Our house, built in the late 80's, has one of those planning desks built in the kitchen. I've never kept a chair there and instead use that area for our dogs' bowls and the large food bin. One of these days I'd love to redo our kichen but I'll have to design a similar area. It's open and convenient and yet out of the way at the same time.

Many people use their mudrooms and that would be ideal except ours is a pass-through laundry room between our garage and kitchen. It's cluttered enough without tripping over the dogs bowls!

Our's are in the utility room against the far wall. Both bowls sit on pretty cork placemats. The cat's bowl sits on top of the dryer, with her own placemat.

Amazingly, the placemats are what makes the area look neat. We have two big dogs so you can imagine the mess they make drinking water!

Houzz has some great ideas for tucked-away places:

http://www.houzz.com/dog-bowls

We have a large chocolate lab that slobbers and drips water on everything, so we keep ours outside on the porch or in the garage. One thing with having large dogs we find is that is does help to elevate the bowls. Makes it much easier for them to eat.

Right in the kitchen, lined up against a small portion of one wall. I want easy access to them, and I think the bowls look fine where they are. They sit on a fake oriental carpet so that any dropped food or splashed water stays off the floor, but that's rarely an issue.

Neither the bowls nor the carpet match anything else in the kitchen, but once we're finished doing the kitchen, I can see myself getting stuff that will go with it. These days, there's such a vast array of bowls & dishes that coordinating should be simple.

Since you're doing a renovation but we had to work within an existing space, you do have options we did not. My only caution is to make sure whatever space or solution you come up with leaves the dishes easily accessible. Who wants to bend down under something, or have to open a door or something, every time you want to feed the pets?

A book you might look for is titled Animal House Style. I don't know whether it's still in print, but it contains many photos on solutions to various decorating problems having to do with pets in a house. I can't recall any of the photos of pet dishes, but that most certainly must be an issue the book deals with. Or just go online and look around. :)

The water bowls are in a wrought iron stand on the blank wall adjacent to the sink/oven wall. I had them further from the sink before but it was a pain. The food bowls go on top of the food bin in the pantry when I remember to pick them back up after mealtime :)

I tried having a mat under the water bowls but my girl will drip water 10+ feet away from the bowls, so I gave up. They really don't splash much AT the bowls so it's not a big deal.

Have you seen where they build the pet stations into cabinets now? Or in place of an under-the-stairs closet? Spaces like that - so neat. I see that in alot of dec magazines now days.

Our little pup has a water bowl in the kitchen. On mornings that I work or we are leaving the house, she is fed in our bedroom (also has an out-of-sight water bowl in there). Our master bath used to be "her room" (used a baby gate), and she still likes to nap in there, so it's easy to feed her in our room before we leave.

In the evenings, she is fed in the kitchen.

tina

No pics, but I keep my Tibetan Spaniel's bowls in the kitchen tucked under the cab a bit. Chloe is only 11 pounds so her small bowls (that say "Spoiled" and "Princess" ) are unobtrusive. Our big boy, dobie Ronin, has big bowls and I keep them around the corner from the kitchen in the family room, in a out of the way spot. My dogs need to be separated when they eat so Ronin doesn't try to eat Chloe's food as well.
Lynn

Our two dogs dine in the pantry. It's an oddly shaped room created when a new wing was added about 17 years ago. I like the idea of a rubber mat and have been looking for one. Our biggest problem is that the little dog mines through the kibble and eats only the best ones, scattering the rest all over the floor! We usually buy the same dog food from a pet store, but the occasional bag from the grocery means we'll have a mess for about a week.

And this is right across from it:

Our dogs eat and drink in the mudroom. It's not a big mudroom -- it's basically an entry from the back door but there is a closet on one side and the dog bowls on the other. We have 3 dogs, but only 2 bowls. One bowl is for water. When they eat, they have a particular order (oldest to youngest) and they wait their turn. Two of our dogs are English bulldogs and they make a big mess when they drink water, so we have tile on the floor as well as a tile "baseboard" in the mudroom. Plus, they have an LL Bean Waterhog matt under their bowls.

We keep the dog food in the mudroom closet.

Fun - my little one (10 lb yorki-poo) eats out of small fiesta ware plates!!! Because of her size and her long ears, she does better with a plate than a bowl. Dry food is kept in a shallow bowl and is always out for her. She doesn't eat alot of dry food. She uses one plate for morning and one for evening. Plates are washed after each use.

I have a short blank wall space just before the cabinet bumps out at the entrance to the kitchen....Casimir's dishes go there...out of the way, not walked on, but easy to keep an eye on when we go by to make sure there's water in his dish.

We struggled with this as, when you're designing a space, you tend to design out nooks and crannies, yet they can be so useful.

