I've given this a lot of thought and I just can't warm up to idea of the sink on the peninsula and losing space with a counter overhang in what's already a small dining room. I much prefer the sink on the outside wall. We need to keep the office closet and the shower because this is our "aging in place" house, and at some point we might need a downstairs bedroom. This morning our architect and his assistant crawled under the house to take the structural measurements and see what would be possible. There's a city requirement that the garage must be at least 9'x20' which has complicated things a bit because our original plan was eating into the 20' length. The stairs are a limiting factor as well. The new plan is this: steal up to 18 inches from the current furnace/water heater area to allow for cabinets to be recessed, and steal even more from the garage to have space for the fridge. With fridge/cabinets set into the back wall, that gives us 12 feet to work with for the rest of the room. The math so far is: 26" sink/window cabinets 36" aisle 36" island 46" aisle --- 12' The bad news is that there's no room for a double oven, so I've switched the cooktop to a range. The furnace gets moved to the spot just to the left of the door from the hall to the kitchen. We'll have a smaller furnace there because we're going to heat the upstairs from a 2nd furnace in the attic. The plans: The first tall cabinet unit will have to be shallower on top because it's limited by the stairs. The windows can't be centered on the back wall because the new office will come 3 feet into the end of the kitchen. I put in a few more uppers. The island will just be 2 cabinets with a 12" overhang, but I drew it as 4 to get the dimensions right. Maybe I can add another 12" set of drawers on the stove end. Comments welcome!

Congratulations on starting the adoption process. I hope that goes really quickly and smoothly for you. Some friends of mine adopted from Ethiopia two years ago and are incredibly happy with their son. I wish you the same joy. One thing to consider, if you're planning on adopting an infant, is making it as convenient as possible to feed them. That means keeping all the bottles and accessories (nipples, cleaning supplies, bottle warmer...) somewhere that you can easily do the entire process (clean bottles, put them away/take them out, store, mix and warm the formula) in one place. Obviously you won't need that functionality forever, so also think about what that space will become when your babies have become children; maybe you should put it adjacent to the snack area, so the snack area can just get bigger as the kids grow. I know it's a hassle to go through all these layouts, but remember, that is NOTHING compared to the hassle of living with a badly designed kitchen for the next decade or however long. Put in the time now to make your life easier later. You won't regret it. So here are some questions and suggestions: You bake infrequently (once a month), so why get a double oven? A single oven and the counter space above it (where you could keep your George Foreman grill or your microwave) seems like it'd be much more useful for you. Also, am I misunderstanding the layouts? It looks like you have both a 30" range AND a double oven. Is that a 30" range or a 30" cooktop? If it's a range, then you would have three ovens... why, since you bake so infrequently? If you want the flexibility of having more oven space for those rare occasions when you need it, I think you would love a convection oven (see link below--there are tons of these from all different brands, of course). They are basically speed ovens capable of baking or roasting anything a regular oven can bake or roast (but it cooks much faster), but when you're NOT using them to bake, you just use them as a microwave. So with a 30" range and a convection microwave, you would be set. And you would save a ton of money, in addition to gaining more storage and more counterspace. And that's the other reason to ditch the double oven. Counterspace is even more precious for you, with the way you live, than it is for the average family. That's because you're a two-cook family, so you need prep space for two people working simultaneously--and you plan on having boy scouts/girl scouts in there sometimes, making it way more than a two-cook kitchen at times--and also, you like a lot of "as seen on TV" cooking devices. You need counterspace to use them on; the ones you use daily (toaster, etc.) would be most convenient if they lived on the counter, but even though you would probably store the ones you use less frequently, you'll still want enough counter space that you don't have to clear off the counter every time you want to use them. So you need counterspace not just for prep and a toaster, but for several other devices too. And the other need for counterspace comes from the snacking, reheating leftovers, etc. part of the equation. So in other words, counterspace is A LOT more important for you than having multiple ovens. You use the dining room all the time and would like the kitchen to be a hangout for entertaining, and appropriately for that, you've put a counter with seating (seats in the dining room) where those two rooms meet. So you were right to ditch the little table in the kitchen shown in one of your layouts. You don't need more seating there; it would just get in the way. Since you bring groceries in the door shown at the bottom of the layout, having the fridge near there is convenient. For groceries, most people like to put them on a counter or tabletop and start putting them away from there, rather than setting them on the floor. If you prefer that too, then you'll need a decent amount of countertop near the fridge. None of your layouts have that, except the ones that have some kind of table or cart in the middle of the kitchen--but people have expressed concerns that your kitchen's size and layout would make a central table or cart more of an obstacle than a help. So, putting aside for a moment the fact that you bought two 18" pantries already--maybe there's somewhere else for them to go, and if not you certainly wouldn't be the first person to buy something that she ended up not being able to use (many people sell their "oops" purchases on Craigslist or donate them for a tax deduction, or put them elsewhere like the garage or basement)--anyway, leaving out the pantries for now, is there a layout you can come up with that gives you counterspace right next to the fridge? I think the one you posted on Feb 10 at 0:35, with the table in the kitchen, is a good start--keep the fridge there, but instead of a double oven, have a counter that runs along that bottom wall almost all the way to the door where you bring groceries in. Given the dimensions, this counter would be an L shape. It would be a deep counter right beside the fridge, but a great place to keep "as seen on TV" devices that you use less often and a great place to put groceries that you've just brought in. Since you preheat frozen food a lot, would it make sense to have a freezer in the basement? Or is your house laid out in such a way that that's too far away? If a basement freezer doesn't make sense, what about having a mini-freezer instead of a mini-fridge under one of the counters? Here is a link that might be useful: Panasonic Convection Microwave

