarely have to add water...it's much more common to have to empty or rinse something.

Have you tried any plans that turn the corner in the UL, placing something along the wall where the ironing board is now? It would bring part of the work areas of the kitchen to about 48" apart. It would require a smaller work table.

Where did you plan on moving the portable table to get it out of the way?

If you move it "up", it would be in the way of the range & only door out of the kitchen or the DW

If you move it "down", it would be in the way of the refrigerator & Mudroom entrance or the table.

In short, there's really not a good place for it except in the middle of the room... BUT, since it has no water, it's in the way of prepping & cooking.

I'm starting to think the only way to make the work table work is to make it permanent and put a prep sink in it. It will give you a lot more workspace plus bring the Prep & Cooking Zones closer together...and separate the Cleanup Zone from the the Prep & Cooking Zones.

Ideally, I'd swap the sink & range walls so the Cooking Zone is protected from through-traffic, but b/c of the large window you cannot.

What about something like this? (The island is 27" deep, deeper than the counters.)

It would be better to have a 48" aisle b/w the range & island b/c there will be traffic through there, but your kitchen is just about 6" too narrow for that.

If that 12" pullout next to the sink is a trash pullout, I suggest (1) making the trash pullout on the island a 2-way pullout (see Love2Cook4Six's kitchen) and (2) combine the 12" & 15" cabs into one 27" cab...much better use of space.

You would even have room for a 9" tray cabinet in the island for cutting boards or cookie sheets & cooling racks (probably not room for all of those things...unless you made it wider).

The 9" cabinet on the island is to give you a little room on that side of the sink (approx 9" + 1.5" + 1" = 11.5") plus it could be temporary landing space for items coming out of the refrigerator that are destined for the island.

Usually, I really like Buehl's layouts, but this one feels cramped to me. As I said before, I've had basically the same layout, and did find the aisle inconveniently wide, but a narrow island like that seems equally in the way as the work table. The advantage Rhome's plan had was narrowing the complete working area of the room, and providing a path that completely avoids the work zone.

I know altering the door isn't on for now, but as a thought exercise I'm wondering if the banquette could fit under the window on the far side of the cooler, with the mudroom function where the banqette sits currently, and the door shifted to that side of the room, with all the kitchen function in the new L. Might not work. Might be great.

Merging your #2 and Rhome's, I think, will give you the best function without doing things like messing with the door. I like the way the cooler and fridge divide the space. Not having a wet sleeve in your prep area is important! I wouldn't really have chosen to put the cooler just there, without the old wall, but by using it to separate the seating, and mirror the fridge, it works.

Is there room for the ironing cabinet on the window wall in the top corner. You didn't say how much you actually use it to iron, but the biggest flaw in you plan #2 is the amount of open space you devote to ironing, unless you do tons of it. Your future French door also eats up a lot of flooor space. If you could be content with a prettier back door, and maybe a new side window, you could put the ironing board between the banquette and the door, to recapture some of the large entry space for function.

How many people does the table have to seat?

Oh, cool, I get to disagree with everyone!

I like the work table layout. I think the ref in the UR corner is the "best" position.

I'd just work on the sink wall a bit to reduce the number of small cabinets. Maybe reduce the size of the sink base a bit and center the sink in one or the other of the windows instead of between them?

I loled myself considering the clearances of the dog! The dish at either side of the banquette is kinda a bad idea - both from the slipperiness of the flooring in the vicinity of the water bowl and the number of times where a human foot goes into the water bowl trying to get out of banquette.

I plead ignorance about the California cooler...I had (and have) no idea what it is! :-) I just had to try one more thing to see if we could cut the aisle width without having a barrier, so I guessed about it moving.

I agree that, even with my own imagined frustration I'd have with the work table in the way between fridge and sink, or between range and sink, that either of these plans are workable, and I think, nicer that what I remember plans being from the other thread...but they are not improved by the prep sink. Buehl's plan seems good to me, too, and gives you both the prep sink and workspace.

Thanks all!

The ironing cabinet can definitely move---I just stuck it there as an afterthought when we had an open wall, so no commitment whatsoever. It's the old cabinet style that just flips down and then up again, so it doesn't take much space (but we also almost never iron---DH just likes it because it's old and has a cool iron holder for hot irons. :) Similarly, work table can move too---I'm very lukewarm on it in general, and put it there mostly to mitigate the aisle width and try to add some extra counter space, but it seems odd in the middle of an open room.

