dawnk, you were right. Thank you! I just went to the house to map everything out and confirmed this. hollysprings - I am ok with the 39.5 inches between the sink counter and the island. My main concern was the other side. You were also right about the pinch point between the fridge and the island. That measures to be 39" and we are ok with that. GauchoGordo1993 - the fridge landing is something. It is a french door refrigerator and it is a monster. After playing around with the design a lot we could not find a better spot for it. We currently have no refrigerator landing so this will be a step up for us. Thank you everyone for all your help!

Mine might be higher than average. I'm 5'7" so I have a decent reach. I absolutely would not allow the microwave to be placed over the stove. We have it over the counter and it's just right. If you are worried about heighth, you might consider a cabinet right on the counter. Our kitchen designer put one on the end of a line of cabinets. The bottom is a shallow drawer which I have rolled up placemats in. Since it doesn't need to be opened very often, there's just enough counter space to place bowls, plates, etc that I'm taking out of the cabinet. I really like having the plates and serving dishes within easy reach. The cabinet is right beside the doorway to the dining room. Glasses and coffee cups are next to the frig on the other end but in upper cabinets. Due to 9' ceilings, our upper shelves require a step stool so seldom used items are up there.

... in any case, once you start shaving off space down to the thickness of a couple fingers, what really counts is air circulation, heat and humidity in the air (A/C on all the time or not), and where the heat pipes are underneath the metal cladding of Your Chosen fridge. To get fresh air to flow around it and to give the air an exit path too, it would make sense to put a mini fan (the size of what you see inside a PC) somewhere under the cabinets, without any kickplate either. The manufacturers won't help you because they don't want to discuss how close is just barely close enough and not too much -- and they wouldn't want to start saying that arid climate dwellers have a bit more freedom to squeeze the fridge and humid climate dwellers have to leave more space... If you build the fridge into an airtight plastic bag, it will fail as a fridge because its heat will be retained in the bag surrounding it. Same thing for a smaller and smaller space, you just end up heating the material surrounding it. I know the small LG has a lot of its heat pipes in the front sides near the door gasket, adn this is mentioned in its online PDF. Someone posted here how it still manages to work even after he built it into a tight space and had it practically "plug" the space. It's a 24" wide fridge. HTH

If an L, then it could work for you. I'm still pre-reno, so I haven't lived with our 36" aisles yet. To be honest, it does concern me a bit. But, I really need the island for counter space. Are you planning on trying to put seating at your island or is it just a storage/prep area? It's really a matter of opinion as to what the smallest width is that works. You really wouldn't want to go less than the standard 24" base cabinet. I think that the appropriateness of the width depends a lot on your kitchen width. For example, I think it would look really silly to have a 20' wide kitchen with standard cabinets and a 24" base island in the center. Our island will be (probably) on a 26" base cabinet. We're still debating on if we should go back to standard 24" base and give the 2" back to the aisles or not. Guess we're going to need to decide for certain really soon! I anticipate our aisles looking a little tight, but I think our island will look "size appropriate" for the area. Also, I think you need to keep length in mind as well - I think that keeping things near 1/3 dimensions works nicely - so an approximate 1:3 ratio or alternately a 2:3 ratio. So, if you have a 24" wide island, I would probably try to keep it to somewhere around 66-72" to give a eye-pleasing long rectangular shape or I would try to go to a more square rectangular shape so that you have a 24" x 36-42" (I think the second option would be too small looking in general, but wanted to give a real example of sizes to illustrate what I was talking about.) I highly suggest drawing out your room and posting it on here to get some helpful feedback on ideas on laying out everything.