What about the first set-up but just switch the ovens and fridge. The fridge would then be closer to work triangle and most people are in and out of the fridge alot more than the ovens.
No, to the second set-up because you don't want the ovens in a doorway. Would be a problem with the oven doors open blocking a walkway. YOu wouldn't want to switch the fridge and ovens in that set-up either as you would then have the fridge opening into a doorway.

The door to the right - where does that go? I'm thinking that I actually like a mix of #1 and #2. So, in #2 with the bigger pantry - put the ovens where the fridge is, put the fridge right beside it to the right and then put your same cabinet configuration of #2 in to the wall by the door.
Deciding on that really depends on what kind of drawer sizes you need. It looks like you already have some bigger ones - so do you need more (as in #1 plan) or do you need more medium sized drawers - as in #2 plan with the bigger pantry.
The other deciding factor is - how much aisle space is there between the island and that wall and is your fridge french doors or one big single door.
Hopefully some of this makes sense.

Bump

Where do the doors go? If the one in the upper right is apantry or something, then it's OK to have the fridge (or oven) there. I have my oven in a location like that in number two and my fridge like that in number one. Both doorways in my case are high traffic but I don't use the oven daily and I do locate my toddler before opening the oven (or close the door).

I'd worry more about being able to get INTO the oven in the number 2 arrangement--it's very close to the cooktop.

I'm afraid we need more information. :)

Blfenton and Fori, thank you for your responses.

The door to the right goes to the dining room. We don't use it very often, so there is not constant traffic flow through there, which is a good thing as the aisle won't be terribly wide (38"). I know this is smaller than recommended....I hope it's not too narrow. We are having a counter depth French door fridge. In case it helps, the door to the left of the pantry in 1 & 2 leads to the foyer.

Blfenton, I like your suggestion about mixing 1 & 2 (it made sense!). I definitely think it's better to have the fridge within easy access and not have it too far from the sink. However, I'd also like it to be next to the pantry, though I guess it wouldn't really be a problem if it wasn't (thoughts?). As for the drawers, you're right, I have large ones elsewhere, so the medium would probably be fine.

Fori, that's a really good point about not being able to get into the oven. I'd only thought about the access into the dining room.

I am veering away from the third option as I don't really want the countertop at the end. We currently have a countertop/desk there and it never gets used as a countertop, just a collecting point for clutter :-). I felt that if I had the countertop in between the oven and the fridge, it would be good as a setting down spot from both. Though I will have the island behind, so not sure this is really essential.

Thanks again for your help & if you've any further insight, given the additional info, that'd be great.

I have a pantry and fridge, they do happen to be beside each other but that is for balance in design rather than work habits. I find that I use the fridge a lot more than the pantry and it's almost like they are for two different functions. If I do go into the fridge or pantry, I don't automatically also go into the other. Maybe look at some photos of kitchens (go into the Finished kitchen blog here) and see how they are situated in relation to one another. That might give you some relief about that decision.

I also, like you, planned a landing spot for my fridge and never use it. My counter is 5' across the aisle (galley kitchen) and I just swing around and put stuff down. The french doors actually make it awkward to do that because you are going around the doors instead of just turning and putting the stuff on your counter. To me, to put stuff on the landing spot and then pick it up again to put it on the counter is like double work. Never do it.
The same I would think would go for your oven. You could just swing around and put it onto the island.
I can't tell how wide, or what the design of your island is but any chance you could shave off a couple of inches for a wider aisle-way?

One thing I did notice is that in the first two layouts, the island is a "barrier island" b/w the refrigerator and sink. You say that's a narrow aisle, 38". Is that just in front of the DR door or is that also b/w the island and the "back" wall"?

