they all look great and have their own merits, so my vote may be based on personal opinion and not much else.

my favorite is #2.

# 4 feels a little awkward, and with both #4 and #3, the seats you the cook are mostly likely to take (easy in and out) have the back to the cooking area, so you can't keep an eye on stuff.

I love an el-shaped window seat, but I just like the look and feel of #2 here.

good luck! We are starting a big remodel, I can tell I will learn a lot here.

I guess I am a bit confused about something tho... In your original design, you have shown this part as seating and storage area only. You have decided not to go that direction because you thought that was too cramped feeling. But, (head scratching emoticon needed here), you then show us four options that actually have more stuff in the space, with limited access and no spot for your dog's dishes. So, I am sort of wondering, huh?

So, that said, I would like to make two suggestions then...

One... go back to your original idea of a window seat, but recess it. Since you are changing function at this point, I see no reason why the window seat has to match your counter depth of 24". Make the seat narrower and cozier feeling by making it a depth of say 20" instead.

#2... Sticking with table option 2 , Can you change the chairs to a bench that can slide under the table when not in use, thus giving you more maneuvering room when going by.
Sorry more questions than answers.

I think your original idea is good, it just needs tweaking to make it its own space. I also am wondering how useful 24" deep underseat storage would be with the access point so close to the floor? I guess if you are a kid or animal, that wouldn't be a problem but... ;)

If you really want storage, do #1. If you really want seating, extend the counter left across the window, to the end of the wall (or drop it to 30" high), and put a couple of chairs/stools facing the window. This would give you some nice additional counter space when entertaining.

#2--how do you get into the bench with the counter and wall on each side?

#3--less than 2' for the chair AND to back it out and get into?

#4--might work without the chair. Mock it up and see how that bench between the counter and table works. If it doesn't, take it out. Then the longer bench with the table should work ok.

I think you're trying to put too much in a space that won't work well with both.

Anne

This is said with love. I want you to have a wonderful kitchen. But it's looking more and more like an RV.

Option one for the window seat is okay without the table. And a little, round, folding cafe table, no more than 18" across, would work, and no, per your question, it wouldn't look weird if you chose it correctly. As I said when I first suggested it, this is for a coffee cup, not meal service. In fact, you could do away with that bit of clutter and make a pullout shelf under the baking counter that someone lounging in the corner could use.

Option two has two people sitting in the doorway, and even in the picture the tucked in chairs are a tripping hazard. Not to mention that no one can get up while the table is in place. Options 3 & 4 don't work in real life. Add to that trying to feed four people on a 24" wide table is fine for a dollhouse teaparty, but it's going to feel like cozy camping in real life. Sitting space for two people is at minimum four feet, including walls it's 5-6 feet, and your options 3/4 table is only 3.5' long as well.

With a 30" wide table, and closing off access to the door there, #2 could work for four people who are not overlarge, and like each other, and for meals/dishes that can handle being moved mid-meal to allow a trip to the bathroom.

Anything else is going to be very cramped.

You have sitting room in your space for 2 adults, or maybe, an adult and two toddlers. Please reconsider your design! We want you to have a space that really functions. As it is, either you need less kitchen and more nook, or you need to change your expectations of how many people fit in your kitchen.

Also confused. If storage is an issue, why not take the corner that is empty and put a floor-to ceiling pantry there? I know you said that cabs for this area were nixed because of budget, but if you gave up the bench seating (in favor of a small square table and chairs), and maybe nixed the potfiller above your stove (the sink is just across the way), perhaps that would allow you more options for some additional cabinets too?

Hmm... I think Rubyfig's suggestions are a great way to achieve what I think you are looking for. As much as we love the fun things like potfillers, I believe you will get much more usage out of a well designed pantry and nook area. Try mocking this idea up and definitely google pantry organization tips. I am so glad that I did because it really helped me to see what type of pantry I needed.

You are really close to being done with your design!

I have to say that I think Plllog, RubyFig, & Earth_Pal have a point...

If you have a small table & chairs you have more room plus you get the feeling of cafe seating.

As to a pot filler...they only fix half the "problem" of a sink across the kitchen from the range, and not the most important half. The most important issue w/a sink across the kitchen is draining hot/boiling water, especially one w/through traffic like yours...something a pot filler cannot fix.

If it's a budget issue, consider building a dry-walled pantry instead of pantry cabinets...make a narrow side wall (studs turned sideways) and then install shelves b/w it and the existing wall. 12" deep shelves will work for just about anything (I store food, cereal, Tupperware canisters, bread maker, toaster, waffle iron, blender, food processor, etc. on 12" deep shelves...the only thing that doesn't fit is the toaster oven, so I put it on the floor in the corner of the pantry.) Either use bi-fold door(s) or one or two "regular" doors. (Since a window & doorway are on the one side, I'd consider 2 narrow doors...french door-style. To dress it up, you could get some nice doors...maybe w/glass panels (doors w/glazed glass that say "Pantry" or other decorative glass). If decorative doors aren't in the budget right now, then wait & get them later (leave it open or put inexpensive doors up for now).

