I have 3 countertop materials in my kitchen: Laminate on most of the perimeter counters, stainless on both sides of the rangetop, and wood on the island...So each kind of material is separated from each other, so no seaming one to another.

Without a natural break of some kind; a visual 'reason' to explain the change, it gets tough to accomplish. I think the toughest could be a change from the perimeter counter to a peninsula. You don't want it to look like you just 'went cheap' on the edges and tried to look fancy on the part that shows most.

Maybe something like doing an inset piece might look more artful and intentional (designwise) than just switching countertop materials at the corner. You could do laminate on the edge and around the corner onto the peninsula with a piece of stone inset into the peninsula on the working side. It could be pretty large, but have the continuity of the laminate on 2 or 3 sides of it.

I think having wood on one or both sides of the stove could look good and be useful.

I have a picture of my layout below, which may make it easier to get help with this. So, my thought was the Quartz would go from the range edge out to the end of the pennisula. Have wood for that tiny section between the range and the wall. then the countertop along the other wall would all be laminate or solid surface or something? i think that would go along in part with what rhome posted -- the different styles wouldn't be touching each other.

I was also thinking of shrinking the pennisula to 4.5' or 4' because that would save me some $ and add some space between the end of the peenisula and the wall?

This makes much more sense. Plenty of 'natural' division to do what you'd like, and use the different materials.

Using 3 different materials for the countertops in your kitchen would be too busy. Pick something you like for the perimeter and if you really want to change material, only do it on the peninsula.Quantz or solid surface for perimeter and wood for peninsula would look good. Especially is the wood matched your furniture in the adjoining dining room.

Thanks for the feed back! i went back to my KD and suggested Solid Surface for the countertop that runs from the pantry to the frig (possibly with an integrated sink) and then quartz for next to the stove and the pennisula. He cautioned me about the look since the solid surface would be a matte finish and the Quartz would be shiny. My thinking is that I would like the pennisula to be a focal point design-wise and the different finishes would add to that. i also thought I would keep the Solid Surface plain --maybe even a solid color instead of textured. Any thoughts?

It doesn't show in the plans above but the dining room is on the other side of the pennisula from the kitchen. Also, we have decided to shrink the pennisula to 4.5' for better traffic flow as well as scraping a tad off the price. Thanks for the help!

Totally unrelated: did you ever have the peninsula going INTO the room instead of across? Is this room to scale?

morgne - no. The pennisula was orginally going to be a pass through with a doorway at the end of the wall, but I talked DH into making it a pennisula so it would be more open between the 2 rooms. With the 4.5' pennisula there is approx. 47" between the end of the pennisula and the wall.

I did the floor plan in powerpoint as to scale as I could get it with that. I have another copy below that includes the dining room so you can get a better idea of how it flows with the 2 rooms. They are both next to each other at the back of the house. (The floor plan for the house is "T" shaped with the soon-to-be kitchen and dining room as the horiztonal part.) The kitchen measures approx. 13.5' along the sink wall and 11.5' along the back wall 9stove to pantry). The dining room is about the same size.

I know how much people here like to design, so I thought about posting the layout to see what everyone thinks. However, I think I'm happy with it. We have good flow to bring groceries in the side door (which will be just out of this picture) to the frig. I can set the table without getting in DH's way at the stove. The pennisula is set to be the main working prep space. We do a lot of baking and cooking as a family, so the kids can sit at the pennisula to help. I always welcome suggestions though, because it helps to ensure I've thought of everything.

Currently the kitchen is in the hallway between the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen in my plans is currenlty just a extra room (use to be the bedroom until DH added a second floor befoer we were married). So, the current kitchen measures 7'7" x 7'11". The 7'11" walls have doorways in them --on one end the doorway takes up most of the wall. We're thrilled to be finally re-doing things.

Isn't solid surface as pricey as basic priced granites? There are even pre-fab granite slabs you can consider if you want more options. ALso, check out the myriad of laminate designs that are out there. You've certainly got a ton of choices!

Just an FYI... if you're concerned about the quartz shininess not looking it's best with a matte solid surface; you can always get a quartz with a honed finished. I think some even come with a satin finish which is somewhere in between.

I am concerned about the door to your backyard being in the kitchen. It might be annoying to have in/out backyard traffic while someone is working in the kitchen. Any chance you could put the backyard access door in the dining room instead? I guess it's not a big deal if you have backyard access from another room as well.

Re: mixing counter materials, I think a logical way to combine would be to have one type of material along the L part, and the other type of material for peninsula/range.

Another thing I noticed is that your peninsula is wider than the counter along the range part of that run. Are you going to put anything into the recess? Seems like shelves or a built in buffet or something might be nice rather than the peninsula just stopping, then the counter jogging back toward the range. Hope that made sense!

It sounds like the new space is going to be a huge improvement! Man, when you get that kind of a chance to switch up it's hard to go wrong.

I saw a kitchen once that looked similar but instead of the penninsula being so long it was actually an "L" with the pantries and refridgeratior flipped. I really liked the idea of it and had been wondering if you had considered it. I only mentioned it because I thought it might do something to help your "ctop conundrum".

If the long wall is 13.5 feet that's with say 3 for the sink then you have 5 on the left(I'm obviously just averaging it) and 5.5 on the right (2 -2.5 after fridge or pantry). On the left that five feet is cut down to 3 "real" feet because of the turn to the countertop. If you did a row of 12" pantries INSTEAD of countertop you'd 1) gain walkway space b) increase useable counter on that side 3) lower overall counter costs (because you woulnd't build out those couple of feet after the turn - say a six foot savings)

Moving the fridge doesn't require much, just electrical which you probably have over there anyway so that wouldn't drive the cost back up and if you use 12" stacked wall cabinets instead of buying the 24" "pantry" you might actually save money there as well. LOl. I wasn't trying to switch up the plan just thought hey! What's so going to do with all that countertop hidden in that back corner...

Thanks for all the good ideas. I swear it's hard to design when you have a completely wide open space sometimes--too many choices!

I will definitely re-visit my door thoughts. Orginally my husband wanted a sliding door or french doors to the back yard in BOTH the DR and Kitchen. I thought with the side door also, I'd feel like I was living in a farce. (There's an old theater joke that you can tell the play is going to be a farce by how many doors are on the set --Noises Off has 6-8) My thought was we wouldn't want to track back yard dirt through the DR, but then, this isn't a separate formal DR. We're much too casual for that. We've also toyed with the idea of putting the kitchen where the DR is and moving the DR over.

My DH desparately needs me to just make some decisions already and go with it!