Angie_DIY: The path through the kitchen is the shortest path from the dining room to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and laundry, all of which are accessed via the hallway. DH is often working at the dining room table while I'm cooking, but he can get from there to the back of the house via the living room as well. With only two of us here, there is not that much traffic to deal with. I asked about the traffic flow, though, because these aisles seem small. I can make them a little bigger but at the expense of the counter by the fridge, which is one of the things that I like about this plan. I think I will mock the aisles up in the kitchen and see how they feel. iroll: Thanks for the feedback! Our house has several extraneous doors. The floor plan above shows the one between the living room and the hallway. There is also one further down the hall. There's a small addition on the back that looks like it dates from the 1950s. They extended the hallway as part of the addition, but they left the door where the hallway used to end. We haven't taken these doors down because we occasionally find them useful for blocking sound and light traveling through our small house when one person is making noise in the living room or kitchen and the other wants some quiet in the bedroom. We also store stuff (like our grocery bags) in the little space behind the kitchen door. The opening between the dining room and the kitchen used to have a door, too. It must have been taken down decades ago because you can now barely see the mortises for the hinges under many coats of paint. This door swung into the kitchen towards the fridge, which makes you wonder what the original kitchen layout was.

Welcome to Kitchens! Do you need the peninsula? Is there a reason for it? Have you considered an "L" with the range on the "top" wall and the sink on the right wall (using the drawing w/dimensions to determine left/right, top/bottom)? Here are some ideas. I tired to keep the plumbing as close as possible to the original location. Oh, in all except Layout #3, the counter run along the right wall is 27" deep with 15" deep uppers. This gives you a bit more workspace on the counter and quite a bit more storage in the upper cabinets. You'd be surprised how much of a difference those 3" make in upper cabinets! The cabinet above the sink is farther off the surface and could be a dish rack for both utilitarian as well as aesthetic value. .. .. .. This one is probably my favorite... Plenty of prep space, plenty of room around the range, decent pantry space, and more open. I'm of two minds concerning the MW. It could be put in the corner as I show it, but it could also be a MW drawer in the 24" cabinet to the left of the range. In the corner, it gives you the full height of the 24" cabinet for storage. In the drawer, it opens up the counter completely and is more open. (That cabinet to the left of the range must be drawers. If it has doors, you'll need around an 1" of filler b/w the wall and cabinet so the cabinet might have to be narrower...assuming full-overlay or frameless cabinets.) Here it is with the primary zones marked (I put a MW drawer in this one so you could see it): Why a double-bowl, 36" wide sink? Because (1) it allows you to use one bowl for prepping and one for dirty dishes and (2) the larger bowl can be 21" wide...approx the same width you would get using a single-bowl, 24" wide sink base. Here is a link that might be useful: Read Me If You're New To GW Kitchens!

Lavendar, I love those windows in her kitchen! I've really been working hard on the yard for the last few years, and I want the house to engage the outdoors! Here's a new one, based on what you all are talking about. oh - I forgot to label the DW, to the right of the sink. This would be a less expensive reno, because the wall between the sunroom and the dining room is structural (as is the one between the sunroom and the living room). With this plan, I wonder what value there is in pushing out into the sunroom....other than this plan preserves the existing dining room, which I kind of hate to be in because it's dark and it functions like a hallway. I like it quite a bit... I'm struggling with not being able to have a table right in the middle of that space, in front of those windows. I want to stand there at the sink and look out, AND be able to sit there! We have a stool jammed into the current kitchen now by the back window, and I love sitting there and looking out at the yard. It irritates me that there's really no space to sit there now, with a 22" deep peninsula with no overhang! I'd love to sit there with my husband and have breakfast. I also don't think I can lose that second doorway to the bedrooms, because of the level change at the other opening. But, I think I we can push the fridge back into the closet in the sunroom, which could make it look like a built in, no? Thank you thank you thank you!

I would put the dishwasher on the side of the sink closest to dish storage, which I'm guessing is on the right of the plan. As much as I prefer the dw next to the sink, I would consider moving it to the fridge wall somewhere (about a foot from the fridge, maybe), so when it's open, you can turn and reach it easily from the sink, but the open door doesn't block access to the whole corner and all that counter space. If you move the dw, and aren't doing the trash compactor, which is drawn awfully big anyway, your sink may fit! Are those stools drawn at the end of the cabinets by the stove? I don't see room to make those work.