What if you added a cabinet next to the DW and did a 36x66 penninsula with seating. That would keep your working kitchen compact and maximize the breakfast nook space. That way, you would have easy access to fridge from breakfast nook as well as kitchen. Good luck. Its a nice spacious area.

Okay, this is my last idea to get you a big kitchen with good light. I altered the staircase, added a window, changed the back door to a window, and put a new door in from the garage (where you don't have to walk outside to get inside or take two 90 degree turns while carrying groceries -- it's now a straight shot into the kitchen). Your dining room, living room, and multipurpose room are unaltered except for doorways added in various places. The kitchen is now enormous and has light coming in on two sides. You have a mud room that also has a window, and you have an enormous pantry. I didn't spend a ton of time on the mudroom or kitchen layout, but you can see what is possible with this kind of space. Sky's the limit, really. The difficult part is obviously reconfiguring the stairs. I am not an expert on stairs, but estimating your ceiling height to be 8' - 9', I think where I put the new stairs will fit a straight staircase that turns at the bottom with winder steps (so the bottom steps don't protrude from the overall stairs footprint and get in the way of the front door). Like these: The door to the basement stairs would be underneath those stairs, like this: The basement stairs would have to be shaped differently from the main floor stairs, and I don't know the basement layout anyway, so I haven't taken a guess at that. (This stair stuff is DEFINITELY something you should consult a professional about -- what would fit, code, shapes, options. I know so little -- I only learned today that winder steps exist.) A variation of this idea would be to not have the basement stairs under the foyer stairs at all. You could move the basement stairs somewhere underneath the mudroom/pantry area and have the entrance to it somewhere in the mudroom/pantry (maybe having the basement stairs over there does nice things for the basement layout?). And then instead of having the basement stairs access under the foyer staircase, you could either have a front hall closet or a doorway to the kitchen. And totally separate from any of this, you could put a skylight above the staircase. Perhaps that would bring enough light to the foyer that you could keep the original door and not bother getting one with glass in it. This post was edited by Jillius on Wed, Nov 19, 14 at 18:28

It's not bad! Paint the red out and look at unfinished furniture stores for a banquette. But first go ask the kitchen forum. They will take care of you. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/kitchbath

I think this preserves the ceiling grid while still giving you a large walk-in pantry. It's large enough that you could put the MW in it - counter top model is sufficient since it will be out of sight - and install the oven below a 42" counter, something like this but with no uppers. This would give you landing space for the oven and for the fridge without a counter extending towards the sink wall, potentially directing traffic closer to the cook top. I lengthened the peninsula and eliminated the L counter you had around the duct closet. I was afraid of crowding the aisle between it and the peninsula. (could find measurements so I'm guessing aisles based on scale of appliances.) If you don't want to do the above, another way to get some kind of landing zone near the ovens would be a drop down or flip up table. That would provide counter when you need it but it would be out of the way the rest of the time. Here are ideas: