I really enoyed planning my kitchen (with help from here). It's not perfect because there are always constraints in any project, but I'm really happy with how it all came out. I remember your post from before. Do you have an updated layout to post? One thing I was thinking is that you could extend the run on the right side of your drawing to fill the available wall space up to where the patio doors start. If you want to extend further you could make the patio access just a single door instead of double. Your trash can move to your prep zone and be a pull-out. That spot might be good for the kid-stack. Here are some of the things that I feel we got right: (You should definately read all that design stuff that Buehl posted and start making a long list of all your thoughts so you can prioritize and widdle the list down later 1) Measure: This is free. Measure all your items (such as cookie trays, serving trays, casserole dishes, crock pot, prep tools like cuisinart, blender, juicer, stock pot, pots and pans, slow cooker, etc, basically everything). Then you will be able to design drawers the right size so you have a place for everything. If you're building a pantry, you can plan to store some of the large items in there, but you still have to measure them so that you build the pantry accordingly. Also, are you storing seasonal things in the kitchen such as holiday dishes and serving items? Plan on where all that will go. 2) Ask: This is free too. Ask your family members if there is something that they really want to be incorporated in the kitchen. For our family of 6, only younger DD and DH each had a specific request. DD (age 9) was just getting into baking, so she wanted an additional electrical outlet away from the all the zones, so that she could plug in her mixer without being near me if I'm prepping, cooking or cleaning. There was a perfect place behind the trash pull-out in the island seating area. Now we call that side of the island the baking zone. DH wanted to be able to access his blender and juicer without having to get down on his hands and knees to dig through a cabinet. He got a tall drawer where those items can stand up straight and are easy to access. 3) Hide the MW: We like cheap not-built-in microwaves because we don't use it very much. Cabinet builder made a spot for it where we can close the cabinet doors if we want to. The doors slide back out of the way when it's open. But if you are a heavy microwave user, then you might want it built-in or above the oven so that it is more prominent and accessible. 4) Almost all drawers, maybe a cabinet if you need it: Agree about having lots of drawers. I do, however, have two shallow cabinets in the island where the stools are. It's wide but not deep. We ended up doing that because the island is 4' wide and on the opposite side there are drawers. That left a wasted space on the stool-side, so we put cabinets there. In there I put things that I don't use often, such as long serving trays, a long skinny bread basket, and extra casserole dishes for Thanksgiving and other gatherings. These would not fit well in a drawer. Also in there go vases and other things I want to access but not often. Sometimes one cabinet is needed somewhere. It just depends on what you are storing. 5) Trash can at the prep zone. 6) "Kid/sports stack": For school age kids and people that are always packing coolers for sports, having a stack for them is great. I call ours the "kid stack." We put in a 4 drawer stack at the end of a run. In the top are the school lunch totes, school cutlery, wet wipes, etc. Next drawer has small lunch tote sized water bottles, insulated food bowls for school, reusable snack and sandwich bags. Next drawer is the snack drawer. In there we have all manner of snacks that they can grab while packing their lunches. The bottom drawer has sports water bottles. After the kitchen was finished they actually started packing their own lunches because it was all set up to be easy. Also when people are leaving for sports, they can load a small ice chest (kid stack is right by ice maker), throw in some snacks and water bottles. This stack is not anywhere near my cook, prep, or clean up zone so we're not tripping over each other in the morning. 7) Coffee/tea stack: If you are coffee and tea drinkers, see if you can put a drawer stack under where you keep your coffee maker. Ours is a 3 drawer stack. Top 2 drawers are all about coffee and tea, and the bottom drawer has dishtowels. 8) Bright LED lighting on dimmers. It's so frustrating to not have good light in a kitchen because it is a work zone. But at night or while entertaining you want to turn it down, so have everything on dimmers and try to incorporate under cabinet or over cabinet lighting if you can. 9) Cleverly placed electrical outlets: Place your outlets as low as allowed and turned sideways. Try to match them as well as you can to your backsplash material so they blend in. If you have an area where you don't want to see the outlets (for us this is a long run that is away from the zones, and has glass cabinets and such, so it's the "pretty part"). There I didn't want to interrupt the pretty backsplash with outlets, so we put an outlet strip up under the cabinets. This works for outlets that don't have something always plugged in. But for things that are pretty much always plugged in such as coffee maker and toaster, it doesn't work bc you'd see the cord; for those a low/sideways outlet is best so the cord is hidden behind. Note about that -- since the outlet strips are there (where under-cabinet lighting would normally be installed), we turned the under-cabinet lights around backwards and mounted them under the cabinet, but in the front rather than the back. 10) Venting: Have an appropriately powerful vent over the cooktop. My DS has NO venting in her kitchen. It's awaful and this is a $$$$ house. It's so stupid that the builder did that and the previous owner never addressed it. 11) Niche above cooktop: Before the remodel, our cooktop was in front of a window and I got in the habit of putting the salt, pepper and olive oil on the window sill. When we remodeled the cooktop moved to a regular wall. So we made a niche with a sill where we put these things. I like having the basics within easy reach. Mistakes/oversights: - I forgot to plan a place to hang the dishtowel. This really bugs older DD. - I didn't think about the paper towels. We have them on the counter. But after we finished, I saw a picture where someone had built the paper towel holder into the place where a drawer would be under the counter. It was such an awesome idea, but too late for me. My thoughts on your layout:

