Thanks for all the great ideas. I am glad I found this forum but I am as indecisive as ever now :) To clarify some things ... The windows across the front of the house are only about 22" off the floor. We though about the sink on the front wall but it would require a much shorter window resulting in a less attractive exterior look. Wee also wanted to keep the existing "side" window since it opens to the parking area and children play area. I like the idea of moving the sink but wasn't sure how the window would fit in with this design (I will see if I can find some examples) Maybe I'm wrong but it seems a corner sink compromises the design/look. It seems it would make the one window look out of place or odd. The drawings are not to scale, but the dimensions are correct. The room is 192" wide and 234" long. We were allowing for 40" clear on all four sides of the island. It will be a little tight on the table side but we can move the table as needed. The old kitchen had a layout real similar to option 1 with no island. There was a window right next to the end cabinet facing the stove but it was not symmetrical on the exterior and with the new cabinet run being longer the window was in the way, so we had the idea of the "hidden" window after deciding not to do the shorter sink window on the front of the house. This was also due to wanting to keep the side window for viewing. It is not uncommon to have a window that small by itself breaking up the wall cabinets? Would you recommend the prep sink facing the front of the island or in the end of the island? The wife didn't want anything in the island but she is flexible (just wants it finished :) If we did this we could remove the sink in the bar/snack area which I think would get in the way more than be useful. Any suggestions for finding a KD or ideas of pricing?

Bostonpam, that's an interesting suggestion! I have taped out the "extension" where you suggested putting the fridge and we'll play around with it for a few days. I think we'd want to reconfigure the island to be a foot or so over to the left, or just smaller or something. I kind of want to reconfigure the island anyway to gain easily accessed cookbook storage, so your suggestion is giving me a lot to think about. Herbflavor, I'm not sure what you mean. The family room functions as our family gathering/tv watching/hanging out room. If we had a formal living room, we wouldn't use it. We already have another living space in the finished basement with 2 couches, a loveseat, and chairs, and we also hang out there with friends and family. Another "couch and table" room wouldn't serve my family's needs. As for the dining room, I know it's generally more popular to eat in the kitchen, and if folks have a formal dining room, they may only use it for more formal occasions. Our dining room is used every night and we're really okay with that. In every house we've owned it's been this way. We like the separation between the eating and the dining area - maybe we're just weird. Or am I missing what you're trying to say? I took some pics of the existing space and will try to get them uploaded, with a 1st floor layout, later tonight. The layout may have to wait until tomorrow...I am spacially challenged. I'm sure that is probably obvious by the "quality" of my drawn kitchen layout.

Lavender_Lass, I'm glad to hear you love your wall oven! Everyone who has one seems to. I think I'll enjoy it, myself, and DH is already thrilled with the idea - he's even been checking them out at appliance stores, and he's never been that interested in ovens before. I agree that the space would really open up without the peninsula. We could do a small table and keep it simple at first, but we'd have the room in the future to expand a little, add chairs. Ashleymking, I actually love the open counter space of the peninsula, myself, and if it weren't for DH's bad back and therefore the desire for a wall oven, I'd almost certainly keep the peninsula. The 30" walkway is definitely too narrow, though - I would gladly sacrifice the peninsula space for a larger walkway. It feels cramped just looking at it from across the room. This may not apply in your layout, but for us, looking in through the dining room door, the peninsula actually extends into that line of sight, so if you walk straight across the room you could walk into it. More importantly, it's a real bottleneck for people passing through. Only one person can comfortably pass at a time (2 if you don't mind brushing up against one another!), and with an active 3-yr-old and 2 little dogs, we feel like we're constantly telling someone to get out of the way. This is compounded by the layout of the refrigerator being just off the end of the peninsula, so the walkway is totally blocked if someone opens the fridge door. It doesn't sound like a big deal - of course you can just wait a moment until the person at the fridge is done - but it annoys us every day. We felt that between 40 - 44" would work for us, larger being better. We arrived at that number partly by looking at recommendations in posts here on GW and partly by looking at the sight lines through the doors, measuring ourselves standing there 2-deep and just imagining "what if I wanted to do X..." scenarios. Well, there's my novel about our walkway, LOL! Hope that's useful to you. Marthasdream, it's funny, I had considered open shelving for the plans with the peninsula but didn't think of it with the wall oven/ open plan. Thanks for the reminder that they could still work there! My open shelf fantasy is actually to have a set of 2 or 3 with some room on one for cookbooks, and the bottom shelf having hooks for my most-often used pans. Perhaps the dream isn't dead!

I wanted to thank everyone for the great input. I have not been getting notifications for these replies so I didn't see these until just today. I hadn't thought about moving that dining room doorway to the hallway. I cook a lot and we do use the dining room every night, so I will have to give some thought about how that would function for us. We have a door to the dining room further down the hall near the front door so I guess that would need to be sealed off as well? I am attaching a picture of the first floor to give an idea of how it flows now. Just a couple of other comments- the post, according to the architect, is a load-bearing one. It goes all the way down through the crawlspace and I think supports our bathroom up above. This is a very funky house- custom built with many oddities that I think are as a result of the owners changing their minds as they went along. So we are stuck with that dumb post and can't really afford to do anything cool like supportive wood ceiling beams (if that were even an option.) One major challenge with this house is the lack of storage for essentials like cleaning supplies, brooms/mops vaccuum (right now they are in our coat closet) and I struggle with enough pantry space as well. So if the pantry were impinged upon I am not sure where I could gain storage. I am attaching a few options provided by the architect. In each case it's pretty tight, with the fridge where the pantry was and no end-cap for workspace around the range. As you can see he took over that space to the right of the sink for the pantry, but I don't recall him ever suggesting closing off that doorway, maybe because of where he was putting the fridge.