I've given this a lot of thought and I just can't warm up to idea of the sink on the peninsula and losing space with a counter overhang in what's already a small dining room. I much prefer the sink on the outside wall. We need to keep the office closet and the shower because this is our "aging in place" house, and at some point we might need a downstairs bedroom. This morning our architect and his assistant crawled under the house to take the structural measurements and see what would be possible. There's a city requirement that the garage must be at least 9'x20' which has complicated things a bit because our original plan was eating into the 20' length. The stairs are a limiting factor as well. The new plan is this: steal up to 18 inches from the current furnace/water heater area to allow for cabinets to be recessed, and steal even more from the garage to have space for the fridge. With fridge/cabinets set into the back wall, that gives us 12 feet to work with for the rest of the room. The math so far is: 26" sink/window cabinets 36" aisle 36" island 46" aisle --- 12' The bad news is that there's no room for a double oven, so I've switched the cooktop to a range. The furnace gets moved to the spot just to the left of the door from the hall to the kitchen. We'll have a smaller furnace there because we're going to heat the upstairs from a 2nd furnace in the attic. The plans: The first tall cabinet unit will have to be shallower on top because it's limited by the stairs. The windows can't be centered on the back wall because the new office will come 3 feet into the end of the kitchen. I put in a few more uppers. The island will just be 2 cabinets with a 12" overhang, but I drew it as 4 to get the dimensions right. Maybe I can add another 12" set of drawers on the stove end. Comments welcome!

First, thank so much for all the comments and feedback - especially MG! I should have prefaced a couple of things. We are moving the kitchen from it's current location (The 'Dining Rm" in the sketch) to an addition. Looking at MG's view of the plan above the old kitchen is to the right, which will be the new dining area. The wall between the two rooms is the original 1792 brick exterior wall which is why it's so thick. The exiting door from the addition into the main house is to the top right, adjacent to the plan's french doors. We didn't like the flow with the new design and decided to center a larger opening to the new dining room and making the old doorway a half wall and opening (to pitch more light). We have actually reduced the foot print of the wood fired oven by going with a smaller one and hence picked up 16" of space on either side of the oven platform. We have also nixcxed the worthless mud room closet and have been contemplating running a full depth pantry all the way to the mud room wall. The chimney has also been removed. MG I actually like your first mods to the plan. I hate to lose the pantry space by moving the cleanup area where you have it in the second plan mod you did. Do you think there would be adequate prep and cleanup space along the west wall with the chimney gone? Also the "farm table" will really be a full height island in a farm table style. Based on past experience, I can see myself using the island for the bulk of the prep. I will post some pics of the room now that it has been demolished. Thanks again for all the input!!!

I read your kitchen should be on the east for morning light and bedroom on west for evening Usually, especially if on enough mornings you like to sleep in... It's what I am doing. If you are usually early birds, the sun helps get you up, and the kitchen/dining on the west can make sense... and depending on the lay of the land, and lake, you may get to share good sunsets with guests. But there are other factors, too. Views to east and west, And since you are lake front, I think what you want to do is something to accentuate the views of lake, whatever that takes. You are the ones who know if you like to wake up and see the lake first thing, and how you want to "share" the lake to visitors - presumably, you do! With this lot, I do think your architect's thoughts will be paramount, and if he thinks you'd do best without an angled garage, listen. You have a house to the north of you blocking view from the road, so I think the "rules" about front facing garages fall to the side. Ahem as it were.

Update: I've been really working through this layout. I take a lot of time to think things through before moving forward. After all the input on this thread, I changed things around. Then I had A Cook's Kitchen do a plan review for me, which completely changed things and opened up some possibilities. I have reworked quite a bit and finally settled on a layout shown in the attached images. Definitely still open to any criticism though. I've had the cabinet company create an initial design, but will be meeting with a senior designer from the company next week to make any necessary adjustments.