The stove and sink look more like about 3 ft apart, which I think would be OK. 2 ft is a little close, but maybe OK. But, I am wondering what you plan to use the island for? I like an island for prepping what I'll cook, so would want it in convenient proximity to the stove....Across from the stove rather than the sink. Having it so far away from the stove means the area between sink and stove will become prep space, so the close distance may become more of an issue. --Also, the island is still somewhat of a barrier between the fridge and sink, so carrying veggies, a chicken to deal with, etc. from the fridge to the sink will be a hip-bumping route.

What kind of oven/ micro is that supposed to be? It seems to be only about 15" wide.

I think you could get more easily accessible and useful storage and counterspace if you just ran the counter to the right end of the window wall, instead of coming around the end toward the doorway for only a foot.

rhome.. gee, you always make me think so hard!! LOL Love all your feedback.. it's very helpful.

Your right, the oven /microwave is not wide enough, I must adjust that. Also, now looking at the plan, I see you're also 100% right about the far right corner cabinet, straight it will go!

Now.. for the work triangle, island issue, I'm not sure if there is a better solution. We're not really cooks at all, and I even thought about reducing the kitchen size and removing the island, but than I got to thinking how much I love our island we have now, even though we don't cook.

My wants:
farm style sink
cook-top (just a 4 burner induction) WITH a nice wood hood

I think I really am drawn to kitchens with the sink under the window, but with the right layout... I might be swayed, but the sink under the window is my preference.

Open to all ideas.. throw them my way!

This is somewhere around a scale, but I use the really crude paint program to do this - so its more like a group of thoughts.

{{gwi:1944159}}

You have two big issues - perhaps I mean the architect has gifted you with them. They are traffic and the room sizes.

Every kitchen with one than one doorway has cut thru traffic and its generally a problem. Just like a neighborhood road that accidentally connects to two major roads, someway through your kitchen will become an accidental highway. AND since your kitchen has a nice "run-around" (great room, breakfast, kitchen), for some quantity of years, it may also have a high speed lane.

So one of the "jobs" of the kitchen plan is traffic control. With one possible exception, every plan with an island will fail at this job. The peninsula is a traffic control measure - sorta the speed bump of the kitchen - it keeps thru traffic channeled by the clean up area and mostly away from the cooktop - prep area.

The possible island exception that I can think of is to do something like turn the outside wall into a bank of windows or doors and then so a solid wall of cabinets on the inside wall with a longer island. Move the doorway from the garage closer to the outside wall, put tall stuff (ref, oven, pantry) on the now longer wall where the pantry is shown. Do a cockpit kitchen with about a 42 inch aisle between the inner cabinets and the island, about a 42ish inch wide island top and a 48" aisle between the island and the newly windowed outer wall. A little wider on the aisle between the island and the window wall would be preferred.

The second thing about the room sizes is you don't quite have enough room in the breakfast area for the size furniture shown while maintaining enough space around the table to be able to use all of the chairs. dh is an engineer and he started to question when I started quoting how much room we needed for the chairs in our new dining room design. Just to prove it, I had HIM sit in chairs and get in and out of chairs and see how far he needed (right to the suggested standards!).

So, allow 24" beyond the table or counter edge for a seated person (using small scale furniture). But also allow a minimum of 32" from the edge to permit a person to become seated. If you need to cross behind a seated person, 36" is a squish by and 44" is a restaurant sized walk by except if carrying something (laundry basket, big platter, tray, bag of groceries) where 48" is better. These are clearances to a blank wall - or in your case, windows or sliders.

If you have something back there instead - like an operable door, you need to add on for the door to open - so if there was an exterior 36" wide door, you'd need the minimum 24" to clear a seated person PLUS the entire 36" or 5 feet beyond the island edge.

Which is the long way of saying 48" round table and an eleven foot wide room is a little tightish. You might want to consider something like a corner furniture arrangement using a banquette or benches to allow for multiple seating areas and a larger clearance behind the part that has chairs or stools.

The 13' 8" wide kitchen is a little narrowish for two outer cabinet runs and an island and a major path.

So, doing the math, that's 164 inches in total, minus 52 inches for the two outer cabinet runs (including the counter) leaving 112 inches in the center. Subtracting 84 inches (two 42" aisles) leaves 28" - the approximate size of a 24" cabinet with its counter overhangs. If you didn't have a traffic aisle, I'd shut up, but 42" is pretty tight for a traffic aisle that contains a dishwasher, ref, oven doors, etc as well as potentially multiple cooks and teenagers.

So, if you can use something from this - cool. I don't know that it solves everything or anything.

bmorepanic, wow.. that's a lot to absorb, I need to read through this, and I'm going to try to layout your plan to see how it works.

meanwhile, I was just about to post my revisions that I made, with more exact measurement. I'll do that in a minute, but first a couple things bmorepanic, I was just about to ask about that pantry area, so that's a good suggestion you made!