@palimpsest, it's funny you ask about the UL corner---here's the existing layout:

It's upside down relative to the other plan---sorry! (I unwittingly flipped the way I was thinking about the space at some point.) We played with variations on this forever before finally deciding there wasn't a good way to do it without either blocking pathways or having zero counter space. But if anyone comes up with an ingenious one, we're all ears, since this is a better place for the range on a lot of fronts.

The main thoroughfare from the outside to the rest of the house would drive me crazy when I am preparing food, especially if prep is also done in the same aisle. I have the same situation with the cooktop and cleanup sink flipped. All the foot traffic is out of my work zone. It works very well with a 36-1/2'' aisle between island and cooktop and 41'' aisle between island and cleanup zone.

Thanks! Sadly we can't flip the range and sink walls because our code doesn't allow ranges below windows, but we can look at something like what rhome proposed---that's one layout I haven't played with at all yet. In an ideal world we'd also move the two doors to that side, but it would mean effectively losing the DR because of the layout of that space, so can't do that. (It's probably worth noting that the back door is our primary entrance to the house, though.)

Hoping to seat four at the banquette, but flexible on that---the house is a small 2BR so it will probably never have a large family living in it, but two adults and one or two small children is a very likely scenario (which is why we need room for at least one freestanding chair, since it could well be a highchair). The flip side of that is that there's limited foot traffic with fewer people. (The dog is honestly the biggest back-and-forther right now---but having him in the prep zone could definitely be a problem!)

Oh, and @rhome, a California cooler is a funky cabinet that is framed into the side of a house and open to the basement so that it draws cool air up and pulls it to the ceiling. (Ours vents out the side of the house, but some vent through the roof.) They have heavy doors to keep the cool air in, and work surprisingly well for keeping things right around 45-50 degrees, so we store dry goods and some fruits and vegetables there. They do constrain design a lot, though, and are probably pulled out or boarded up in nine out of ten remodels, I'd guess---but ours was one of the things that convinced us to buy our house, so we really want to keep it intact. The placement is wonky because the kitchen was originally three separate rooms---one where the banquette is with a door next to the cooler, one where the mudroom is with a second door, and then the main room.

Incidentally, if you keep the range where it is, something like this is the best we could come up with:

The 18" counter by the refrigerator can of course go to standard counter depth, but it blocked the path to the back door that way, and seemed like pretty poor workspace given the placement, so I had swapped it out for storage instead....still, this plan has a bunch of fatal flaws too. (There's a variation of this layout that swaps the fridge and range, but it had the same wide aisle problems that the galley layout did.) Just hard to decide which flaws are the most problematic!

Actually, I like this last one a lot better than the open aisle one, and I think it has a lot to recommend it. The fridge is inconveniently placed for the cook, but decent access to the stove, where a quick dash for something is important, and using the island/table for prep makes that work too. It's also a way station for anything that needs to go to the sink. (Unlike many people, I don't think a lot of prep requires running water, where a bowl will do. A bowl saves water too.)

This puts the dog's dishes out of the way of people's feet, and really fairly out of the way altogether, except for possible wet jowls being wiped on sleeves.

You could continue the banquette all the way to the cooler and have close seating for 4 even without the chair, because if I haven't done the arithmetic wrong, the built in as shown has room for three real sized people if one sits in the corner. Though maybe you'd rather put the ironing board there.

Odd notion: It would block the entry door, so maybe this is a really bad idea, but I thought it would be cool to have the ironing board cupboard mounted to form the door to the broom closet.

Speaking of corners, however, the other corner screams for a lazy susan where the trays are mounted to the door so that the whole thing turns in place. Then there's no door banging into the DW and oven. That would be great for pots, mixing bowls, etc.

I've always loved the fancy freestanding islands that places like Napa Style have. Some of them are very clever, with built in spice racks, wine slots, towel bar, book shelf, and even baking sheet slots. And they're good looking, and probably cost less, even the fancy ones, than having one made. Plus, the non-cupboard versions aren't as visually heavy.

Rhome won't like the access to dishes, which look like they'd best go in uppers in the corner, which isn't accessible with the DW open, or in the pantry which isn't right next to the DW or the table, but it's not such a big space, and, in my opinion, not such a big deal.

I know this was supposed to be a picture of what doesn't work, but I like it!

BTW, where did the chimney go? Wasn't there a chimney?

Yep, there is indeed a chimney right now---we're taking it out to reclaim the space, though. (It's non-structural, thankfully---just an old clay flue with an iron belly in the basement that will have to stay there for posterity.) The room is actually 17'6" long, so the 17' measurement accounts for widening the chimney wall six inches to accommodate the furnace and hot water heater vents in addition to the new pocket door. (Current door is an old-fashioned 32" swinging door, but just doesn't work if you want access to anything behind it.)

