Thank you guys for your feedback. I am scratching my head, staring at these drawings, re-measuring things on a daily basis. Just can not come up with the right layout. Few comments: 1. If I move the entry to incorporate the chase in the peninsula then on a daily basis I would be coming in straight into the family room. Also, the side entry is not full heigh because at one point there was a second staircase going upstairs from the bathroom area on the first floor. So by closing in the entry I can not get a good L shape corner there. 2. I am considering moving the chase. I am also estimating the cost to be $2-3k so it is not a problem. The bigger problem is if the chase is also a support column to two load bearing walls that intersect at that point. In the current layout, which you can not see form these drawings, there is a hallway from the side entry (wall is paralle to the wall of the door on the bathroom. 3. Assuming the chase can not be moved then moving the fridge to the alcove makes sence. I like that idea. Few questions. If it is where GreenDesign put it then how would the doors open? The side wall is 40 inches deep. Would I have to pull the fridge up forward in order to be able to open it (it is french door style). Maybe keep it in the alcove, but next to the fireplace (that is where it is today) since that recess is 21 inches. So if I keep design 1 layout of the island, then I would switch the DW to to be on the right side of the sink and then the sitting of the chairs would be paralle to the alcove and to the family room. More than 4 people can sit in that area. May have to redesign this layout and post if it is had to follow. In this layout the range will be closer to the pantry. Yey!

So many extra bedrooms is forcing your actual living spaces to be so small. It seems like such a shame to have so much square feet with so few for actually living in. If you have groups of in-laws at your home at one time, I don't see one room where 6 adults could all sit at one time to visit with adequate space for chairs for everyone without being squeezed together and no extra elbow room. And what does that mean that they travel in groups anyway? How big of a group? I think the plans you have been given, especially Julius, are brilliant because they solve the problems you requested help with but the small living spaces create another problem, IMHO. I only have my tablet with me and haven't figured out how to do floorplans on it or I would try to work something up for you. Sorry. The only thing I can quickly suggest without doing a drawing is to make the wall between the living room and front bedroom a good quality, wide sliding door and then putting a hide-a-bed couch in there so you can use it as an extension of your living room. We have a similar set up and I love the spaciousness. If I wasn't traveling, I would post a photo.

It would be nice to have accurate measurements, especially for that stairway entry/landing area and just outside it. Until we know more accurately, I just offer a small riff on Lisa's great plan. A 33" fridge allows the Hoosier cabinet to be enjoyed from the dining room. I really like the idea of a door from the office. One can work in the office and keep an eye on items cooking If kids are in the future, the office can become a playroom and one can cook and keep an eye on the kids. A 12" deep pantry cab next to the DW with the one Lisa put across the aisle will be more than enough storage for everyday dishes and glasses. I would install a drawer in the middle of each for utensils. I think I'd do glass doors on top with solid on the bottom. About the two tall dish pantries, something like this for the drawer placement. And the pink represents where I would consider putting windows on the sides instead of a solid panel. You could do it just on the one side facing the kitchen. Or on both sides. If done on both sides, the light from the window on the stair landing would filter through contributing to keeping the kitchen light and airy. Not knowing what they intend to use the basement for, I've wondered about the wisdom of closing off that exterior door. It seems like there would be times when it would be so convenient to have it like if something big needs to be hauled to or from the basement. It gives a nice straight shot instead of having to somehow squeeze it around tight corners. And safety issues. Also, what if you're cooking and burn something? Even with a good hood, the more windows and doors you can open to eliminate the smoke, the better. I simply wouldn't want to lose the close exterior access point just so I could have a table and chairs right outside that door to enjoy my coffee on a summer morning, eat lunch or dinner, or sit outside with a book while waiting for dinner to be ready, whatever. Or what about when you want to BBQ? Nice to have outside access right next to the kitchen for that. I just like outside! And I don't see any reason to lose that access point. Also, if there is an emergency, like a fire or an intruder, the more you have outside access locations, the better. That's another reason why I would also like to see the pocket door for the office on that landing. No, I don't live in Paranoia Land but, rather, by the Scout motto. I think when you're remodeling it's good to consider these kinds of issues and plan for escape routes for worst case scenario situations if it can be done at reasonable cost and effort.

a cabinet's side touches a wall. This is probably a symptom of the Ikea planner not running well on my computer, it made it impossible to line everything up just right, I'm just working on the general layout at the moment. A differ depth cabinet touches another If you're referring the the pantry cabinet and the cabinet over the fridge, that's intentional and I fully realize we'll have to do something to mount this but if I mount that one above the fridge further back I'm going to end up with a pile of junk on top of the fridge. That may end up being a custom thing I build myself and not an out-of-the-box Ikea cabinet. Would you be willing to change the layout of the first floor? Probably not, we're pretty happy with the flow of it as is, but what, generally, did you have in mind? I'm all for DIY, but kitchens are complicated. So many factors to factor in a functional kitchen. I highly suggest getting a layout done by a Pro then installing yourself. I appreciate the sentiment here but that's simply not going to happen. I bought a small house that had lots of room for updates because I enjoy doing these things myself. It's fun for me and I'm not going into the process blind. I know what I need out of a kitchen to make it functional for me and I'm not interested in spending money to have someone else do design work that I'm perfectly comfortable doing myself. Our family is full of professionals, several of whom have designed and built their homes themselves (including the kitchens) from the ground up. We're not amateur DIY'ers (we're in the middle of building a garage with our own two hands). I love Ikea, but spend some of your planning/budgeting time looking beyond Ikea, such as Barker Cabinets, the RTA store (Conestoga Cabinets) -- both have good reviews here -- and especially, a local cabinet maker who will make frameless cabs We'll definitely shop around - doing this is probably at least a year or two out), but I suspect anyone custom will be out of our price range, especially with all of the other things the house needs outside of the kitchen (we're building a 24x24 garage right now, deck, patio, and fence in the spring, upstairs is to be gutted, re-insulated and drywalled in the summer/fall, need to install heat on the second floor, furnace is old, etc.) I may end up building all or some of the cabinet boxes myself, that's the level of DIY I'm talking about. :D Ikea is a starting point and a backup since I'd love to build them myself but even raw lumber can be $$$ so Ikea may be more affordable. Once I have a layout settled on I'll price it out with Ikea cabs, and with building them myself, and go from there. I would move the DW/sink down to have more space between the sink and stove though as that will be the space used most for prepping due to its proximity to both the stove and sink. The peninsula will likely be your secondary prep space or only used when you don't require the stove In our current kitchen, I actually do most of my prep on the peninsula (even when doing lots on the stove) and then move things to the stove when they're ready to go on the heat, and with the way I cook, having the sink closer to the peninsula will mean less time spend near the stove. I'm very messy with my prep and tend to spread out and generally my husband will come in behind and clean up the prep mess while I'm working at the stove. I'm also trying to avoid crowding the peninsula when the dishwasher is open, I'll try a version with the sink bumped down a little bit and see though! I think I'd have to loose that open shelf for my mixing bowls and such, though. There's not room in the dining area to push the peninsula any further down. I'm wondering about the short wall though that you show as load bearing on one side. Where does the beam go - across the kitchen to the peninsula wall or back along the fridge wall area? If across the kitchen to the peninsula wall then where is the load point on that wall? That short wall used to be the exterior wall of the house and there's a beam that connects it to the exterior sink wall - I'm operating under the assumption it is due to that, and just shortened it in my post to simply saying it's load bearing cuz either way we don't want to do the kind of structural work it would take to find out and/or remove it. The main beam of the house inside runs directly beneath it and the wall dividing the livingroom and front parlor on the other half of the house.