Basics: There's nothing wrong with an island sink in general, and 42" aisle are fine. It actually benefits you in the work zone to have it on the tight size, so that going around the long way is more attractive to people crossing through.

Then there's the seating issue. I think you're right. With a 12" overhang, a 42" aisle, and a large sink, this is not a great place for seating. You have that lovely breakfast area right there, so you really don't need the island for meals. You can do it as is, with those narrow saddle stools that tuck fully underneath. Think of it more as a perch place than seating. Not optimal, but available. And if it doesn't work out IRL, you can put shelves under there for extra storage. :)

Another option would be to have all the seating on the left of page side of the island, and maybe expand and curve the surface there. You'd have to make a smaller recycling cabinet and slide the sink down, as well as losing the symmetrical end cabinets. It can be done. It depends on your priorities.

As is, I think this looks like a functional and attractive kitchen, if you're willing to forgo island seating. People tend not to like sitting in a line anyway. The table is much more conducive to conversation.

The kitchen is a large space, but the lower (south) half isn't really doing anything. A shallow hutch and message center, nothing that is actually cooking or cleaning or serving-related. Basically, you have a galley kitchen with an extra walkway on the south side.

The two doors on the right (west) side of the kitchen seem superfluous, since they are less than 4 feet apart and access the same hallway. Each doorway eliminates 3 feet of workspace.

Suppose you explored this:
- Eliminate the upper doorway (that faces the garage). Have the counter wrap around that corner, an ''L'' shape.
- Put the refrigerator where the broom closet is, which is now the short leg of the ''L''. If this creates too much of a ''counter hole'' to the left of the refrigerator, then put other floor-to-ceiling stuff on that short leg - oven stack, microwave, pantry, a wider counterdepth refrigerator, etc.
- Make the entire south wall, where the hutch/message center is, into a wide, shallow pantry cabinet. 18'' is actually an ideal depth for a pantry, also for wine racks, dishware/glassware storage, etc. If you are into cocktails and wine, a shallow bar could go there too. Ditch the dedicated ''message center'' (what is that anymore? A blackboard and an iPhone handles ''messaging'' fine.)
- Shorten the island to accommodate the ''L''. Make the island sink the prep sink. Locate the spout and controls so that the sink can be used from either side of the island. Have trash pullouts on both sides of the island, under the sink space.
- Put the washup sink where the refrigerator currently is, dishwasher to its left.

The idea now is:
- Food comes in from the garage, and is stored away in refrigerator and pantry which are both immediately adjacent to the entry to the kitchen.
- The island is the prep zone, is close to food storage, can be used by multiple people (on either side of the island), and is also close to the cooking zone. Being shorter, the island is less of a barrier.
- Cooking and some prep take place in a ''protected'' aisle that is not a traffic path.
- Dirty dishes get cleared to and washed in a corner of the kitchen, away from dessert and coffee prep. Can the current bookcase be repurposed as dish shelves? They only need to be 15'' or so deep, and are handy to the dishwasher. Might need sliding doors on that dish cabinet, to avoid interference with the dishwasher door.

I don't have time to draw anything, so I hope the word picture was clear enough.

Id love to see what John just described drawn out. It sounds like a very functional and beautiful space. Love the idea of eliminating the top doorway. It gains you so much more space and interesting opportunities.

Thanks so much for the feedback so far...

plllog - I have to agree with you. I was really against the seating because I was worried it would feel tight. My husband really wanted it, but we will be putting a build in window seat in that bay window and will probably be able to seat up to 8 in that area with no problem. I just don't see the need for the bar. Yes, it would be nice to have someone sitting there chatting with me as I cook - but is that really going to happen everyday? Nope! ;) And, if we have company and they want to chat, I'm sure they won't mind standing with me.

johnliu - thanks for such a great, detailed plan. I like your ideas a lot. I have to say that it is so similar to my KP's plan that I completely loved. In theory, it's probably a much better layout. The only thing that may not work is the pantry. We only have room for the cabinets on the bottom to be 12-15" deep at most because we are lining that entryway up with the hallway to the dining room.

The reason I changed the basic idea of the floorplan from this and added the second doorway is that I think I would really dislike walking into our house with an arm full of groceries into a wall or walking out with the recyclable and trash so near the dining room and living room. I know, I'm spoiled. But, as it is now, it's a direct shot into the kitchen from the garage and I just can't imagine that entrance being closed. I think it would irritate me.

The main reason I think that would be a problem is that I have some problems with my shoulder. It makes carrying heavy items difficult and also reaching into deep cabinets a real pain. Right now, I have two corner cabinets that basically get NO use at all because it's too hard for me to reach to the back of them. My idea was to create the galley feel to eliminate that wasted (for me) corner space.

I know the fridge is a long way from the garage. We went back and forth on that idea. I figured it's easy enough to unload the grocery bags on the island and then put away from there. But, I like having it close to the table and deck for easier access to drinks and snacks for the kids and while outside entertaining. Also, it keeps the fridge out of my work space while cooking so that someone getting a drink won't be competing for space with me.

As for the other entrance - I want to open that wall up to the dining room. The kitchen doesn't get a lot of great light, and I think this would help tremendously. Right now, the dining room just doesn't feel like a part of the house. I'm hoping that opening this up will have us using it more.

My original idea was to keep the whole area open, but I'm afraid that is just going to look strange. Then we considered running the island all the way to the small wall. That morphed into just having the wall by itself. The contractor suggested recessing the broom closet in the area, which I think I like.

"Message Center" probably isn't the best name for the cabinet. I want it to be a place where all the family cell phones (5 of them...) can be put away to charge, mail can have a place to fall, phone books (that we never use) can be stored, school papers can be kept, etc. Mostly it would be sort of an electronics docking area with other various junk thrown in.