My main concern with this version is how tight the corner is where the range and sink counters meet---seems like there's barely room to maneuver there now, and this is even tighter. We could keep the existing doorway (all the way to the right) which would, of course, be cheaper and free up some wall space---but that has its own challenges, since then you end up looking at cabinets. There's also pretty limited counterspace, though the work table/island definitely helps with that. Augh...

I like the ironing board idea, too---we actually just saw one like that last weekend at the salvage yard! Could be a fun way to reuse it---thanks!

Are you really set on a 36" range vs. a 30"? The extra inches could make the corner cabinet more useable.

I have a range close to a corner too. My countertop microwave sits back in that corner, using that space.

I think with the exception of the dishwasher door/range interference, this one has a fair amount going for it.

(although I never ever leave the DW door open so I don't fully get this one--however I once had a pre-renovation
kitchen where you HAD to open the fridge to open the DW...but I digress)

I like the dog food away from the people food too. One dog I sit for sometimes has food which almost causes me to throw up, its that bad. But thats a personal take...it gets it into more of a porch/service location and out of a people dining location.

Thanks---range is existing and a new one isn't in the budget, so we're stuck with the size. The dishwasher will fit on the other side if the sink is centered under the two windows, though I'm not sure that's much of an improvement as far as the door goes!

Oh, and I just realized---there probably wouldn't be a door conflict between the dishwasher and oven because the oven door is on the right side of the range:

...so I think it would just clear. (The door on the left is just storage and opens like a normal cabinet door.)

Still a tight squeeze and not exactly ergonomically sound, though! :)

We lived in a rental house while we were building that had a similar kitchen layout to the last one above. There was a lazy susan in the corner (I love them!), range about where it is here, a small cab to its right, and the DW and sink were reversed (which in your plan I'd make a double sink so you don't get cross-eyed looking at the frame between the windows--if you were to make this DW/sink change). There was no island, but there was a 2' wide pantry to the left as you came through the door where the DR door is on your plan, then the fridge, and then a long counter with the MW. I really enjoyed working in that kitchen. Even with only the lazy susan counter in that corner, I did most of the prep there, but occasionally other prep to the left of the sink, or to the right of the fridge.

So, I like this last plan the best of your choices. I'd make the changes mentioned in the paragraph above, but have a 3' wide pantry, then the fridge, then the MW and a decent sized sink. I always like it when the fridge, MW, and 2nd sink are out of the main prep area and near the eating area like they could be here.

Anne

I would like to flip the left hand 12" cabinet and sink for the dw, so it's not open between stove and sink, and so you can access that important corner when the dw is open. So from banquette would be dw, sink, 12" cabs.

Also, if fridge could shift toward dining room just enough to be more easily accessible from straight out the aisle (maybe about 3 ft), I think the table would seem less of a barrier. --Only a quarter lap from the sink instead of a half-lap or more. ;-)

I'm going to be honest here and disagree with most everyone...

No surprise, I'm sure, but the latest layout would drive me crazy...sorry, but it's the truth. All three major zones are in that one corner, sharing all the counter and floor space...Prep, Cooking, Cleanup.

In our house, cleanup is often going on at the same time as prepping & cooking...empty DW from the night before and cleanup from breakfast & after school snacks are done then. Also, the DW door is often left ajar to finish dish drying. And finally, I use running water all the time while I prep.

So...this layout would be one that would be driving me to remodel to eliminate. However, if you work & live completely differently [e.g., stay-at-home adult who can cleanup & empty DW during the day], then maybe it will work for you. Oh, if you're planning children, then remodel the kitchen with children in mind, not a house of adults...even one child is very different than a house of all adults.

BTW...as it stands, there will be enough room for one person per bench, I just wanted to be sure you realized this (18" seat + 18" leg room at table-height = 36" depth needed for each side with seating.)

So from Anne and rhome's suggestions, something along these lines, maybe?

The sink could be smaller---this one is 30"---but the sink/window alignment issue gets a little sticky. There's 45" from the cooler to the center of the two windows, so if you stick the d/w on the left side, you end up with wonky dead space. The 36" base leaves three spare inches on the d/w side, while a 30" base would leave six...neither super useful. (We do want to center the sink, though it could be centered either under the lower window or between the two windows.)