Refrigerator...is it a "true counter-depth" refrigerator or a "regular" counter-depth refrigerator? Most counter-depth (CD) refrigerators stick out approx 30" from the back wall...the carcass/box is around 24" deep, but the doors + handles + back air clearance are another 6" to 7". So, be sure to account for the true depth of the refrigerator (back air clearance + carcass + doors + handles) when calculating your aisle measurements. (In most CD refrigerators, the doors must extend past the counters, cabinets, or walls next to them to be able to open the doors fully and allow full access to the refrigerator contents, open bins, and remove bins for cleaning.) [Standard-depth refrigerators are usually around 36" deep; built-in refrigerators, like "true counter-depth" refrigerators, are around 24" deep.]

In addition, be sure you're measuring aisle widths counter edge-to-counter edge and not cabinet-to-cabinet. There's approx a 1.5" overhang of counter over cabinets.

What is behind the window run? Is it against a wall? Is that a window over the sink?

I'm asking b/c I was wondering if you were "wedded" to this design? You mentioned you were open to something completely different...is that just for the refrigerator/oven wall or is it for the entire kitchen?

buehl, I'm not wedded to this design & am definitely open to suggestions for other areas of the kitchen. In these plans, the cooktop and sink haven't moved from their current locations. I can't see where else I could move the cooktop and don't want to move the sink as I like it under the window (yep, it is a window).

As for the island, we have two options - one is to go for a counter depth island (just one set of cabinetry underneath). If we do this, both aisles will be 40.5" wide (presuming we have them both the same size), but I was thinking of having the one between the island and fridge wall slightly wider. The other option is we go for a cabinet on one side of the island, plus a shallow cabinet (6" deep) with shelves on the other, which would reduce the aisles to 37.5" each. Do you think this is a bad idea? I know this configuration doesn't give a lot of extra storage, but I like the idea of the extra countertop, plus I'm not keen on having just a panel on the back of the island. In my measurements I've taken account of the 1.5" countertop overhang.

As for the refrigerator, it is not true counterdepth and I believe the one we are looking at (KitchenAid KFCS22EV) is 30" deep with the handles. This is definitely another factor and although I "knew" it, I'd not really thought about the impact too much (why I need help from here! :-)).

If I follow blfenton's suggestion, the fridge will be closer to the sink and would allow for a little more opening room since there'll be space behind at least some of it.

blfenton, good points about the landing spot - the more I think about this, the less of a concern this is for me, considering I'll have an island right behind - and also about the pantry and fridge. Maybe having them next to each other isn't really that important.

I'm attaching a shot of a different perspective to give you a better idea of the kitchen as a whole. We currently have a peninsula instead of an island which comes out beside the dishwasher (if that makes sense). It really doesn't work for us as it gives only one decent usable prep area in the whole kitchen and also makes it feel quite confined and closed off to me. Hence, the island! The plan doesn't show it but the room doesn't end there - there is also a eat-in area with a bay window & a doorway into the family room. Because of the bay window we're not able to extend the kitchen any further along the sink wall. Finally, on the cooktop wall, we have decided to go for all upper cabinets here and forget about the chimney hood as it would mean a lonely 12" upper cabinet to the left of the hood which to me would be unbalanced. Any thoughts on this too much appreciated.

Thanks again for your helpful insights.

I don't suppose you could move the DR doorway, could you?

What purpose is served by having an actual door between the kitchen and dining room? Especially in this layout, that just seems like it would create problems without providing much (if ANY) benefit. What about having just a doorway, with no door?

When it comes to aisle widths I do have a tendency to suggest going wider if possible. But having said that - how many people are going to be cooking/cleaning in your kitchen, do you have young/teen kids who are in there with you or is it just you doing everything. I think that the more people the wider the aisles. This aisle is also the main walkway from the dining room with the potential of making it even more crowded.
I see your point about wanting the 2' island to be deeper - so it comes down to how important is that extra 6" of counterspace.
As for panels just being on the backside of the island , have the panels designed to be the same pattern as your cabinets. Eg. If your cabinets are shaker-style and if your island is 4' long, have 2-2' shaker-style panels put on (or if its 6' long have 3-2' or 2-3' shaker-style panels put on) instead of one long flat panel. Then the backside looks like the rest of your cabinets. That can be done with any design of cabinets. Do that to the ends as well.
Just an aside comment - It was suggested removing the door from between the kitchen and dining room - we actually did that to open up the space a little. The dining room continues onto our living room and it has really connected the space well by having done that. We also have off of our kitchen an eating area and small family room and everything flows nicely now.