Thank you everyone for your honest feedback. I especially love the RV comment. That helps put things into perspective.

This morning, I was in a meeting, and I started thinking about the window seat again (TKO, I guess). Originally when we were cutting scope to meet budget, it was either cut the bookshelf cabinet unit or the window seat. Then I started thinking maybe I was going in the wrong direction with trying to keep the window seat and that I should swap things, and then I saw rubyfig's post to the same effect. I need to check a couple things (like measurements) and make sure we have enough granite in the slabs we have at the fabricator's, and I'd need to get some decisions to the cabinet maker pretty soon as he's doing the shop drawings right now!

Here's a real-life picture of that end of the kitchen as it looks today:

Here's what the old plan looked like for the bookshelf unit, but that corner of the room has a nice lower molding that goes across 3 walls (you can see it in the picture above) that would be broken up:

We also decided not to expand the casing on the door (another budget decision), which left us with this plan for that area:

So, this brings me to this amendment:
1. Scrap the window seat altogether. Plan on getting a little cafe table with 2 chairs to tuck into that corner. We only use the nook for breakfast or coffee anyway and use the formal dining room for any real eating. Save $2150 there.
2. Keep the bookshelves as 2 wall shelves. This keeps it cheaper, and you can then still see the nice molding around the room. Plus, it's way cheaper than doing upper cabinets since the cabinet maker is very nicely tossing them in for free.
3. Under the bookshelves I have some choices:
a) Originally, I was going to use my Boos butcher block kitchen cart there. I still can, and that would be the cheapest option. There are open shelves on the cart, so there's some open storage, just not as nice and neat as cabinets. Might not be the end of the world, and maybe having a wheeled kitchen cart is more useful since we can just wheel it up to whatever counter we're using that needs some additional space.
b) Put in a lower cabinet, but it would only be 17.25" deep because of where that window would get in the way. If we have enough granite, use that to top the cabinet (probably don't have enough, as I think that area would be 40x17.5 and that's a pretty big chunk). Or, make it my dropped baking center and change my existing baking center back to regular counter height granite. But is that corner so far away from the sink to really be useful as a baking center or even a working counter for that matter?

I thought the pot faucet was only adding a couple hundred to the bill (vs. a couple thousand for each block of cabinets) based on the fixtures I was looking at and the fact that there's a water line on that side of the wall already. I'd hate to lose it, because years of playing the violin and typing too much have made carrying big pots of water back and forth not that fun. I'll of course have to do that to empty the pot, but I thought I could at least eliminate 50% of the trips!

Ok, one more option: extend the baking counter to form a peninsula at the lower height (I think that would seat 2). You could store the books on a shelf in the corner on that side of the room, and the opposite 18" deep section could be a nice setup for a tall pantry cabinet that could easily store dog food and a ton of other things (or if there is a chunk of stone left, it could be a section of lower cabs with open shelving above--a nice spot for the coffee maker).

Thanks for adding in the info regarding your hands. I take back my comments regarding the potfiller and I agree that is an important component for your kitchen.

Any chance that you could, once this is all done ;), use a steamer basket to cook your pasta in. You could then lift the steamer basket, do a quick shake over the pot, spin, and be at your sink within a few steps leaving very little water on the floor to mop up. Then the pot with the water could stay on the stove, cooling, and possibly someone else could make some of those trips for you!

I like your idea of the wheeled cart for all of the reasons you have stated. And a wheeled cart would be handy in moving around those large bags of dog food! Can you tell I am an animal parent too? !!

Is there any possibility of putting in a shelf OVER the doorway for additional book/decorative item usage? Unfortunately, I can't see the picture to see if this is a non-issue.

Since budget is a big consideration, I think it's great that you can solve some of the issues by trimming. Rather than adding to your budget in the bookshelf corner, I agree that keeping it to the wall mounted shelves and the Boos cart is an excellent idea. Much easier on the budget, and useful for all the reasons you mentioned. You can put some big, nice looking items on the shelves so that it doesn't become visual clutter, and is still useful storage. On a lower shelf like that, a single large roaster can be more visually appealing than a bunch of bowls, for example.

You can't plan for everything and things change. For instance, if your rolling needs outgrow your little lowered rolling station, you can, at some point, switch out the cart for a marble topped one at rolling height, and put butcher block on your built-in marble to raise it to counter height. Since you have the lip, you probably wouldn't even need to secure it.

Oh! You could actually do that now, get a butcher block to fit there. It would extend your counter space, be convenient to the sink, and protect the marble when you're not using it for pastry.

I'm still concerned about that whole end with the fridge but it might just be something you'll have to live with, since you can't move it to the bookshelf area. I really suggest you do a mockup using cardboard boxes and tape to make sure it's going to work for you. It would be a shame to do this whole remodel and then be unhappy. Much better to slow down a little and be sure now. You might find that the corner beside the fridge is just fine and the layout works really well for you! But if it doesn't, better to know now. Or it might be that you can use some of the money you saved on the window seat to put a narrower, built-in fridge in the bookshelf corner. Whatever you can do to make it comfortable, and make it work.

BTW, I have a cupboard that opens into a doorway in my currently-being-installed kitchen, and I just love it!

