With a tuck-under garage, how will folks get to the front door? Where will guests park? The garage is tiny. My garage is 22'x22', and we can barely fit a minivan and a Jeep in there. I would never go any smaller than that - and wish ours was at least 2 feet wider. None of your bathrooms - even the huge master bath - have any storage space. Where will you put towels, TP, extra shampoo? And windows in the upstairs bathrooms would be nice too. The laundry room looks pretty claustrophobic. I suggest blocking off those dimensions around your current washer and dryer to see if it is feasible for you. The master closet isn't very functional - corners really aren't useful for hanging. I would add a pocket door from the closet to the hallway, so you don't have to carry laundry through the bedroom and bathroom to get to the closet. Have you laid out furniture in the living room/breakfast room? I think you'll concentrate your time near the fireplace, and at the breakfast table - what do you see happening in between? I know you've posted your kitchen in the Kitchens forum, so I won't address that. Good luck!

Holy Smoke! Thanks everyone for your kind inputs and special kudos to Buehl for taking your time to analyze our layout in great details. Very thoughtful reply. I should have mentioned that we are doing this project on budget -- I expect that getting permits where I live (unincorporated San Mateo County in CA) will end up biting off a large chunk of our budget. Did I read somewhere that MUA is required for a range hood >400CFM??? (I have yet to find the spec for our county but I can guess that is only more strict.) Since we do not have storage elsewhere in the old house, we elect to put in many cabinets in the kitchen in anticipation of using some of them as general storage. Due to the budget constraint, we try to keep things where they are allowed with the current pluming and gas layout. I should have mentioned that the gas pipe (that sticks up from the floor about 5" away from the wall) is about 4" to the left of where my stove it. That's the reason for that cabinet (not drawers) to the left of it because the code requires direct access to the shutoff. But Buehl, you got me thinking and I'll look into moving the stove further to the right. I was planning on putting the MW (as well as a toaster oven) on the counter to the left of the bar area so that countertop is not too wasted. Was going to have a MW Wall cabinet on that wall, but the cabinet is expensive and it limits our choices in MWs. Here is a picture of the American Woodmark Del Ray Maple Spice from their online showroom. Yes, it has the tiered trim at the bottom and the top of the center panel and the drawer front is slab. I think it might be the least expensive Shaker Woodmark line. I like the even look of the veneer center panel (vs. the striped look in some solid wood panels). P.S. BTW, the email notification on follow-ups does not seem to work here. Is that right? I did check the box to enable it, but never got any emails.