Thanks again for your comments. I'm afraid my plan wasn't accurate - there is no actual door between the dining room and kitchen, just a doorway. Sorry, it was misleading.

buehl, I wasn't sure if you meant just removing the door or the entire doorway? If it was removing the entire doorway and blocking it up, much as I'd love the extra space to work with, I don't think it's practical in that I'd have to walk out the kitchen, past the front door & through the living room to get to the DR.

To answer your point blfenton, it's my husband and me plus our toddler. So not a big household at the moment. We plan on being the house for 5-10 years. So the kitchen doesn't tend to get crowded (at least for now!), max of 2 people at at time. I guess I just have to weigh up which is more important for me...counterspace or aisle width.

Thanks for the great suggestion of having a more decorative panel. We're going for shaker style cabinets, however they're from IKEA so not sure whether it would be possible to customize something for the panel. I'll talk to the installer.

Any suggestions about the cooktop wall? I did really want to go with a chimney style hood as in the plan above but just don't think it will look right if I have cabinets surrounding it because it leave only a 12" upper on the left. How do you think it looks in the plan above? I'm not sure about having no upper cabinets on that wall?

Thanks again - helpful stuff!

You can customize anything from Ikea if you really want to. Go to Ikeafans.com if you haven't yet. I think those people could make a Murphy bed out of Ikea cabinets if they wanted.

I have one question: How wide is that cabinet to the left of the window?
Your options for that stove wall are so many:
-No cabinets with a chimney hood
-Do the cabinets with the chimney hood and the 12" space to the left do an open rounded shelving unit to display stuff
-leave it blank to the left of the hood vent and do open shelving on the right side
-if you were to do cabinets would you then put a rounded cabinet in the corner to take it to the window?
-yes, individual walls needed to be designed with weighting/symmetry/asymmetry issues in mind but kitchens themselves should be designed with that in mind also.

- so, from the lower right hand corner envision how that wall would look in conjunction with the window wall and the fridge/stove wall and how it would fit in between the two.
Then try to imagine your different options for that stove wall. I think it would be kind of neat to just leave it but then do you need the storage and where would you then keep your spices, oils, vinegars etc. With open shelving you could put those things there - options are endless

Options then depend on amount of storage you need and the look and feel you are going for.

For the panels on the island, if Ikea can't provide them get your carpenter to pick up molding and create your own design.

No, I meant actually move the doorway to next to where the sink is...it would create an "L" on the other end of that wall.

I am not a layout guru, but I have a similar layout, so I'll chime in. It looks like your range wall is longer than mine by about 18 inches (it would be helpful if you could post dimensions, including the window and door locations). I tried to come up with a layout for my kitchen that included an island, but in the end I decided that I needed a minimum of 2 more feet of length on my range wall to make an island work and not have too-tight aisle widths. I stuck with the peninsula. But again, it sounds like you have more room than me for the island.

Aisle widths: I would stick with the wider aisles and 2 foot island. Buehl has already pointed out that your fridge is going to stick out into the aisle quite a bit. My countertop-to-countertop aisle width between the end of my peninsula and fridge wall is 37.5 inches, and I wish it were wider. It's really only wide enough for one person at a time (and we're average size), or two if we turn sideways. I can't imagine my entire kitchen with aisles that wide. I suggest you mock it up with boxes to get the feel of it. I have 2 teen boys, and I don't think we would be happy with even the 40.5 inch aisles. If you've got anything open (dishwasher, fridge, a drawer, pantry cabinet door), that aisle is blocked, especially if there is a person in front of it. My 16 year old empties the DW and he really wants everyone out of the kitchen when he does this 3 minute job. But I have to admit that he's got a point - if someone does even a simple task (like get a bowl of ice cream), it's hard to not get in his way. That said, there are plenty of happy GWers with narrow aisles. You should be able to search and find several postings on this (use google to search. The GW search does not work well).

