Kelbrat 7, To answer your questions, IMO, and as you have the plan you do not need a door from the mudroom to the hallway kitchen at all. In the masterbedroom, as you have the plan and traying to come up with a simple solution, I'd suggest a pocket door where you have the door to the master and a regular door to the master bathroom. You need a door since you can partially see the shower from the living room. About the stairs width, remember that you need some space for the handrailing. Think proportion and resale: A house with 3 car garage and narrow stairs? On top of that, taking furniture upstairs on a narrow "L" shape stairway is hard. Now, is it were my house or one of the clients (where I work)house I'd rework the master and mud/powderroom/breakfast and also the masterbedroom. The breakfast area is too narrow. If I have the chance, I will play a bit with it. I love the kitchen with a lot of windows!

Rosie, the funny thing was that until you pointed that out I really thought I'd come up with about as perfect a layout as I could get...we haven't yet got to the part about what we can or cannot afford...at this stage I thought I was still planning my dream (well, maybe I did try to exercise a bit of restraint!) kitchen...but your comment is just exactly what is so great about this place...keeps one from getting too narrowly focused! Mahlgold, such good questions. Let's see: 1. The prep sink is a little oddly placed, I agree...but I thought I'd use the counter in front of the window for most of the prep....I had a niggling doubt in the back of my mind about that appliance garage...about all I'm thinking of putting in there is my food processor and a phone extension so I think it'll work size-wise but it does really interfere with the run of counter there. Rosie's comment made me look at the space with the question that you ask "what if I put the prep sink on the peninsula?" If I did that, I would want the cooktop on the peninsula as well and I'd probably want to move the fridge to where the China closet is...so it's kind of like starting over which I just may have to do in spite of DH's reminder that we already paid $3000 for this plan...but I want to get it right. 2. You're right the broom closet is too big and I plan to make it smaller in order to accommodate a wine cooler in the lowers between the dishwasher (assuming I can insulate sufficiently) and the broom closet. 3. The opening to the DR is not 3 1/2'; I was trying to indicate the width of the aisle from the counter to the pantry. You're right the door is not as wide as the pantry. This drawing is taken off of a blueprint done 1/4" to the foot so the sizing should be fairly accurate but I didn't want to post all the extra detail so relabelled it myself which is why it may be confusing. 4. Yes, we will have 2 or 3 stools on the family room side of the peninsula but we are planning to use it primarily for snacks and breakfast. Our family dinners will be at a small table we're moving from its current location to the family room, sort of in front of the french doors. Not ideal but that's been one of my self-imposed constraints because I knew if I tried to reinvent the family room also it would break the bank! I don't know if any of that clarification helps or if you would still like to see something redrawn on graph paper but I sure do appreciate the additional eyes and thoughts so I'll do whatever will be helpful.

This is quick and dirty, but if you're OK with the narrower island, and you can move the DW down to the end of the run without having the window divider bisect the sink, the fridge could go on the same wall as the cooktop. (I've been drawing a 36" cooktop, with 30" wall ovens, but a 30" would allow you to have an 18" drawer base next to the super susan. If you're using the 36" range, with 24" MW and steam oven? then you have more counter space on the pantry wall, or space for wider pantries.) It would be a more efficient layout, but you need to decide if the aesthetics will work for you. The ovens open into the long aisle, not against seating; with a step back, the island could be used as landing, or if no one is in the last seat, there is landing space to the right. The 18" drawer base could instead be another trash pull-out, convenient to the chiller and MW (if MW is part of oven stack). Sorry for all the editing--I can't seem to pull it together this morning. :[

mikebone: This island was installed per engineered stone manufacturer's installation instructions, but not by me. Although you can't see it here, it has a slight dip in the middle of the cantilever: Manufacturers don't always know what's best for their products, however, the guys who make money from installing their products and will lose money if they get a callback, do. Sink manufacturers say you need a 36" cabinet to install a 33" sink. You don't; I do it all the time, no callbacks. They provide clips for the installation of their sinks; clips are junk and leak. We'd still be making joints in Corian with silicone were it up to the engineers and specifiers at DuPont. Thermoforming was invented by the guys who bought the sheets; they wrote the specs after we worked the bugs out. You had better know what the hell you're doing if you go against the manufacturer's specifications, however, they should be considered minimums. The estone manufacturer in the above photo didn't wait around long enough to see the sag. I didn't have to, but there it was. Our customers are much more fussy than theirs.