Good question...That space is actually not that big in real life. We'll likely put the 2 chairs with a table in between that we have in the sunroom now. We may end up with a moveable island in the "butler's pantry" -- agree, it's more of an extended kitchen space. But we can reuse the same cabinets so it will be low cost and extra storage since we'll have less in the main kitchen area. Moving the bathroom was deemed to be more than $10k, and creates a lot more complexity in the project. I am intrigued by that idea, but I think that will actually make the house feel smaller since that will create more of a closed off hallway from our utility room.

So I like your ideas. I would definitely talk with a contractor and then a kitchen designer. My whole concept hinges on whether you could change the glass wall/doors so that the doors are on the other side. If it’s a whole unit (which it look like it is) you may be able to take it out and flip it upside down. So then what you would be able to do is run cabinetry all the way down and possibly build in the rad. Give a seamless look and takes advantage of all the vertical wall space for storage. Also the sofa would be jammed in the that area giving you a better view of the outside and there wouldn’t be any glare on your tv. It also allows for the peninsula to be a little further down which would allow the addition of a microwave cabinet which could be put on the end with the pantry next to that so it won’t encroach in the doorway. It also allows more room in the kitchen for two people. And I’ll also mention that the sectional I’m showing is really deep. Unfortunately, the program I’m using doesn’t allow me to change the size but you could go with something smaller in scale.

Nice kitchen, Not ugly at all ... but a bit dark. On a budget, would not add tile now; instead rip off the old but repair/smooth the wall and paint all but the 4"-6" above the countertop as backsplash, which you could tile to coordinate with the countertop. Another exception to the painted wall might be the stove niche -- you could add a stainless steel panel the width of the stove, beginning just below stove top level and covering all the visible wall above the stove top. You could always add a hood to that later. Like the stove niche suggestion of Hannah Wolfson except would want a stainless steel panel above the stove and would want the electrical wiring for the lights to stay to connect a stove hood later ... so keep lights for now even if you don't add the hood now. Would create at least a countertop level with the top of the stove on each side of the stove. What you put beneath that would depend upon what that white unit left of the stove might be; however, if that white unit is something movable, create a pair of free standing base cabinets with countertops the same height as the stove top. Your kitchen windows do not have brown trim so ... if you want white trim around all your windows and doors and doorway openings, consider scrubbing all the brown trim throughout the house really well before painting them white.