The only thing that jumps out at me in the kitchen is the 3' aisles at either end of your island. That's tight, even with just 2 people. With a minimum of 4 at home, I'd re-think that.

On the powder room, I have zero idea how much room stuff needs, but if the sink could go opposite the toilet, could a closet be built out of that free-standing wall that's hovering between the powder room, dining room, and kitchen?

He probably thought he was doing you a favor putting the sink with a window looking into the backyard. If you like your current window and sink location, try to work around that, rather than moving it. It seems like maybe he was trying to work around centering the range on the side wall. If that's not important to you, I wouldn't let that rule.

I think if you're considering using a KD, now is the time to do it, but starting with ideas here is a good start.

Without getting to layout specifics, I'll ask this... in a floor plan this small, do you really need both sets of dining furniture? Combining the kitchen and dining room would give you more options. You could have your large dining table, a larger island for informal seating, and space for your closet/landing area.

Flip the powder room door so that you don't see the toilet when the door is left open.

Hhhmm, good point, cal_quail. I just assumed 3' aisles would be fine. Having now taken out the tape and measured out 3', I can see it being tight for two people to maneuver. I read dilly_ny posting on a separate thread that 42" counter to counter being perfect. Given our space limitations, I don't know if we can fit 4' aisles, so will aim for 42". Will try to see if we can do 4' on the stove side of island however.

Yes, GC was trying to center range along side wall, saying it would be more balanced to walk into the area and see range in center vs. off-center with window to one side. The freestanding wall has ducts running through it up to our second floor. It can be moved, but I am liking the nook it creates with our coat closet. Understand if I need to give that up for a more functional kitchen though. It's all a give and take right?

DIY2Much2Do, do you mean making our current office, kitchen and dining room all one open area? That was floated as an idea, but I'm worried about too much openness. To open it all up would require us to put in a support beam (i.e. extra costs). I'm scared of spending the extra money only to get tired of open concept and wish for more separation down the line. I can totally see this is where we'd spend most of our waking hours. The kids are definitely going to bring their coloring stuff and toys into this open kitchen/dining/hanging out area. Where would I put alway all their "stuff"? For now, you're right, we don't really need two sets of dining furniture. Currently our dining room is more of a kids play/work area. We have both a dining table covered with arts, book, crafts and a train table and toys in there. Realistically, this will still be the case after our reno. I thought if we have a separate dining room, at least I can enforce an all toys/crafts must stay/go back in there to keep the kitchen uncluttered. And down the line, when the kids get older, we do hope to change it back to a formal dining room with minimal work.

debrak2008, unless I'm understanding you completely wrong, flipping the powder room door would require us to close the door in order to use the sink. I don't mind seeing the toilet with the door open if I can have better flow. When we have guests over, we have the kids line up to wash their hands. This wouldn't be possible if the door was flipped.

Could you please post a larger image of your existing kitchen? I can't save from your photo page and saving the tiny image in this thread is useless since it's illegible when enlarged.

I think you can get a functional kitchen in your existing footprint if you change the slider door to a French door moved to the far left. That requires enlarging the deck and moving the deck stairs over but since that's part of the plan already, I'm assuming this is possible.

I would remove the wall between kitchen and DR but leave the wall up between kitchen and office. I'd be tempted to add double pocket doors so that you can open this up when needed - kids are working on projects but you want to keep an eye on them while cooking - but close the doors when company comes over and you want to hide the mess.

But I can't draw any of this out without being able to download and save your photos.

cal_quail, you need a minimum of 30" width for toilet (15" to center of toilet); 36" is better. You can find pedestal sinks as narrow as 18". You need a minimum of 21" in front of toilet or sink. A round toilet is about 28" deep, a sink base cab is 22.5" deep with counter overhang. With the required minimum of 21" between the two, you need at least 72" to put a toilet across from a sink. The OP's powder room is 5" shy. Good idea but unfortunately, it won't work.

Ignore my request, I was able to make my idea work from the image I could save.

Here's my idea for you:

I left the coat closet alone. I agree that its current location is good.

I opened up the DR to the kitchen, changed the table from running horizontally to vertically in the room, which opened up room to run storage cabs and counter along the long wall.