MelissaStar, You're usually the only cook, but occassionally have someone who helps. You live alone, I seem to recollect, or at least there are no kids to accomodate at a family dining area, right? And as I recollect you do some heavy duty cooking and prep, thus the desire for butchering and baking areas and for storage of canning supplies, etc. Right? Your memory is fantastic! When it is used for dinner parties, I see no reason to think it would be any more inconvenient than a similar booth at a restaurant, and they are usually the most desired spots, because they facilitate converation and coziness, My thinking exactly. I certainly prefer a booth in a restaurant to a table - I just find it more comfortable and relaxing. I started the kitchen design process focusing on seating at a peninsula, which changed to seating at various islands, but then through all of the back and forth with everyone on this board, my thinking on my likes and desires sharpened quite a bit and the appeal of the banquette became more obvious to me. I'm designing this kitchen for my enjoyment and my ease of use, not for kids or guests. Taking my morning coffee, reclined in the banquette, feet up on the opposite side, watching the sunrise is a far more enticing prospect than sitting on a stool in front of an island either in the middle of the kitchen or buried deeper in the house. I'd rather watch what's going on outside my windows than turn my focus to what's taking place on my Big Screen TV. I don't have teenagers who need to be glued to the screen during meals, so a good line of sight from meal sitting to TV was a non-factor for me. If I ever develop the habit of desiring to watch the news while I'm having dinner I can always hang a small undercabinet TV right above where the dishwasher is situated. As for the casual guest - they can sit at the banquette and they're completely out of my work flow in the kitchen and with more than a few casual guests, even the messes in the sink are hidden for 2/3 of the span of the banquette. For more formal occasions the dining room is available. And for the rare "house is teeming with guests" events, I can fit 5-7 kids at the banquette, with 3 more kids sitting at chairs while the adults are in the dining room/living room. The banquette works extremely well for me and I had the most miserable time in trying to fit it in. It doesn't really work that well in the middle of the East wall and it doesn't work that well on the South end of the East wall because now it intersects traffic and work zones. Being on the North end of the East wall keeps it out of traffic. I keep thinking there should be a way to either overlap the butchering and baking areas (since they are unlikely to be in use at the same time) That's true. I find that I like hacking up meat close to a sink because it serves double duty - easy to throw waste into and convenient for clean up. Baking doesn't require sink proximity as much, at least the way I work, so I can make do with a smaller sink near where I bake than where I cook and cut meat. This means that if I combine baking and meat cutting, which never go on at the same time, then the big sink is really only used for pot clean-up and the secondary sink is more heavily used and it has to be larger, thus taking up more counter space. I'm just not able to fire on all cylinders here and get the "perfect combination" of all the features. The alternative would be to replace part of the counter between sink and range with butcher block. That would certainly make things simpler, as kateskouros so perceptively noted in the other thread. There's just something about the change of materials in the run of the countertop that unsettles me. Maybe I just need to mull over the idea a bit more - this solution after all just popped into my head last night. A appreciate the picture of your kitchen - it now makes real what I was only imagining. The placement of the prep sink seems awkward to me, in that corner. What about moving it to the other end of the peninsula? There are lots of islands with them at one end. I agree that the sink placement is a bit awkward. I hadn't thought of putting the sink at the end of the peninsula, so I fired up the software and did just that. I looked at it, I rendered a photo and I actually find that more awkward because it cancels out the fridge drop zone, a grocery from garage drop zone, it sits smack in the middle of a walk around zone if I need to work on something from different angles - I have a 180 degree work surface there. I think the question at the moment is whether to keep that sink where it is or move it a tad more towards the inside corner edge, with the attendant trade-off of creating dead space behind the sink. I'm wishy washy on that - I see the pros and cons of both positions. What would you do? Favor more work area or favor easier use of the sink for your baking needs? I would consider rejiggering the oven/refrigerator/storage areas to make the storage facing the banquette less deep and widen your aisle there. Also, as someone who has a "pinch point" with fridge doors opening across from the end of the peninsula, I can tell you it's not good. Can you switch the fridge and oven placement (you'll be opening them much less often than the fridge) and move them a foot or so to the left, losing the small closet? I'm going to play around with that tonight. I had never thought of placing the oven right at the entrance to the kitchen. I recall from past commentary that there was a consensus opinion that having the fridge placed deeper into the kitchen was less than optimal and that it would be better for the fridge to be placed nearer the entrance so that access to the fridge didn't require disrupting cooking/prepping activity. However, because it's just me that I have to worry about your suggestion might bear fruit. I won't know until I try. MrsPete, I adore your seating area. I wanted something similar, but my space just doesn't work. Thank you. I'm starting with a blank slate here so I have more flexibility. I've scrapped so many plans because of kitchen design issues, and even in this latest iteration, due to trying to make that seating area work. I wonder about switching the butchering area with the baking center. I say this because meat goes with basic meal prepping, while baking has a different set of "stuff". You'd have space for baking pans, your big mixer, your canisters over in that separate area. One of the reasons that the baking area is where it is is because just off the bottom of the plan is a wood fired baking oven, hence pizza and bread and when everything comes out of the oven that peninsula is only 6' away to use as a drop zone. Secondly, in terms of baking I'm currently used to working on a large surface - I've never actually done a lot of baking on a 2' wide counter, so I'm going with what I know. Pressure canning supplies -- have you allotted enough space for this? I have two canners and various accessories, and I couldn't fit it into one upper cabinet. How often do you use these things? I currently have a greenhouse, so my growing season is extended, but it's certainly not a year round production chain for items coming from my gardens, however, I do put up non-garden derived food throughout the year and once this house is constructed I intend to focus more effort on that activity. This house is really kitchen-centric. When I embark on a kitchen project it's usually pretty involved, so the design I'm trying to achieve is catering to my extreme uses rather than to my day-to-day uses. I'm faced with two alternatives - design for everyday ordinary needs and then be cursing at the limitations of the design when I need more space or design for big projects and then don't use the kitchen to maximum potential for the following 5 days. That's a huge refrigerator, yet I'm hearing that you have only two people in the house. Is that size really justified? The space for the refrigerator is a placeholder. I come from a science/engineering background and I tinker and design machinery as a hobby and instead of hot-rodding my car I'll be hot-rodding the fridge, amongst other systems in the home. If the design is finalized as it stands now and I kick the bucket or decide to sell, the new owners can close up the fridge space and enlarge the hallway closet if that's to their liking. Secondly, I put a lot of stuff into my fridge. When I'm making cheese, I need ready access to a lot of milk. That has to be stored somewhere. When I'm making salami, I need to store the meat until I need it. So I'm pleased to make your acquaintance but as you see, MelissaStar already got the lowdown on my oddball ways earlier in the year. Your kitchen is soooo large. Everyone keeps saaaaying that! :) But you know what, I've spent a lot of time analyzing how I'm using my current kitchen, which I didn't design, and I'm reflecting on my youth when I worked in restaurants, and I just don't see that the kitchen is to large for how I use my kitchens. I've seen large kitchens showcased on this forum, by which I mean that they're too large for how I would use them for myself, but they're probably just right for the families that use them daily. From fridge door to wall and from sink wall to edge of peninsula counter is 11'6" x 16'9" and that doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Could you move the penninsula "up" towards the sink, making the "main kitchen" smaller and more space-efficient . . . and have sort of a "working pantry" in the are that you're now calling the baking area? It'd be just a small, not so fancy spot for these two activities. I'm going to play around with this idea because it's one that I haven't thought of. Thanks for suggesting it.

Just a couple of things that jumped out at me. I would hate to make my guests go through my mud room to use the bathroom on the first floor. Maybe you will keep your mudroom nice and clean, but for our family, it's a dropping zone for all our stuff when we come in and it isn't always as clean as it should be. Also, I like windows to be balanced in a room and in the study, there is just one small window on the left wall that is off to the side. I would either put one window in the middle of that wall or add a second window to balance that wall. In the master bedroom I would put a door between the bedroom and the closet/bathroom area. That way if someone has to get ready before the other person get's up, they won't wake up the person as the go back and forth between the closet and bathroom. If you do this you won't need the doors that enter the bathroom and closet, but you could keep them if you prefer. And on that note, it would be nice to actually have another door that enters into your closet directly from the hallway, which prevents anyone from having to enter or re-enter the bedroom to use the bathroom or closet if someone is else is sleeping in there. And finally, the kitchen island is definitely funky, but it sounds like you will address that problem with your architect. Also, I love the door that directly enters your mudroom, it's so convenient for kids coming home to enter the house directly into the room where they will drop their coats, shoes, etc.