explain furthur what the limitations are in the corner at bathroom wall......I see an L kitchen with the short side of L extending from questionable corner....straight toward fireplace wall about halfway across the room...... with some stool placement as well... This would involve a corner sink in that questionable corner, likely, as under that sink cabinet you handle all the fittings that are are not going away...but explain more about that .....the long outside wall handles fridge and range and no "walkway' limitations,so fridge can protrude or not.....Table and chairs are placed much furthur down toward window alcove,perhaps even turned the other way, depends on what table you get -maybe round table now with one large open area available.??....

The corner at the bathroom wall is where the fridge goes, facing out toward the dining room. The sink goes next to the fridge, along the same wall. The appliances are all in one line along that one wall. This isn't an L-shaped kitchen, it's a one-wall kitchen - more like an "I". The island is breakaway space facing the one wall of appliances.

I think herbflavor was suggesting you extend the bathroom wall, eliminate the island and move/reorient the table. Perhaps not a corner sink as I depicted. Move the sink to the top of the long wall and scooch the range down toward the deck to give extra prep space between the two.

how about closing off the door to the upper deck and putting a door to it on the angled wall (looks to have a window there now)?

then make the kit an L shape with short part where the door WAS and a smaller island for extra counter top space.

javachik, I LOVE how you marked up the layout. One issue with that is that our contractor is building out the wall by 3 feet to exactly where you suggested putting in the fridge, so that would block off the hallway and bathroom from the kitchen and dining room. Aside from that, I'd still do the island, just a smaller one, and still orient the table lengthwise, it would be tighter but it's New York, things are tight anyway.

If anyone had suggested the layout you did earlier, I'd have probably asked the contractor to put in columns around an island instead of building out the wall.

since posting originally, I bit the bullet and hired a designer to come in and nail things down so we could order cabinets, and we ended up sticking with the one-wall kitchen and making the island 3 by 6 feet including an overhang for 3 stools, and making the focal points of the kitchen the fridge and range, with an undermount sink in the middle and a hidden dishwasher next to the range. I think it will look clean and be functional with access to the stove and sink and fridge from both sides of the island, and a lot of island prep space. As for the cabinets issues, the designer worked with the contractor to tighten the area behind the wall so the counter-depth fridge will only stick out 3-4" inches past the cabinets, which should work. I think this kitchen will work.

They did suggest a small prep sink on the edge of the island closest to the fridge. I loved that idea but it added a few thousand to the project and budget is so tight already, and I wasn't sure if it would make the kitchen "awesome" or just end up being a pricey semi-error. So we didn't pull that trigger.

As for storage space, the contractor is building closets on an angle into the space next to each pocket door, so we get storage without losing flow. I can't picture it but hope it works well.

desertsteph, I thought of your suggestion so many times and ultimately rejected it because
(1) the bay window in the dining room is perfectly symmetrical and a gorgeous look from the dining room, and an angled door would ruin the detail and look (if anything I'd put a door between the 2 bay windows, and make our deck wide enough for the door there, but I priced it out and it added some crazy number that we can't afford (turns out neighbors with decks who have converted windows to doors all have doors off the kitchen or middle of bay windows, none on the angle) and
(2) the kitchen window is long and lets in a lot of light, so putting the counters in front of the windows would mean bricking up the window partly and losing light which is so important; I couldn't pull that trigger.

How about a re-think ?

Put the table where the kitchen is now and use the opposite side of the room for the kitchen ?

You are a bit late in the game , but I'd put down the hammer now, and iron out the design before going any further. This is a classic novice mistake. Rush , rush , let's get it done by next Tuesday, and we'll decide on fly about this detail and that. Costs more in the long run and my experience has been that you don't end up saving any time either.

Is that your main dining table or do you have a separate dining room? If you have a separate, do you need that large a table in the kitchen AND bar seating for 4 ?

What kind of professional help do you currently have for design ?

Is it possible to put a door to your deck in the Bay bump out and a window where the door currently is ?

Thanks xedos for weighing in! yes I'd love to switch out kitchen and dining room -that switch was done on the floor below this one, which is the ground floor, by running pipes down into the basement where no one cared to look. - in this case, though, this kitchen is in the parlor/2nd floor and the floor below it is where we have had our kitchen/dining room, and it's an original tin ceiling in gorgeous shape. it will be a tenant's apartment and the ceiling will help us get the rent we want (it's that pretty, and the apartment is small). plus it's a ground floor so I figure we may live there if we stay and get too old to climb the stairs, and want tenants above us paying our overhead later. So the swap isn't feasible for this particular house.

yes it's possible to put a door to the deck in the bay bumpout instead of off the kitchen. it would cost more than we can afford (something like $10,000 extra to widen the deck and $4,000 to make a door out of the bricks and reinforce the sides - not an option right now). If we can do it down the line I will definitely do that.

there's no door to the deck now. the deck is being built, should be done Monday, and the window-door conversion will follow. we could still put the door someplace else. for me the only 2 places would be between the bay windows, or off the kitchen. so off the kitchen it will be.

we don't have a separate dining room - it's the city and for the city, what we have is pretty generous believe it or not. we won't have a "standard" size dining room table - ours will be probably 35" wide not the 42" that I think is standard, which will help.

for design we have an architect helping as needed on an hourly basis, a designer (also hourly) who signed off on this design based on all the constraints (trust me she had a ton of suggestions that didn't work for various reasons). and our general contractor has a kitchen/bath store so he does cabinets/countertops and has been weighing in helpfully.

sad to say I've been planning this for about a year and a half. Boy did I have a lot to learn. I had NO idea what I didn't know. I hired an architect, wanted to fire her then she quit. When I look back at her designs I'm so thankful we didn't end up working with her. She would have saved us a lot of money but didn't "get" our house and wanting to preserve details, and a certain openness of flow (all she saw was wasted space in a hallway, that she wanted to knock out). This design has a lot of issues but the compromises are much closer to what I'm willing to live with.

thanks again!

dream - It would really help for suggestions if you could post a layout showing where walls etc are going to be and which walls/windows/doors cannot change.

Here's the drawn layout with elevation - not a full match but gives a good sense of final layout, leaves lots of space for entertaining below the chandelier in the dining room.