I reduced the width of the office but kept it as a separate room with double pocket doors so that your kids have a place to do crafts and homework. (It's recommended that you have the kids' computers in a place where you can keep tabs on them and the sites they visit.)

It would look something like this:

[

[Beach Style Home Office[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/beach-style-home-office-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_732~s_2110) by Boston Architects & Building Designers Patrick Ahearn Architect

[

[Traditional Home Office[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-home-office-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_732~s_2107) by Portland Architects & Building Designers Emerick Architects

I gave you windows on each side of the range so that you again have views out to your garden area. I lengthened the island from 4'10" (NOT enough room for 3 stools, suggested minimum is 24" per seat) to 69" and increased its width from 36" to 40.5" (36" wide provides only a 10.5" seating overhang, less than the 15" recommended minimum). I also added a prep sink to the island to give you a nice work triangle between pantry, fridge, prep sink and range.

In a pinch, you could add a 3rd stool at the island. Kids can fit in less space than adults. But 2 seats will be the most comfortable.

I envision something like this for the dish hutch (but not as wide):

[

[Transitional Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/transitional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2112) by San Francisco Interior Designers & Decorators Artistic Designs for Living, Tineke Triggs

I understand about your sink usage. About the toilet, I bothers me to no end that if the door is left open on our downstairs bath and can see the toilet and if someone leaves the lid open (I'm fanatic about closing the lid before you flush) I can see right under the rim. Do to the bathroom layout (which can't change) the door can't be reversed. I will never again live in a house with this issue. I don't mind having a bathroom off the kitchen, I just don't want to view the toilet! Yours doesn't look to be right off the kitchen so it may not be an issue. Just something I noticed. A friend built a custom home and made sure the bathroom doors of the power rooms (2) had doors that blocked the toilet view because who wants to look at a toilet or what if someone left the lid up and maybe forgot to flush. You'd be surprised how often that happens at parties. She entertained a lot and had several children.

Is this a house, or a townhouse? I'm not clear on why there are NO windows on the stove side of the building or why the dining room and living room each have one not very large window. It's cheaper to do without them, but not nearly so pleasant. Similarly it's easier for your contractor if you deal with the kitchen designer later but if you fail to allow the right amount of space there's not much that a kitchen designer could do later. For sure you do not want the toilet visible from the hallway. Are you really sure about this guy?

lisa_a... I am flabbergast! The ideas originating from this forum never cease to amaze me. That folks are able to take layouts and turn it around in a matter of hours, or less, and churn out something completely different simply amazes and delights me.

Alright, DH loves your layout. He likes having a dedicated area for our kids near us, and especially one that is directly across and in line of sight of kitchen. We will likely still make our guest bedroom upstairs our office so kids aren't mucking in our stuff (missed bills are not a good thing!). While we'll keep the main floor office for our kids. It just makes sense to give them a space for arts & crafting/reading/playing while we cook. It'll also be easier to help them with homework later on, and yes, definitely easier to keep an eye on them surfing the internet.

Concerns... We do entertain and have BBQs often in our backyard during the summer months. The most used path to our backyard is via the kitchen. Will the 42" entryway be sufficient space for people to go in and out of? Also, I'm not sure about putting a down-to-counter dish hutch by that backdoor. Post-BBQ, it's often a steady stream of dishes back into the kitchen for clean up. Would maximizing counter space here be more practical for post-party clean up? Did you perhaps mean an upper cabinetry-only dish hutch? That would afford me both cabinets and counter space.

I really like the fridge location in your layout. Makes for an easy path to unload and store groceries when we get home from shopping. Should prep sink be relocated to fridge end of island instead? The current layout has both sinks so close to each other that I wonder if it's worth the extra money to put in two sinks. Also, assuming my dishes are stored in cabinets/drawers near the sink. Is that too far from the dining area? If I store them in buffet counter area, then I'd be carrying them across the kitchen from dishwasher to dining area. No matter what, a trek seems unavoidable. Any tips on how to get around/minimize this? Note, one of my kids' task when they feel up to helping is to put away dishes in dishwasher.