Fridge wall: I didn't go with wall ovens (is one your microwave? If not, where will your microwave go?) - I have a range. I have a 42 inch pantry cabinet (food storage was an issue for us before the remodel. We kept extra food in the basement and it was a real PITA), then the counter depth fridge, then 48 inches of regular base/wall cabinets. The base/wall cabinets are on the foyer entry end and the pantry is on the end with the doorway to the dining room. I totally agree with you that our 48" countertop there is a clutter catcher spot, but I just make sure that I keep it tidy. The mail, etc. is going to plopped somewhere. I'd just as soon it be there than my peninsula (or island, in your case). I find that it's a great space to sort through the mail, pay bills, any paperwork that needs a little spreading out room, but we don't have a study or desk elsewhere for that type of work. I keep a few office supplies in the drawers below, and we charge our phones in a drawer there and put our keys there. The reason that we put it on the foyer hallway end is that we wanted a more open feeling when we entered the kitchen from the foyer, rather than a full height cabinet like a pantry. I also agree that you will use your island as your fridge landing space, for the same reasons that blfenton mentioned. I use my peninsula.

Doorway to the dining room: I think I know where buehl is going with moving the doorway to the dining room because that is the same advice we got when I posted my layout pre-remodel. In our case, our dining room is quite small, so moving the doorway down would have meant squeezing past the dining room table. We also had hvac issues that would have made this option costly, so we didn't move the doorway. But for kitchen functionality, it really looked like this would have been a great layout.

Range wall: I don't really have a suggestion because my situation is different from yours (I have a range and regretfully, an OTR MW, compared to your cooktop/vent). But I have skinny upper cabinets on the sides of my range. I store spices in one, and a mish-mash of coffee, flour, sugar, and measuring cups in the other. This set-up works ok, but skinny cabinets are not ideal. I have one skinny base cabinet on one side of my range that has a 2-tier pullout for oils, vinegars, etc, which I like a lot. The other side of my range has my corner susan door.

Question: Can you move/enlarge/add on to your window so that you could shift your sink down? The best prep space is usually between the sink and cooktop, but you don't have all that much room there. That way you could also eliminate that blind corner cabinet (I am assuming that's what that is next to the range) and perhaps go with a corner susan. I would consider DW on the end, then sink, trash, drawer stack, corner susan.

Good luck!

Sorry, I've not been on the forum in the last week...I think I needed a chance to digest everything as my head was spinning with kitchen layouts, not to mention appliances, flooring, etc. Thanks again for your comments and advice. I'm finding this forum so useful.

buehl, I see what you mean about moving the dining room doorway to make an L on the other end of the wall. I think it would improve the work flow, but I pretty sure it's not within our budget (thought granted I don't really know what the cost to do this would be, so maybe I should find out before I rule it out completely!). I was trying to avoid any big changes to the kitchen to keep costs down as much as possible.

pudgybaby, thank you for all your advice. It's helpful to get some input from someone who has a similar layout. I really, really want an island and I'm pretty sure I have enough room (the kitchen is 13' 2" wide), but it might be best going with a 2' island to maximize the aisle widths. I still think this would be very useful prep space and have seen pictures of other people's 2' deep islands & I'm sure I could definitely live with it, even if it's a bit narrower than I'd like. I guess I have to compromise somewhere :-) It's useful to have your countertop-to-countertop aisle width between the end of your peninsula to fridge wall, especially as you mentioned you felt you'd need an extra 2' minimum for your island. Mine is 61" so half an inch shy of the 2' feet you mentioned. By the way, you're right, the microwave will be above the wall oven.

As for moving/enlarging the window, I think it too is probably outside budget (in an ideal world I'd definitely have a larger window). I'm conscious that it would improve work flow as currently I find that that area of countertop between the sink and range too small to be particularly useful.

