I can't tell for sure but your main sink and DW's look a bit close to the island but I am not really sure on the scale. Also where do plan on having your main prep area?

I can't tell what is on the right of the picture, near the 3 that is circled. It has blue writing that I can't make out.

It looks like stairs are going up by your sink area. Will the people in the room next to where the sink is located be able to look down and see dirty dishes, etc.? Will there be a partial wall there?

Do you need the corner area behind the range to hide the plumbing? Although it says cabinet behind it. Sorry, I seem to have more questions than answers.

It says "cabinets"?

Ok, well, with stools, the counteredge should be a minimum of 44 inches away from a wall since you have passage ways there. The side with cabinets behind it should be 54" to 60" from the opposing counteredge.

I'm not liking a couple of small things - the pantry pulls out in front of stairs and the angled stairs by the sink for safety reasons. The angled stair is kinda trippy and the person can easily fall into the seated person or the island edge or the edge of the sink countertop. We don't know what rooms are connected on any side or how frequently the other staircase would be used, but it looks like a problem to roll out a pantry in front of it.

I don't know the measurements of la cornue, but it looks like the oven doors and dw doors can collide. I don't know if this is important.

In your kitchen, I don't care for the placement of the prep sink and/or the ref. The 30" ref has the big fat door and it has the potential to be wierd with multiple people in the kitchen because opening the door might contention with person at the prep sink. The prep sink location - food moves from ref across aisle to prep sink and back again seems kinda odd. Food travels about 8 feet or so to end up 4 feet from where it started.

Its a very one person place... Is that what you wanted?

I know others will ask this also, can we see more of the house (to know what's on the other sides of the stairs and doors)? Do you entertain? Do you have small, wandering tribes of playmates come through? What kinds stuff you cook?

I like how the kitchen appears to be in the "middle" of things...in our house the kitchen is definitely the "heart" of the house. I also like that you have protected the cook(s) from the traffic and kept the open feel!

But, a few things....

• # 1 Refrigerator...not only does it compete w/the prep sink, but it's also inaccessible to anyone not cooking. Ideally, a refrigerator and, preferably, MW should be on the perimeter of the kitchen so it can be easily accessed by not only the cook(s), but also snackers without interfering with the cook(s).

Stools on the top end of the island...you will not be able to fit 4 stools there...3, maybe, but not 4. People need leg room! You can either have one on each side and, possibly, one in the middle at the top or maybe two on the top end. For seating, you need 24" width & approx 15" depth (leg/knee) for each seat.
Stairs/different levels...I think for safety reasons, especially around a kitchen, having everything on one level (instead of sunken) is much better. Bringing dishes in/out...both hot and dirty will be safer if stairs are not involved. And with children learning to walk...same thing! I also do not like the pantry (or anything) opening into stairs...even just a couple of stairs.

In addition...

• As to being a 1-person kitchen, I strongly advise you not to plan for that (if that, indeed, is your plan). Your children will grow (quickly!) and you will most likely be including them in the cooking and cleaning up. Also, with 3 or 4 children it can get crowded!

Aisle widths...I cannot tell what your aisle widths are, so I cannot comment on them directly. But, in general, aisle space should be around 42", give or take 3" with no seating. If there is seating, then 48" for an "off the beaten track" aisle and more like 5' for a well-used aisle or passage way.

It would be most helpful if you could give us the exact dimensions of each wall/opening. Plans like you show above give you general dimensions which may or may not have any basis in reality for walls!

One thing I was thinking is that if you want to garage your appliances...why not have extra deep counters/cabinets on the bottom wall...say 30" to 33" with 15" deep uppers that drop to the counter with swing up & in or out & in doors (rather than rollup). This way, you could keep them behind closed doors when not in use but open the doors and use them in-place. the extra deep counters would give you plenty of work room in front. I would recommend at least 33" deep if you get 15" deep uppers.

Why 15" deep uppers? To be sure you have room for all your small appliances...some are more than 12" deep. Also, you may be able to fit them "2 deep" for the smaller ones...i.e., you will be able to fit more in the garage.

Why not rollup doors? Because they often develop problems down the road. BUT, swing up & in or swing out & in will get the doors out of the way while prepping/cooking.