@buehl, your concerns are exactly why we abandoned this plan the first time around (after spending a year+ trying to work through it). I'm still really torn---I see the advantages to this, and I see the advantages to the galley, but both have serious flaws and I keep hoping to discover some magic solution that fixes everything! *sigh* One major advantage to this version, though, is that it's cheaper---it doesn't entail moving the gas line or as much structural work for the door framing, and it lets us keep our existing DR setup, which we like a lot. So much to balance...

We do generally have cleanup and prep going on at the same time, which is a challenge...as is trying to plan a kitchen for kids without knowing the first thing about what that will entail (other than that the dog would prefer that the high chair be in his zone... ;)

The banquette is (hopefully!) sized to allow one adult on each of the benches (assuming the corner 18"x18" square is lost space for adults, but could be used for children). We only eat in there in the mornings for breakfast, so it would be at most two adults and two small children at once....I think we did use 36" of non-corner space per adult to calculate the lengths of the benches, though. The plan is to start off with furniture there, though, to make sure the sizes work before doing anything built-in.

Thanks for all of the feedback....so much to think about! Good thing it's the weekend. :)

Where are dishes going in any/all of these plans? I got caught up in traffic patterns and forgot some of my other priorities. We need to fit baking supplies, baking pans, pots and pans, spices and oils, and dishes... Some of these plans seem pretty short on storage, especially in crucial areas. That may help narrow down which will work best.

The idea of a cooler is pretty cool! (pun intended!) However, I don't think you can do this any longer since Fire Codes in many areas say you cannot have an opening b/w floors like that. [For example, a Laundry Chute...many municipalities will not allow them (ours, for one, does not).] It probably wouldn't be feasible for those of us with cold winters either. But it is pretty cool that you have one & can keep it!

(1) What's the distance b/w the top wall & the cooler and the bottom wall & the cooler? It looks like 102" from the "top" if there's no filler in the first drawings, which you will need, btw, b/w the wall & first cabinet if the cabs run up to the wall w/no corner cab....unless you get custom cabinets with a wider stile to act as filler.
The bottom appears to be around 78"
Leaving 24" for the Cooler
Are these #s correct?

(2) Would you consider moving the DR door all the way over next to the right wall?

@rhome, I did finally inventory and map out everything that lives in the kitchen over the holidays, and while it would work in either plan, it's definitely tighter and somewhat less convenient in the L version. In either case the dishes go in the upper cabinets on the right-side wall, and the silverware in a drawer on the sink wall....so that's a tradeoff as far as placing the refrigerator. I may be able to build dish storage into the pantry cabinets in some way or use shelves in the work table, though, which would be a little better as far as proximity to the d/w. (We'll also try out open shelves in the UL corner, but don't want to rely on that option in case it becomes a problem, since DH is pretty sure he'll hate them.)

@buehl, yup, those measurements are right---although in reality we actually have 108" from cooler to top wall, so if we nix the pocket door and figure out an alternate furnace venting option to avoid widening that wall, we can pick up six inches there. (This plan assumes we lose that space.)

And yes---definitely would move the door to the right (in fact, that's where the swinging door is now!) I don't have an image of the full house layout, but when you leave the kitchen into the DR, immediately to your right is the door to a hallway with bedrooms and bath off it, immediately to your left is the DR proper, and straight ahead 12 feet is a 60" wide doorway to the LR. So the further the door stays to the right, the better as far as flow in the rest of the house....it's just the issue of entering the kitchen and what you walk into there, which is a huge problem right now.

Yuck! No!

I totally agree about the barrier issue between the fridge and sink, but it's a trade-off for the rest of the flow of the room. The plan with the fridge in the center is way off balance, and the 45" counter is orphaned. Plus, that loses the fridge as the boundary of the coat area. And in this plan it's still better located than in the straight galley.

The big space hog is all the open space by the door. Plus, you mentioned starting with furniture.

It might be a bit tight, but if you put the table with four not-large chairs pulled out a little from the corner, you could use that area you're planning to use for another door (i.e. French), for the coat hooks, and let people sit on the chairs for boot offing. Then you could run the pantries all the way from door to door. That would give you the most storage. With both the bench and banquette you have an awful lot of seating.

I still think Rhome's original plan had merit. There would be a pinch point at the cooler, but the main problem would be the tendency of people to walk through the working part of the kitchen instead of going around, especially with the pinch.

Could the DR door be moved in the opposite direction...all the way to the left?

If so, that would draw traffic away from the work aisle in RHomer410's layout...