I guess I'm sort of thinking of the kitchen as an open galley with the cabinets on the other wall as bonus storage that isn't really a part of the kitchen, itself. Does that make sense? I like that it provides a walkway through the room without compromising my work space. My goal is to have only cooks in the area behind the island and everyone else on the other side.

Hope I'm making sense - looks like I just wrote a novel...

I like johnliu's idea too, but ayerg I just read what you said about your shoulder and carrying things from the garage.

What if instead of a doorway there you had just a lower cabinet with a pass through? Then you could come in from the garage and put all your bags on the counter. You'd have to walk around when done unloading the car to get into the kitchen, but you'd gain an extra 3' of lower cabinet and a handy landing space. It looks like you would have space on the lower part of the wall for the refrigerator and a narrow broom pullout on one side or the other of the fridge.

Rough mockup:

{{gwi:1909380}}

I see what your considerations are.

My main issues are, how to reduce jogging laps around the 11 foot long island, reduce traffic in the 42'' aisle (maybe less, if you deduct for counter overhang), and how to get more use from the space to the south.

The layout seems designed for counter seating on the south side of the island, the consequence of which was there would have been no other function for that side of the kitchen. Now you've eliminated that seating, but the consequence still remains.

Getting a second sink would be a plus too. It is a big kitchen, there should be room.

I, too, don't much like inside corners.

Would a pass-through work, where the top door is? Exit garage, dump groceries on the short ''L'' counter at the pass-through? I'm not sure. One of my old kitchens had a dutch door with a bit of counter on top, that might be an option. Though I'm unsure about that too.

I think pantry cabinets can reasonably be 15''. If you look at walk-in pantries, their shelves are often no deeper. At 12'', utility starts to suffer a bit - you can't lay wine bottles flat.

Whereever it goes, I think there is something to be said for having food storage in one location. Walking to one end of the kitchen for the cream, and to the other end for the pasta, seems not ideal, especially if you're threading through a 42'' or less aisle that is plugged up by butts stacked up between the range and the sink. I don't know how many cooks and helpers you usually have, though.

Instead of adding a second doorway, you could do with a passthrough or two. Then you get the advantages of both sets of ideas floating out there. The new ideas proposed by johnliu and others can be implemented, and you get what you want too.

Instead of a corner cabinet, use that space as a place to grab the garbage bin from the other side, from a butler's 27" by 27" door on the wall facing the garage. Above this little door would go a visible passthrough (or blocked by a rolltop or some other system), so you can dump groceries when you carry them in. Heavy things like a big bag of potatoes could go in by the little butler's door.

Then you wouldn't need to "dislike" walking into your house with an arm full of groceries into a wall or walking out with the recyclable and trash so near the dining room and living room. As I'm thinking it, it's a direct shot into the kitchen from the garage.

In the 1946 film about kitchen space planning, this idea was shown. Some stuff like potatoes were to be delivered or "brought into" the kitchen by access to bins from behind the wall, outside the kitchen.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll have to fiddle with the floorplan and give it some thought.

I take it that you all really dislike the whole 'open galley' idea?

If by "open galley" you mean the plan as shown, I think it's fine. I don't disagree with some of the suggestions for closing up the extra door, but I don't think it's necessary if you don't. Do you have enough storage? Do you have enough workspace?

I like the fridge and microwave where you have them in your original plan because it makes a nice snack center that doesn't interfere with the main work area, and has good access to the breakfast area and deck. I also totally get your garage access concern, and am not sure that a passthrough will do the same job for you.

In general, one doesn't prefer to have the sink centered in an island so that there's more continuous space. Your island is big, so there's adequate workspace on either side of the sink, and the centered location works well with the the rest of the kitchen as pictured. This also gives you lots of island landing space near the doors, across from the hutch, etc., and the other side gives a good staging place for the breakfast area and deck, and a good landing space for dirty dishes.

Because the island is so long, I think your walkways make a lot of sense. You have all the kitchen proper stuff in the work area, including the pantry.

Your plan as posted isn't the most efficient use of space, but it flows well. As I said before, you can have island perch space for your DH, and just the kids if they want to hang out (in my experience, kids, especially teenagers, are more inclined to lounge than stand). This stool is only 9" deep and can tuck entirely under the overhang.

This is all a long winded way of saying that there are some interesting ideas out there, but I'm not sure that they're necessarily improvements.

I've been looking for pictures of passthroughs to give me an idea of what might work. I'm not seeing anything that screams "this is perfect for my kitchen". Is there any way to accomplish this without it looking like I'm framing a big space to showcase my hallway/garage/laundry room?

plllog - we must have been posting at the same time. I didn't see your original post when I wrote just above.

Thanks for the input. I know that it might seem counterproductive to redo a kitchen and take away usable space, but I do think that I'll have plenty of storage with the original plan. I'll also have some nice big drawers in the window seat and I haven't even considered what to use them for.

I love that stool. I love it so much, in fact, that I happen to have 4 of them in our tiny mother-in-law kitchen in the basement! LOL

That kitchen is why I think the area might not work for us. The counters down there only have 10" of overhang, but it is REALLY not comfortable to sit at.

One thing I was considering was doing deep drawers in those cabinets and putting the stoneware plates that we don't use very often in them. I thought that would be a handy place to pull out dishes, napkins, etc when entertaining. I plan on having the glass plates we use everyday in the uppers opposite the dishwasher, but this area just seems to lend itself to plate storage. I imagine putting food out on the island during a party and having guest use it as a buffet on the way to the dining room.

I'm glad to hear that you think the work areas are set up well. That's my biggest concern. I've moved things around here and there and this one just seems to set well with me.