That bottom wall could...

I agree with Buehl about the refrigerator being #1 -- As it is, its location puts anyone going to the fridge in the cook's way. Not safe for little ones, and not conducive to family harmony; so something on the periphery would be much better.

A Cornuefe is a work of art that should be enjoyed on many levels. In placing your beautiful range, I'd be sure you are getting the design 'bang for the buck' as well as a protected work zone for the cook. If your kitchen opens to a living space, I'd try to put your range on the wall opposite that living space, with your prep zone opposite and seating area across from your prep zone. IMO, it's the final prep and rangetop cooking time that has the most potential to be hectic and dangerous, so also keep anything another person is likely to need out of the area immediately behind or adjacent to your range.

Your plan shows some exposed steel beams, so I'm imagining a loft-like design? High ceilings perhaps? It's certainly possible to have tall things like fridges or tall cabinets stop well below the ceiling line and not visually create 'quite' a wall where you want openness.

While I don't hate what you've got, I'm confident that you can do better. I'd like to see some of the earlier options you rejected, and also just a blank floor plan with dimensions. What about gas and water? Are they already there? Locations of adjacent rooms and traffic patterns. New construction or renovation?

Thanks, everyone, for your very helpful thoughts. I really appreciate the time that you took in making suggestions and giving me thoughts.

This is a new construction home but with so many different constraints, we don't have much leeway. One thing is that it is a tiny lot (30 X 70) on a sloping lot, so getting everything packed in can be complicated. To that end, we have to have the steps going up from room to room. I can't get rid of them, and I think that there is a reason they are at a diagonal, but I will check on that.

One self-imposed constraint is that it is REALLY important to my husband to have minimal interior walls in the main living space. Our ceilings won't be that high (a little more than 10' at the highest), but it will have what we call a "modern beach house" look, which includes the steel beams. I honestly have no ability to add more wall space; it would completely ruin the house for my husband.

I realized that I posted a slightly older version of the kitchen earlier. The differences aren't that significant, but I hope the picture below gives you more information about the current set-up.

Basically, the kitchen will be between the living room to the south, and the dining room to the east. The island labeled "countertop" at the right of the picture is two sided, with a bookcase toward the living room and cabinetry toward the kitchen. The dining room will have a halfwall that is shared by kitchen which should create a ledge blocking all the kitchen dishes. It is also where I plan for the dishes to be set after dinner in the dining room, hopefully to do away with some of the hazards of the stairs.

One big concern I have is the couple comments about it being a one-person kitchen. That is exactly what I DON"T want. My kids already help me now, and I know that I will continue to want them to help out. Any suggestions for how to change that, I would really appreciate.

Knowing that the refrigerator has to be on that wall, is there any other way that you can think to make it less of a problem for the prepping? You can have the refrigerator and freezer open the same direction, which I had planned on doing. I think that I planned to do the prep either on the island across from the refrigerator or on the counter next to the refrigerator. I expected that most people getting snacks would come from the living room, so I thought that the refrigerator would probably be out of the way from there.

Thanks, again, for your help. I will try to find more specific dimensions so I can give you more information soon.

I think the big thing you need to do in order to get workspace where you'll need it to to find a way to rotate that island so the long side runs parallel to the fridge wall. One way you could do that is to move the bookcases down to the livingroom level and have them tall enough so that they extend 3' above the height of the kitchen floor. That way the book cases would act as a barrier to prevent anyone from falling out of the kitchen. You would be eliminating the cabinets there, but you would gain the needed inches so that the island could rotate. Because the aisle between the livingroom and kitchen would be a traffic aisle and not much of a working aisle, it could be narrower, something like 36"....or dare I suggest 33" or even 30"?

Is the wall that borders the stairs a full height wall? If so, you could put in a beverage/snack center there that would help alleviate the need for the family to make it's way into the kitchen's work area to get to the fridge to get drinks and snacks. Put in a beverage fridge and store snacks there, as well as the drinking glasses. It could also house a bit of cabinetry to replace the storage space lost by eliminating the cabinets on the kitchen side of the bookcases.