Another BTW, if the issues with your hands are soft tissue, I highly recommend Feldenkreis therapy.

I have to admit that I really like the look of the first elevation in your "Thu, Aug 13, 09 at 16:20" post. But, I understand if you cannot do it b/c of budget.

But, it does give you a "Pet Center" similar to ours... We have a 6-gallon can that holds dog food on the bottom, there's a second shelf above it that holds misc pet items, and the top drawer holds our batteries & flashlight.

If you go with it, I recommend making it similar to a trash pullout w/a pullout shelf inside in case you can fit both dog food + shelf. (It looks like it is a pullout, but I just thought I'd second that configuration! I wish we had done that instead of 2 doors + 2 pull out shelves.)

Thanks everyone!

earthpal: Here's a pic of that doorway (so between this pic and a prior pic, you can glue together that other bookshelf area that currently has the not so useful corner cabinet. Not sure how a bookshelf would look over the 30" doorway just yet:

plllog: We are on the same page with the butcher block - that was something my DH really wanted as well, but thank goodness we can look for that later. We have mapped out the fridge area and are well versed in cardboard boxes, pieces of furniture, etc. mocking up spaces. It also helps that with the lego model, we just move pieces around and see how it looks. It's not perfect, but it should work for us. But if I come back in a few months complaining about it, you can just tsk tsk at me. :)

rubyfig/buehl: I guess I am a little sad about losing the pet center too. Right now, all our choices for where we'll store dog food, supplements, etc. aren't ideal. And yes, that was a pullout drawer - I wanted to just pull out, open the container, scoop, and go. I'm kind of nostalgiac now just thinking about it.

Let's say I entertain expanding the budget - would you have the cabinet go all the way up to the ceiling? Or just up to the existing molding that goes around that whole area? And where would you move the heating vent? Into the toe kick of that cabinet (but then would that possibly "cook" the dog food)?

Oh, ok. By nixing the bench seating, you saved $2150 from the budget. Seems like you could put a cabinet in there for that. Leaving the dropped ceiling will be cheaper (obviously), but it also means you have to make sense of this "side" of the room and it is more difficult to make this side work with the rest of the kitchen. But it can be done.

A base cabinet with the pull out at the bottom and shelves on top. The vent can be routed through the toekick in the cabinet.

If you chose to extend the baking counter to a peninsula with seating on the other end of the room, that leaves a wall by the door for additional shelves& storage as well.

rubyfig - Yes, we save $2150 by not doing the window seat, but the original bookcase as spec-ed was $2350, and that's about half the size of the spot that we have now, +300 for the heating vent (btw, my vendors must hate me - I ask for so much detail on how much each portion costs so I can budget accordingly). But, I need to crunch my numbers again tonight and see where we're at.

By "side", I guess I was thinking of the kitchen in the sides that it currently takes - there's the 2/3 of the kitchen that's the real cooking kitchen side, and then there's the 1/3 "dead" space side with the nook. Perhaps I should think of it more that an entire wall is a side? Is that more typical?

If we do the cabinet and don't take it all the way up to the ceiling, any ideas on how we reconcile it to the dropped molding?

I hadn't really seriously considered a peninsula just because we currently have a peninsula on the other side, which I really hate. Granted, it's totally different on the other side b/c of the traffic pattern, but I wonder if my current hatred clouds my judgment a bit. :)

Current peninsula in all the main walkways:

$2350 seems awfully high for that bookcase + cabinet...but maybe it's b/c of the finished inside.

You might ask how much it would be if you ordered a 21" base cabinet w/two pull out shelves and w/one door unattached. 21" is a multiple of 3 so it might be less than a 20" cabinet. Also a cabinet w/pull out shelves is generally less expensive than one w/customized pullouts like trash or the one you were considering. Then purchase the Rev-A-Shelf kit that allows you to attach the door to a pullout shelf or other pull out. You could then make the dog food pullout yourself. [If we had had only one door, that's what we would have done...but we have two doors so we cannot do it.]

The doorway, of course, would have to be 1" less than it is...

Oh! Was the cost of changing the doorway included in that $2350? If so, then you're actually getting a good deal!

If not & you've decided not to enlarge the doorway, then you might also find out what it would cost to do a 24" cabinet instead of a 21"...that's an even "more standard" size than 21".

We just had a custom banquette built into our bay window and we love it. But geez, they can break the bank!

I love option #2 for lots of reasons but mainly for the traffic flow.

Is your heart set on a banquette, if so you can get the look for lots less (ours cost $2200 too) by choosing a pre-fab bench. Ikea has an awesome option that has a white, dyeable slipcover. And it looks like it would fit into your space. Just an option to save a buck...or 2000!

You know the outside door is shown as about 18-21" wide. I don't know that your local building code would allow one that small.

Suppose you put a larger(24") single window to one side of a 30" door? If the window is on the dog food side, could the table then shift to where the dog food thing is(two seat corner banquette plus one loose chair? Could you get an appropriate height actual buffet (a shabby, repurposed, repainted buffet) and put a new marble top on it and just sit it in front of the low window?