You might be able to move the island "north" a bit to shorten the aisle b/w the island end & the north wall to 36" or so...that would then move the island further away from the Cooler. With a 48" work aisle the refrigerator will be OK opening into the aisle.

Oh, wait, that's where the furnace and hot water heater vents are. Hmmm...more thinking here...

Not that I think my plan is without merit, because that's why I drew it, but why aren't we looking more at Buehl's plan, also? Doesn't it offer about the same aisles as mine? I realize that they're both work aisles, but this is a walk-through kitchen, so that's one of the burdens here. I don't agree that the narrow island causes the same problems as the work table, because the fridge-to-prep-to-stove, stove-to-fridge, and stove-to-sink are all on one side. The sink aisle, like my back-of-island aisle, would still be preferable for traffic, but still least likely that it'll be used that way because of the doorway locations. The other advantage of Buehl's is some storage closer to the cleanup area, and the storage around the stove is free to hold baking and cooking supplies.

I see good things about both, but less odd storage and more multiple-worker-friendly areas with Buehl's. (the odd/narrow storage on the wall and the back of the island leaves possibilities for 'character' and a different feel to the room, so it's not all bad, just maybe not as convenient around the back of the island, and probably more costly?)

Do we need to worry more about a better working kitchen, or a better traffic pattern through the space while someone is working? I'm not being sarcastic, or anything, just honestly asking what the priority or the bigger need is, because both are valid, but at odds here. With a small family, is the traffic path that busy? Usually one or two people coming through? I would consider making the cooking aisle the narrower one (my aisle in front of my stove is 36" and feels roomy enough), to encourage use of the wider path past the sink...And if you're standing in front of the stove, prepping with a knife, that should help, too! :-)

I didn't mean Buehl's was bad! Just that I liked the way Rhome's just tightened up the galley aspect of the kitchen. In many ways, it seems to me that the most efficient kitchens have compact works and use outlying areas for storage. And I prefer the single well located sink to the two, separated ones. What I meant by "has merit" was that it was an idea I was interested in revisiting, not that it was the only one.

I think Buehl's point about future high chair dwellers and their brethren is important. This should work for a young family. I know it's not the way her family dies it, but I grew up with "Go empty the dishwasher because I'm about to start dinner." If the layout works for conflicting tasks not to overlap, that's great, but I don't think it's the end of the world if the work zone is too small for that. But when there are five year olds speeding in the back door doing the crosslegged hop on the way to the bathroom, and two year olds slipping out the door and into traffic if you look away, you do need to have a plan where a hot pot isn't slipping on them when the cook trips over the wooby.

Did you try the fridge up at the top where the range is? It's counter-depth, it can go to the right, closer to the door than the range, so it may not make too much of a dark hole in that corner. I sometimes exploit a little bit of a recess like that to put things I want out, but out of the way.

Thanks! Yes, did try the fridge up there too---seemed more important to get the range and sink within spitting distance, though, particularly because some number of fridge trips are non-cooking-related--coming in the backdoor with groceries and then into the DR, or coming into the fridge just for a drink and then back to the DR--so it seemed more logical to have that be the straggler appliance. (Also, it's on that wall in our current layout and it's been fine there, aside from being a 33" deep fridge in a cabinet originally built for a 20" deep model!) We also unfortunately can't go to the left with the door because of the DR layout on the other side of that wall, or else that would be a great solution.

@rhome, our traffic pattern isn't much of an issue now with just two of us, so I tend to think you have the right idea there (though plllog's bathroom run is a good concern I hadn't thought of---it's tricky to envision how traffic patterns may change with kids in the picture!) The only real conflict we have space-wise now is if DH is washing dishes at the sink and I'm trying to start dinner and waiting for water---BUT we don't have a dishwasher now, so a lot of the pre-dinner dishwashing is an attempt to get breakfast dishes out of the way so that dinner dishes can get washed after dinner. I think (hope?) that problem will vanish when we have a dishwasher, since most breakfast dishes should be able to go into the d/w right after breakfast.

I'm going to play with these a bit more this afternoon and run them by DH to see how he's feeling about them....hopefully can at least optimize the two variations so we can weigh the pros and cons of each. Thanks for all of the help!!

Thanks for all of the help---we sat down with these this weekend and were able to refine three variations on the layout. I've put those in a new thread since there are so many images, but would love any additional thoughts. (Unfortunately DH vetoed the most creative of the solutions here after some debate....his opinions are few but strong, so we're going with them given that I get to make almost all of the other decisions!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Three variations on kitchen layout...