The picture below is not to scale, but hopefully it will illustrate my suggestions. You'll need to work with your measurements to figure out how long that island could be.

Your husband's insistence on no walls costs you DEARLY in terms of efficient kitchen design. From a strictly visual design aesthetic -- I get it. It'll be beautiful! But from a livability standpoint, there are just so many sacrifices. It would be a shame to end up with a kitchen that doesn't function well:

- Only one wall, which means your fridge needs to be on it, and everything else either needs to be right be the fridge or not on a wall.
- Sound transmission from kitchen to living and dining rooms will be completely unimpeded, and kitchens are noisy places.
- No walls means very few places to hang artwork and wall cabients.
- The little steps into the kitchen on the bottom right of the photo send foot traffic right into the heart of the kitchen, resulting in no protected work zone for the primary cook.

Imagine for a few minutes what you would do if Hubby DID NOT insist on no walls. I know that's not what you want, but a sub-optimal kitchen layout is ALSO not what you want, and if you don't even consider the options, you'll never know how 'bad' they are. (or aren't!) And a few minutes of drawing on paper is free... (That's what salvaged my kitchen design -- when I played "what-if I didn't have to have the range against the wall?")

Imagine that instead of being burried in the only wall, you had a shorter fridge and freezer encased in beautiful wooden 'boxes' set directly behind the living room sofa. Use the space on top for an art ledge, and you'll still have more than 4' to the ceiling. Have you seen the Frigidaire 'twins'? Only 64" tall. Maybe one 'box' on each end and shorter cabinets in the middle? Then move the little staircase to funnel people away from your work zone?

Pardon the primativeness of this rendering, but here's something to consider:

I really value all of the time that you all, especially Sweeby, Buehl, and Alku05, have spent. Thank you so much.

And thank you for getting me to think past what is the current design some more.

Here are some more answers to questions, and my current thought (and actually more questions for you).

First, I love the idea of a hutch and beverage center out of the way, but the stairs are an open staircase with a well from the first floor to basement. I won't be able to put anything there. But, maybe I could have a beverage center at the end (at the top of the drawing) in the cabinets closest to the living room.

I know that my DH would die if I tried to put much of a wall between the kitchen and the living room, but maybe I could wall off the current bottom stairs by the pantry and make that a full wall for about 4 or 5 feet. That would allow me to have the deep cabinets on the full wall for an appliance garage, plus prep area, and move the refrigerator and freezer over more out of the primary prep area (which I envision to be both on the full wall at the bottom and the island).

If I had the beverage/snack area on the north end base cabinet area, then the kiddos wouldn't come too far to the range and prep area unless they were actually helping. I could move the refrigerator/ freezer to that partial wall which would also give me more upper cabinets.

I do worry some about aesthetics. We are planning on having a stone "buttress" right between the living room and kitchen toward the bottom of the picture. Having a 5 foot wall beyond the buttress would probably not look fantastic. I also wouldn't know what to put on that wall from the living room side. Maybe it would all look great; I just can't picture it.

What do you think?

And... thanks, again, for all of your help!

Can you

I'm clearly in the minority here, but I really like your current plan. The only issue I see is opening the left DW into the stove space. To address your appliance issue, you could lose the pantry and move the fridge and freezer down and put in an appliance garage where the fridge is now. The counter between the living room and kitchen could have pantry drawers below.

That said, I do like the suggested modifications, especially Sweeby's, but I would put the fridge and freezer together with the base cab next to the steps to keep as much openness as possible. If you did something like Sweeby's with the range moved down the wall a bit, instead of a china hutch in the corner there, you could put a corner appliance garage like the awesome one Julie7549 has. Check out her pictures.

Here is a link that might be useful: Julie7549's appliance garage

I figured I would try bumping this up to see if anyone had some thoughts for me....

Can someone please point to what makes this a one-person kitchen? I'm really concerned about that, and my husband would be, too. I really think that could be an entree into any changes in the plan. Both of us really want this to be a kitchen that tons of people feel comfortable hanging out in.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the deep cabinets on the east wall. It makes a lot of sense for a garage/prep area, and being able to use things in place is really important to me. It also probably would not be much of a problem with the design. I also love Julie7549's appliance garage. I keep trying to figure out how I can push for that. :) I think if I pushed the refrigerator and freezer down toward the stairs (nixing the pantry) and had an appliance garage in the interior space, I could also have pullouts for a modified pantry down below while getting a much more user- friendly space. As I write it out, I'm getting excited about that possibility!!