Re: the clutter catcher area - I've been torn about whether to put the wall and base cabinets at the foyer entrance end as you have. As you say, it keeps the kitchen more open. I'm just worried it won't get used for much kitchen stuff and will be wasted countertop space. We have a desk as soon as you enter the family room which we use for bill paying, etc. (I should really make more of an effort to use this for clutter too! :-)) I feel if I put this wall's countertop closer to the range/sink area it will get more kitchen use.

blfenton, thanks for your input about the cooktop wall. The cabinet to the left of the window is 24" wide. Do you think it would look strange to have this cabinet situated like that? It seems slightly awkward to me, but maybe that's just me! Do you think it would work if it was a corner wall cabinet with the door on the diagonal? Or would that look odd? As for open shelves, I've considered this too and would quite like it, but there isn't the room if you allow for the opening of the door of the 24" cabinet. The open rounded shelving to the left of the hood is a nice idea - I'll look into this further. If I do the upper cabinets, yes, I would put in a corner wall cabinet that would take it to the window.

I've been looking into more of a pro style under cabinet hood and have seen some I like so I don't feel I'll be as disappointed if I don't end up with my longed-for chimney style hood. I definitely need to try to envision the whole kitchen as you suggest, but this is the part I find most difficult. I've looked at so many photos of finished kitchens for inspiration, I think I'm having kitchen overload!! I'm definitely driving DH mad with my constant kitchen talk. We've been in this house a year and it's the first home I've owned after many years of renting. I've been dreaming of having a kitchen that's really 'mine' for so long, I really want it to be right!

At 13'2", your kitchen is wide enough to have an island only if you have narrow aisles and as long as it has no seating on the work aisles. You aren't planning seating, so that's not an issue in your case. This is what you can do:

First, 13'2" = 158"

25.5" sink/cabs/counters + 36" aisle + 27" island + 39.5" aisle + 30" deep refrigerator (counting doors & handles) = 158"

The aisles are counted counter edge-to-counter edge. [Note that if you have standard depth cabinets in the island you will have 1.5" of counter overhang on each side. So...1.5" + 24" + 1.5" = 27"]

As you can see, your aisles are rather narrow. Personally, they'd be too narrow for me...especially as my family also likes to work in the kitchen and I like having them help. With more than one person working in the kitchen at a time, these aisles are too narrow.

If you can find a place for the refrigerator that isn't in front of/behind the aisle, you will gain 4.5" for your aisles (30" - 25.5" = 4.5")...they could then be 40" on each side.

Oh the angst of kitchen designing. We took a year to design ours and like you, had to take breaks from it at times. Smart idea to do that. I'll think more about your stove wall and respond. Do check the cost of moving a doorway because it isn't all that expensive. At least then you'll know the cost and you'll know whether or not you have to give something up in order to do it and if it would be worth it.
We always got pricing for our "pie-in-the-sky" ideas so that we wouldn't second guess ourselves after all was said and done. And we were surprised at out inexpensive some things were and it was those things that we got the biggest bang for our buck. Like the second window and the vaulted ceiling that we did in the family room that we did mid-construction.

Back again after another break. Well, I haven't priced the cost to move the door. DH isn't keen - he's happy with the layout and wants to keep costs down as much as possible. I think we'll live with what we have, due to costs...our true dream kitchen will have to wait for the next house!

buehl, I know our aisles are going to be narrower than recommended but I think they'll work for us. We used to rent a house that had an island. I contacted our landlord and he gave me the dimensions of his aisles and they're even less than what we're going with. Incidentally the island itself is also the 27" that we're going for too. That's gone a long way in putting my mind at rest. We had no problems with his layout, even with us both in that kitchen and never felt like it was too cramped. Having said that, I'm rethinking the fridge wall again, moving the fridge so that it opens into the area between the stove and the island, so as to hopefully maximize the aisle space, as you suggest.

Thanks for your help with all this...this really is a great community. I'm learning so much!