I do think some here are so use to humongous kitchens, that my size seems small, but my current kitchen is almost the same size (it's 14' wide) and we have an island, I never found that we have issues with the paths. On occasion we bumped into each other, and opening the dishwasher causes the traffic to divert, but nothing major.

My breakfast nook I currently have is 11 x 12, and my 48" table looked so lost in it that I custom ordered a 56" table to fill the space, and works well, however, that said... I really do like the looks of banquette seating, and have been already tossing that back and forth in my head!

I'm going to post my revisions now, and I'm going to play around with your ideas and I'll post them later today. I also wanted to post my current kitchen, which does have a barrier island. It works okay for us, but I do know it could have been a better layout.

New revisions based on rhome410. There is now 3- 1/2 ' between the sink & cooktop. Corner cab is removed and oven cabinet is to size. {{gwi:1944160}}From Drop Box

Crude 3D picture with limited cabinets, but gives generalized look. {{gwi:1944161}}From Drop Box
{{gwi:1944162}}From Drop Box

Pictures of my CURRENT kitchen

{{gwi:1904220}}

Large, 56" table. {{gwi:1944163}}From Drop Box
{{gwi:1944164}}From Drop Box

Anyone else..? I know that there must be some other thoughts on this, so please help!

I'd do whatever I had to do to get rid of the wall between the kitchen and family room. Then turn the island into a BIG island and you've now got a galley kitchen with sink on the island and cooktop on the rear flanked by wall ovens and fridge. With that big pantry, you can afford the lost storage, and it make the space more open and efficient.

I appreciate your posting posting live wire! I know many love open kitchen plans, I happen to like both open AND closed, which made things initially difficult, but once I realized the whole look I'm going for in this house, I realize that the closed is more fitting. I want it to feel more like an older style home, and rooms were not so open. I did so much researching on open vs closed.. it was interesting (and I'm relieved) to see not everyone does love open plans.

A little bit of push back because the same kitchen isn't the same when some of its physical characteristics change.

The current kitchen and informal dining don't seem to "flow though" to other parts of the house. I'll bet in your current house people can get from the garage to the rest of the house without walking through the kitchen. Plus, I think your aisles are wider in the old kitchen.

I think you'll find that more entrances and exits cause more traffic through the kitchen.

In the new house breakfast area, you kinda have to maintain two wide aisles on the sides that have doors to the outside in the breakfast area and a passage between the dining area and the kitchen. If the table stays a nice 4 feet away from the kitchen cabinets (leaving a passage even when people are seated) and 3 feet from the outside wall, the table can be 49" wide. With a 56" table, that extra 7" gotta come from somewhere! 4" can come from pushing the table closer to the top of the drawing and 3" from the bottom passageway, but it might be a pita during entertaining.

I do know what you mean about the table being lonely - part of why I was thinking of a banquette up in the corner.

Right now, it looks like people walk behind you when you're cooking. Does that bother you?

bmorepanic, LOL.. I don't cook - but I want a nice looking kitchen!

To address some more of your points, you are 100% correct - people can walk through a hallway to the garage, by passing the kitchen completely. They can get to any other part of the house as well, because it is an interior kitchen.

As far as this new breakfast area, I could eliminate the outside door.. do you think that would be better? As far as entertaining, it is 98% of the time with my extended family, and there is almost 40 of us.. so EVERY plan would be a PITA, we are all on top of each other, but we're use to it! LOL

On to the new layout, I played around with it, and all it has done was confuse me more (that's not hard to do!) I LIKE IT, maybe almost as much as the island plan but I have a few issues. One, my most used appliance (the microwave - lol) is far away. I tried placing a banquette in there, but t looks lost in 3D , half the space is empty, and very "un symmetrical" if that is a word! You're really helping me a bunch, thank you!

Here are the pictures, I forgot to play with the pantry part. {{gwi:1944165}}From Drop Box
{{gwi:1944166}}From Drop Box
{{gwi:1944167}}From Drop Box

I don't have anything that draws in 3d. I'm guessing the unbalanced feeling is sorta -- I was thinking a couple of stools on the other side of the prep counter and arching it for some balance.

Possibly consider killing the door from the breakfast area to the porch since the great room doors are only two steps further. Then you could build a banquette or one with a little storage on both ends across the entire wall. Could possibly wrap around to some tall shelf units? Maybe a drop down desk?

Maybe consolidate the door to the deck with some of the window space - double french doors or sliders or something like that instead?

That could make some unity for the windows as only the back wall would have "tall" windows and the kitchen sink window can be different.

The prep sink near the cooktop is kinda important in this design. It keeps the chef mainly in the one area but also frees both sides of the main sink for accessory prep. Well that plus you don't have to carry hot pots across the kitchen anymore. There's also an advantage to having a few stools - you can place another pair or two of hands on the other side in those stools. So that would give you 4 decent prep areas when you have the forty relatives.

On one of my attempts, I had a smaller island towards the pantry. I wonder if that would fit or be useful? The other thing I wonder about is of of those prep carts that maybe could be pulled out of the pantry.