As for the DW competing with the oven, I think that it will happen only in the rarest of occasions. The Cornufe doors are french side swing, and the left oven is the one with more features, so I expect to use that one more than the right side. Plus, since I have almost always had a right loading dishwasher, I suspect I will naturally go to that side first, too. Thus, I think that only on the rarest of big family gatherings where I am trying to cook 8 different items and wash 24/7 will it turn out to be a problem. I am thankful, however, that the issue was brought to my attention so that I could double check that it won't be too much of a problem.

Thanks, again, for everyone's help. And, I really would appreciate help in figuring out what more I could do to make it less of a 1-person kitchen...

I don't know if this is a good way to see it - but here goes!

The green circles are occupied stools. Red is opened doors, blue ovals are bodies at different stations. Purple lines indicate cabinets with access problems some of the time.

A person inna stool takes about 2 feet by 2 feet past the counter edge. With three stools occupied, the pathway to the dining room is unappealing (not impossible, just narrow), the clean up side might be completely blocked if you're opening/closing the dishwashers or it might not. The livingroom side aisle is also unappealing as a pathway, but the person seated there blocks access to at least the purple marked cabinets. There's only three stools because each body needs an exclusive two feet of counter (minimum) and when you go around the corner, you have to leave room for the person seated at the other side to have legs. The end of your island has maybe 9 running feet of counteredge, but you lose about 30-48" because of the corners.

Next most serious thing that clean up with the twin dishwashers blocks up that aisle but also blocks the path to the dishes while unloading one of the dw.

Oven door can run into dishwasher door - not sure that's serious. Person standing at range pretty much controls that corner. So other person prepping next to prep sink. If you want to use trash from range, you need to ask prep person to move. If you want to use ref, you might have to ask prep person to move.

Again, if you have a LOT of visitors and were dreaming of that being a bar sink, the cook ends up trapped on that side by the bar service person's access to the sink and the ref.

Now in that corner, imagine getting dishes, pans, mixing bowls, etc. WHILE someone else is cooking.

"primo" prep space is the little bit between the ref and range - but it doesn't have water, so secondary prep space is right beside the prep sink (except the prep person has to keep moving out of the way of the trash).

So, you have all the major stuff (prep sink, range, ref) in a very tight triangle - which is good for one person, but not so great inna crowd.

{{gwi:2107727}}

If you start from BMore's drawing, then push the fridge and freezer over toward the living room with the fridge closest to the LR. Put the pantry either on the range side, or in shorter cabinets behind the living room.

Then push the island over closer to the dish sink and closer to the appliance wall. Make those aisles narrower on purpose so they will clearly be one-person work zones. Make the aisles on the Living Room and stair sides wider and have your stools back into the living room aisle, thereby designating them as 'public' and 'traffic' zones.

The primary cook's zone will be a triangle from fridge to island to range. A helper can work on the DW wall and on the island immediately behind; and additional helpers can then work on the top side of the island and on the cabinets backing to the living room if needed.

Extra trash cans can really help prevent cross-traffic. Or get into the habit of using a portable 'trash bowl' that then gets emptied at the end of meal prep.

And relocate your dishes so a helper doesn't have to cross a busy cook's path to set the table.

Bmorepanic,

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it to me. I understand what you mean now, and can hopefully figure out a way to make it less 1-person intensive.

Sweeby,

That explanation of how I can make it better is so helpful. It makes a lot of sense, and definitely something I would never have thought of. By doing that, people will not naturally go through the dishwasher aisle unless they are working, so they will stay out of the primary "work" area if they just want to go to the refrigerator to grab something. It also brings the seating a little closer to me while prepping which would facillitate talking more while still giving plenty of room for someone to jump in and help on the island. I can definitely get used to prepping with a trash bowl as could my kids.

I really think this will help make it much more user-friendly!