Unfortunately I can;t scan drawings, I changed from PCs to Macs a while ago and never bothered updating my scanner to Mac. I did a coupe of quick drawings in adobe illustrator. Nothing fancy as I just got the program and haven't learned how to properly use it. But regarding the "medicine cabinets" in the pony wall, the following scratch pad drawings will hopefully convey a better idea of what I'm getting at: Note that the "sink side" medicine cabinet uses the upper part of the pony wall and the "toilet side" storage uses the lower half of the pony wall. I didn't show doors. There might not even be space to have a door on the toilet side. I can show you a photo of what I did in my own bathroom. Instead of having a narrow 5" wide pony wall, I instead turned it into a 48" tall cabinet that's maybe 15" wide and about 32" deep. You can see two drawers in my "pony cabinet". The upper is where my wife stores her hair dryer, etc, there are outlets in the cabinet so they stay plugged in all the time. The lower drawer is on 28" full extension slides, so it slides all the way out of the cabinet, almost like a kitchen pull-out pantry. The lower drawer is divided in half vertically, the shelving on one side faces the sink side of the room and it serves as a medicine cabinet of sorts, with several shelves about 4" deep. The side that faces the toilet has several shelves that are about 6" deep, deep enough to hold rolls of toilet paper, toilet cleaning supplies, etc. I think using a pocket door will help your room spatially, especially with the room being 5-1/2' deep and your vanity taking up a bit of that 5-1/2" depth. Does this help clarify things a bit?

A lot of good advice here already. Ikea is a tricky store, we often installed Ikea for our customers in the past years. Good for rental properties, I would not put in my own home. To me, you get as many quotes as it takes you to meet the person who can deliver good design to you. Even though the quality of cabinets is very important, great kitchen is about good layout and great hardware options: drawer-based systems, swivels, hardware that makes hard to reach places accessible. We offer all of the above, so if you wish to check out some of the top of the line hardware options and design, you are welcome to stop by our showroom and meet for a FREE consult with our designers.

Starting early While you won't likely find a KD to work on a project that far out without a retainer (which you ought to wait on till you know more) I do think that it isn't a bad idea to do some preliminary exploring. I regularly work on projects that are a year out and currently working on several that span more (but those are for a repeat professional and have retainers) You can get rough (very rough!!) ball park ideas- beware of low ball guesses though. You will get a sense of what is out there for the money. More important though is getting a sense of "WHO" is available. As others have pointed out many KD's will be less than interested but if you present a serious completion date and a general budget anyone worth their salt should be able to answer some questions and give you an idea of what cabinets fall into you budget. You won't have a final cost but the more specific you are about everything you want the closer it can be. Starting early gives you some time to establish a relationship, at least that is how I look at it. ( I just spent 5 months buying a car and when I went into talk I told each salesman I was getting this 6 or 7 months out (an eternity in that world). How that went played a part in deciding who I got it from) The other thing you can get settled early is budget. As Joe says everyone has a number "you're comfortable with" (everyone does, everyone, just some are more flexible) There are parts that you can get fairly solid prices on. Flooring, appliances, sinks, faucets, hardware and counters are easier to price out than cabinets. Have your SO assess just what he wants to handle and realistically how much time he can invest before it costs him work. Since he's in the trade maybe you can get an idea of other costs that may crop up. Mechanicals, electric in particular, are often big tickets. Once you have all that, add them up and subtract from you "comfortable number" see what is left. That gives you an idea of what is left for cabinets, incidentals and overages. Now you know if you're number is realistic, if you have to do RTA, can get insets, or need to move you're comfort zone. It also allows you to be sure you have enough money when the time comes. Inset- If the budget is really tight and you don't want RTS cabinets might look into Traditional overaly- which has some of the look of insets and is actually always a lower cost than full overlay or inset. My experience is that decent base level factory made frameless cabinets typically cost more than the equivalent quality framed cabinet (there are a very few exceptions). Once into upper middle and hi end then framelss cost less BUT insets from many companies at that level don't cost any more than full overlay. In the the brands I have that offer both but charge more for inset the difference in per cabinet cost is 10% BUT the net increase on a kitchen is usually only 5-8% since trim, panels, inserts and the like does not increase along with the cost of the box. I personally prefer privately held makers to those owned by conglomerate companies for a lot of reasons-inset pricing is a piece of that- keep an eye out for brands you don't recognize the name. Just find out what you can about them, for that a (good) KD can be an asset. Total "average" cost I'm close enough to the metro NY area to have relatively higher costs though not up there with the city. A lot of our work comes from professional referrals the majority of which is upper end (not all though) However most of our local traffic is middle of the road (and my favorite), making budget is a very big priority. Even without zero or very limited DIY and only modest compromises there are ways to have a nice, fully functional, well designed, quality kitchen at a good bit less than the big numbers posted for averages (which are for 200 sq ft kitchens BTW) I've done plenty of complete, fully functional (all I do) kitchens with cabinets I'd put in my own home that totaled out between 30 and 40k and a few down in the 20's. None with RTA's or imported cabinets. Now that is not magic, or even high discounts. Those kinds of numbers agree with some listed national averages out there, just not those on Houzz, Remodeling magazine. You just have to pick and choose your battles which means a head start can't hurt nor can having someone on your side.

In one of the other posts where you asked the same question, you indicated that you were getting rid of the door to the outside. That's a good idea, unless there's some reason you wanted people entering your house through a bathroom. "Wondering if there are any builders or designers out there who might give a guess as to what this entails." I don't understand why you are not directing these questions to the GC and the architect. There are too many cooks in this kitchen, and this kind of dilemma/ mangled design is the result. You want something very specialized (dare I say idiosyncratic,) and you're not going to find it at Lowes or Ikea. If you don't like your architect, find a designer who can work with you locally. Or you can keep asking the same question over and over, and a bunch of random people will throw a bunch of random ideas out at you. There's such a thing as too much information. Ideally, owner, designer, and builder work together so that these types of things don't come up when you're staring at stud walls. Dozens of people have given you good ideas here. Hire someone local to turn the best ones into reality, or your'e going to be staring a stud walls (or a terrible design) for a long, long time.