Jen, Your house burned??? Oh My! How horrible for you guys, but it looks like everyone got out okay? I hope!!! Good luck with planning the new kitchen. I have 24" wide and deep pantry cabinets and they are tough to keep organized. I think you could realistically steal the six inches at the far end of your pantry for the broom closet without feeling the pinch, especially if you do roll-outs on the shelves. My pantry is actually in my laundry room, which is just outside the kitchen door in the garage. Is putting the pantry in another room an option for you? My sister in law actually converted her in-house laundry room to a walk-in pantry and moved the laundry room into the garage itself. Good luck!

Thanks for the awesome advice ladies. I have been away from the forums..we were out of town dealing with family illness. ANyway, on a brighter note..back to the reno! Jeri: I am not familiar with the designated broom closet thingy. I would love to see it. I am having a closet set up for that in my kitchen area, too. FirstHouse: Any idea who it was that put the cubbies underneath? I'd love to see pictures. I can somewhat visualize since my current W/D is up on a pedestal but curious how useful they would be if I had to stand on my head to see in them. YKWIM? I am getting nervous abt the 3x3 space. I guess I never thought abt that! I am so thrilled to be getting it changed, I am blinded to the downsides... Jsweenc: Thank you for your thoughts...Where are u in NC? We r in CHarlotte...been here abt 5 years after being out in the midwest for most of our married life.DH is a USC alum/fan so we have the running.."real" Carolina discussion a lot! Of course, there really isn't any discussion since *we* know the answer! Anyway, you are very kind to play with my layout. That wall between the two rooms already exists. We had just planned to cut a hole in it for the door. The front part (where the powder room will go) is my current laundry room and the back part (cubbies) is a storage room that backs up to the laundry room. We are stealing that space from the garage if you will. The back wall is approx 10 ft wide. W/D are standard front loaders at 27" but GC said allow 30" for each one. Not a lot of space. It looks a lot bigger on paper!! We are moving our entrance to the house to back area from a door that is currently on the other side of the commode wall in the drawing. I am putting a coat closet there.So I will have additional storage for coats besides the ONE they are to put in the cubbie.(yeah, right...I'll need to do an inservice with the kids on that!) I am not married to closing everything off in cabinets. I am leaning toward wanting to close my laundry area off from the powder room with a pocket door though. I'd like to think my LR will be neat and clean but it really never is.I suffer from CHAOS which is an acronym for "Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome" because my house is always a mess.I feel like that back area will suffer the most even with additional storage. I thought about switching the kid's zone to the file drawer area but worried about the mess. I also have that window right in the middle. Both of those windows currently exist and moving them would require a lot of additional expense. I toyed with the idea of putting the powder room on the window side but figured it would make it dark down the hallway. That would free up cubbie space on the other side. I'd LOVE to hear what you guys think about all of this....My GC emailed me yesterday and wants to finalize things next week!!!!! Yikes....I'm getting a little panicky...

Been doing a bit of thinking (and working) so haven't really had a chance to post. Davidro: Thanks again for the suggestion, but I'm not into the Silgranit or the drainage area. As far as I'm concerned, taking away counter space is a bad thing. As for the other things, I stood int he future stove area and there was plenty of space behind me for others to get by. I don't think thats an issue. Measured the fridge and will need to incorporate the dimensions into the layout. They're pretty close as they are now, probably a 1/4" here and there off. Opening my fridge to 90 degrees gives me access to pretty much everything easily. If I need to take drawers out (which I do like once a year now) I can either pull the fridge out or just remove some of the door storage shelves (they pop in and out easily). So, where I have it now is pretty good in terms of placement. I'm thinking of getting a 36" wide vent hood instead of the 30". i've been doing more reading and it seems like everyone is going 6" wider than the range/cooktop, especially with gas. Also, I'm thinking in the future, when this stove dies (hpefully not for a while) we'll get something a bit more high performance, but still 30" wide. Anyways, in order to get a 36" hood in, I need to switch the 24" cabinet to the left of the stove in the layout above to a 30" which is better for pots too. The cabinet on the left side of the stove will stay at 18". I'll have to rip my door trim down a bit, but oh well, can't have it all I suppose. So, I'll try to get my plan updated a bit although there aren't any huge changes at the moment. Still thinking about microwave placement. Have to do a rough layout for my laundry room as well. We're moving it from the main floor to the basement and the plumber that is coming to do the kitchen drains is going to do the laundry room rough in as well so need to get that planned out. Bye for now! Thanks! Dan

Thanks for the link, buehl! That's exactly what I was going to search for this morning. I do have a bit of wall on one side of the cabinet (the edge of an archway into the eating nook/butler's pantry--hence the need for the cabinet to create space for the refrigerator door swing) that would make the back third of a double-sided pull-out inaccessible from one side. plllog, thanks for throwing out the idea of modifying the frame. I think, though, that it's time for not letting the best be the enemy of the good, and keeping it simple just to get the thing ordered. To someone who always before has had to snake a hand into a thin crack between the wall and refrigerator to grab a broom, this will feel positively luxurious, even one-sided and a couple inches narrower than might have been possible. Thanks for all the help. This was the last cabinet detail, and the order will go in today. Well, we're still working on getting the stain right. There never is just "one" last detail, is there?