I don't know how your LR is laid out, but could you make a doorway to the back door area from there as well, just as a secondary means of circulation to the kitchen?

Your kitchen isn't really large enough for a separate cooktop and wall ovens. Plus, an OTR will not provide decent ventilation for your needs. It's also not at all appealing to have a refrigerator in your dining room. It makes an already very tight DR even tighter and you would need to utilize a banquette in the lower right corner in order to have good clearance for the table.

We have considered opening up the wall in the living room to the side door. Our living room is laid so that there is not much problem to open it up but the main reason we are probably not going to open it up is because we want to keep the door on the basement steps. With both doors wouldn't it seem like it would cause a problem trying to get down the steps or out the side door from either the kitchen or living room? If the door was open, you would have to shut the door, walk past the door, and the re open the door to use the doorway. We considered removing the basement door (even though we really dont want to) so we could open the living room up. However we still envision the same problem with the side door.

As far as our kitchen size, we currently have a separate cooktop and wall oven is why we wanted to keep them separate. There will be more room for the cooktop by having cabinets along an additional wall.

As far as the refrigerator, where would it fit better? We were going to keep it where it was but figured by moving it out a little would give us a larger cabinet/counterspace between sink and fridge. Also it keeps a line lined up with our counter on the other side coming off of the closet wall. Also it gives us a point to build a shelf to which we felt would look better.

As far as the dining room size, it doesn't seem like it would shrink it that much as we currently have a shelf where the refrigerator/shelf would come out to.

I appreciate all of your opinions, and advice but without a better suggestion I wouldn't know where it would be best to put the refrigerator, and we already ordered the cooktop and wall ovens so they are going to have to go in the kitchen.

40 pounds in a 10 pound sack. I agree that a galley would be more functional as corners actually take away usable space. You aren't doing anything but crowding an already very small DR by intruding the kitchen into it. It doesn't help either room to feel bigger. It makes the whole space actually seem smaller. A range would give you more counterspace and work better. The refrigerator should go where the old pantry was so it can be recessed into it and not stick out so much in such a shallow kitchen. The range goes on that wall, with cabinetry all the way down. Then you don't have to worry about the cabinetry on the end crowding the range run. It's an open walkway. And you get better storage than with your plan. Leave the walls alone between the kitchen and DR.

Have you considered flipping the kitchen with the DR? I think Pal's suggestion of opening the LR to the space would work very well then and you'd have more room if you switched the spaces.

For where you are at right now-I'd probably put wall ovens where you have frig-with less extension into dining room. then the cooktop and frig can vie for spots by side door or across from sink. cook top with 12 in[or more]counter to its left-by the side door, will give you that nice corner to use between cooking and sink area. Frig behind sink, altho occupying more space would be just fine.Accept that you can't do it all.Wall ovens near dining is a decent spot-cook mostly uses them-and not much standing there.The cooktop at far location can be done up with a nice backsplash/hood and make visual focus when entering the kitchen.

I like herbflavor's idea a lot. The cooktop would indeed be a really nice feature on that wall, and would then be somewhat protected from traffic.

A tweak on it could be to put both Fridge and Double Ovens on left wall with tall Pantry cabinets for the remaining space. That gives you a more open feeling to the kitchen and would not block any view to the nice cooktop feature. You could then do glass cabinets, possibly down to the counter in a hutch style, to make a pretty dish storage area. Move the undercounter Fridge Drawers somewhere to the right of the Sink so people can easily grab a beverage and glass without crossing all over the kitchen.

Finally, if you normally prep at an open space like a kitchen table, you are not going to like prepping at a normal-depth counter with uppers in your face. Consider making the counters on the sink wall an extra 6" deep. You can do this by ordering extra-deep cabinets (more $) or simply by building a 2x6 frame against the wall before you install the cabinets.

My daughter has a kitchen much like yours, without the little pantry in the kitchen and closet beside it that opens into the living room.

How are you going to access that closet over the basement stairs? Hers doesn't go to the floor, but starts about 2 or 3 feet up on the wall.

We are still thinking about opening the living room, not necessarily for the kitchen layout but we are having trouble figuring whether the doors would be fine or need switched.

The closet isn't above the stairs as it goes all the way to the floor. The pantry that we had was above the stairs, about 2-3 foot up from the floor. That is why we didn't want to put the oven or fridge their as we couldn't recess it into the wall and we would waste all that space. I am probably going to put a 36" wall cabinet in front of it with the back cut out and build pull out pantry style doors that pull out 36" even though the cabinet only sticks in the room 12" deep.

We were thinking about your advice that the refrigerator looks like it takes up more space than it actually does on the corner of the 2 rooms. So we decided to move it behind the sink as you all suggested. I was thinking leaving the wall ovens where they are as anything in the corner of the 2 rooms seems to close them up and move the cooktop there. To have more room at the cooktop we decided to not have the counter on the opposite wall extend into the door way but to have them be 30" counters to match closer to the fridge depth. Instead of a shelf in the corner by the sliding door we can wrap the counter/cabinets into that space and still use that for our shredder,mail etc that the shelf would have been used for. We think this opens the kitchen up both spaces a lot more, but what do you all think?

Is this our final layout??