We don't have a mud room or a pantry. We don't have a proper laundry room, as it shares a room with the bathtub. That being said, the cat's dish is on top of the dryer, so you get to look at it when you get out of the shower in the morning (but which also makes for warm toasty towels in the winter!).

We solved the dog dish problem by havint the dogs eat outside. The two older dogs' dishes stay outside the back door and they get fed in the morning. There is a big galvanized tin bucket/trough out there for water. the puppy eats right near his crate for now, but his dish will move outside later this year.

I do have a water dish that stays inside for when they're all inside. It sits in a little spot just outside the kitchen.

Mine are in the den. My other problem was food storage. Space is limited and I wanted something that wasn't cheesey and sort of decorative to hold the giant bags of dogfood. I found a really nice one on amazon that fits the bill - the Simple Human Pet Food Container.

I did post this over on the Pets forum a few months ago. I found it when I was looking for a container and loved the idea, though its a little late for me since I had already remodeled the kitchen.

http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=12661671&clickid=prod_cs

Here is a link that might be useful: In Wall Pet Feeding Station

Tinam61, I love that your pup eats from pretty plates. I thought my friend's idea was genius because it does away with the need to have a place to put the dog bowls. Of course, some folks might not want to share their dishware with their pets...LOL!

The main feeding station is situated between the hutch and TV console in the kitchen/keeping room. One of the kitties is currently having health issues, so I've given her an extra spot in dh's office.

Btw, I recently bought a new feeding station on Etsy for both of them to use, but right now that's not happening.

Here is a link that might be useful: pet feeders

Mine are on the floor in my kitchen (really the breakfast room). There's a space between the end of the china cabinet and the door to the pantry that's the perfect size for a mat and the bowls. The dog food is in a smallish white "Oscar the Grouch" style metal garbage can with a lid.

I should add that the garbage can with the dog food lives INSIDE the pantry.

Right now my (German Shepherd) dog's big bowls are in the breakfast room. When we remodel, I am hoping to move them to somewhere in the family room. We'll have a wet bar there (convenient for filling the water bowl) and her food is stored in the adjacent pantry. Really, I only need to keep the water bowl down at all times. When I dog-sit, it's definitely necessary to have a very large bowl of water available, but there is no reason I need to keep the food bowl down (since I can't free feed). I don't intend to build anything in, but I am hoping to tuck them out of the way. It's never fun to step in your pet's full water bowl.

We do not have a proper laundry room either (oh how I wish we did!), but i do have the planning desk in the kitchen like Treasuretheday, where we stash the 'not too unattractive', large food bin. Also the water bowl. We have two large Boxers and I agree with Outsideplaying... it helps to elevate the bowls for large dogs.
I purchased a feeding station from Amazon, it looked like wood, but was not. After a few months, with water slopping down inside it started to smell, so out it went! Then I was on the hunt for tall metal or wrought iron stands, but boy are they expensive, and hard to find! I took a friends advice and bought metal plant stands, at Garden Ridge. They are just the right height, and the base for the flower pot is just the right diameter to fit a glass mixing bowl. They don't look bad in the kitchen, and after the dogs eat, I scoot the stands under the desk behind their big water bowl. The plant stands was a great idea, and really inexpensive.

Under the laundry room sink.

We keep our dogs' two large food bowls in the diswasher. Take them out when we feed them, put them back in when they are finished. The water bowl is in a corner below the wall ovens and the small metal garbage can with the food is in the garage. We keep a plastic container with food in a kitchen cabinet.

We have a short wall in the corner of the kitchen that is just outside the pantry closet and which turned out to be the perfect size for a raised water and food bowl. The bottom shelf of the pantry closet is where we keep containers of food and treats, so that's handy. The wall is parallel to the end of our island. It's out of the way of most foot traffic, which I like.

We have a large walk-in closet (8X12) by our garage/back door. There's a doggie dog in that closet that goes to the garage and then to the outside. We always kept the doggie dishes there, as well as their beds. It was a comfy place to put the dogs when we were going to be gone. Easy access outside, too. Unfortunately, both our aged girls are gone now.

Our dog bowls are along a wall in the kitchen. It works well. I'm not sure how awesome it looks, but it fits in nicely. Our kitchen is usually somewhat messy since we're always cooking and do so much in there - it's our main entry too, since we have an old house with no mudroom or anything. I figure the dog bowls really don't stand out when there is mail, bags, and various cooking articles on the countertops, along with a pile of shoes next to the door.

I bought a box of pretty sandwich glass dishes from an auction for 2 dollars. No one wants this glassware that is over 100 years old. 2 dollars for the whole box. Now I can feed the cat and when she finishes it goes in the dishwasher. If it breaks oh well I have another.