The most used space in any kitchen is the space between the sink and the stove. That's where all the prep takes place. Right now, with both of your sinks on the perimeter, that leaves you with your back to anyone else in the kitchen, especially the island. A smaller prep sink on the island instead of the two larger sinks would actually be more functional than what you have. You also have your dishwashers spread apart, which just makes the cleanup zone encompass the whole kitchen rather than just a distinct space away from the prep zone. If you have something that won't fit in that dishdrawer, you have to schlep it all across the kitchen dripping water the whole way to be able to put it in the DW. And, a DW set 90° to a sink is a real PIA to actually use. It always bangs your shins. Your dish storage is a LONG way away from your cleanup zone. It's a hike from either of the DW's. I'd put the freezer drawer and MW on the other side of the island adjacent to the fridge. That way if anyone wants a snack or drink while you're cooking, they're mostly out of the prep zone. The layout of your cooktop and windows suggest that you aren't allowing enough room for a proper ventilation hood. With that large a cooking zone, you'll need a large and powerful CFM ventilation system at least 3" larger than your cooking zone. Your island looks a bit large for the space, and the clearances look tight. It would help if you could indicate some dimensions with your drawing. I think this is a case that a rectangular island might not be the best shape for the space. Maybe kidney shaped, with the larger part of the "bean" in the prep zone, and the smaller part being the seating area. Rounded seating areas are always more comfortable for the folks sitting at them than are square.

I would very seriously consider closing off the doorway to the entry hall and making that a pantry area. Your traffic pattern would not be that much further to come into the kitchen from the DR and it would help with storage tremendously. If it were accessible from the hall instead of the kitchen (a common older home scenario) then you could have the range cabinet run extend all the way to the fridge wall. I'd also explore moving the door to the powder room to the DR. Neither the KIT nor the DR is ideal, but I think the DR door would be better for most people. What is the narrow door to the left on the range run? It's not shown there on the floor plan, and it's cutting into your storage for that wall. With the overhead view to see what's what, I'd ditch that lonesome cabinet between the bathroom and the exterior entry. It's in your traffic path and makes you have to make the island narrower there. Take that room and add it to the island instead. If it's intended as dish storage, and I can see where it would be convenient to have dish storage there, then the additional cabinets in the island can work for that and you can keep your dishes there. Symmetry on an island that faces the cooking area will never be seen or appreciated. Instead, focus more on function and making it work better. I'm with the others that the DW and trash needs to be swapped. If you closed off that hall door to make a pantry and shifted the whole range bit down, that would give you plenty of room for dish storage right behind the DW on the range wall run.