So I've spent the past few hours trying to rework the layout to see if I can keep the existing wall between dining room and kitchen. This would save us a good chunk of money since that is a load bearing wall, whose removal would require us to put in a recessed steel beam. I've tried making our current dining room into kids' office/play area with pocket doors (we're loving the pocket doors!) and our office the dining area with perimeter counter space, but just haven't been able to make it work. Sigh! So it looks like the money will have to be spent.

One improvement though (I think). I loathe the narrow hallway we currently have. It just seems like dead space to me. So rather than keep it, I've modified your layout to put our coat closet and duct work in the existing hallway space instead. This allows for a wider entry to the dining/kitchen area. This new closet would also be deeper that what we currently have, so I'd be willing to forgo the closet nook as I can stuff things into the deeper closet and also in the main floor office.

I'm also tempted to extend the powderoom to 72" so the sink can go across the toilet, thus making the powder room foot print narrower and opening up the entry to the dining room even more. If I do this, I can then reposition the door as debrak2008 suggested to prevent toilet views.

Practigal, this is a house. We do have a sizeable window in our living room, though not in our dining room. Down the line, we may consider replacing the dining room window with a larger one. I'm in no rush since our dining room window faces north (low light) and looks out towards a cross street that does get busy at times.

I would like to keep a window or more along the stove side of building as it's west facing and brings in the afternoon sun. Our backyard is south facing and BRIGHT which we absolutely love. I've told my DH that if we were ever to move, it would have to be another house that backs to the south. Our big living room window and patio doors currently bring in enough light that it doesn't bother me that dining room window is small.

Agree with you re: working with a KD now vs. later. To be honest, I'm feeling like you folks on gardenweb are my KD. With practical, unbiased opinions to boot!

You and debrak2008, should see our master ensuite. The toilet, though set in further, is directly across from the bathroom door! Don't worry, we're planning to redo our master ensuite as well, so that will be changing soon.

Here's our existing floorplan reposted:

This post was edited by AnWLee on Wed, Oct 15, 14 at 2:15

Does it bother you at all that the living room is so isolated from the kitchen?

I think at the very least, I'd want to create a hallway here to run directly from the kitchen to the living room. It'd also give the living room direct access to the deck.

It'd make the office Lisa proposed smaller, but still useable as an office.

Also, I would like to reiterate the points already stated in this thread about not starting one tiny morsel of work until you have your full plan for the space totally hashed out. Everything you do at the beginning of a construction job is called "rough-in". It includes framing, plumbing, and electrical work, and it's all a humongous, expensive, sometimes impossible pain to change later in a job. Down to the inch, what cabinets will fit on your walls is decided by the framing and where the plumbing is sticking out. Framing decides all the doorways and windows. The placement of your sinks is decided by the plumbing and there is, like, 6 inches of wiggle room. Number, placement, type, etc. of all your lights is decided at this stage. So if you move one cabinet later, you have a can light illuminating the wrong thing. Or off-center. Or missing entirely. Or you have a can where you now want a pendant lamp. Or whatever.

There are always things in a remodel, particularly one of your size, that will need revision as you go. So brace for that, but definitely don't add to that by starting work without a REALLY thorough plan.

Does it sound as if I learned this the hard way? I had all my electrical work done twice in the kitchen. Our vanity pipes stuck out of the wall precisely where the main support beam in the back of the vanity was (the vanity we hadn't chosen yet when the pipes were installed). Required major retrofitting of the vanity so it would stay structurally sound when we notched it to pass the pipes through.

Something to keep in mind for later...the best use of stained-glass windows (and they don't have to be conservative traditional religious looking stained-glass or tiffany style either, unless that is what you want, there are some amazing contemporary designs out there) is where you would prefer light but.... For instance, where you want privacy down the side of the house in a tract where the houses have little space in between them or where the view from the window is of a busy or ugly street scene, or where your house is too close to the street and you don't want every passerby watching you...

I could be wrong, Jillius, but I think the entry isn't at the same elevation as the rest of the main floor. If so, then that makes the hallway you propose complicated to execute.

You're welcome, AnWLee!

I love your proposed location of the closet. I didn't realize that wall could come down. It looked like it had HVAC venting in it so I didn't want to mess with it. But moving it and the closet really does open up that entry and hallway area very nicely.

Mock up how a 72" long powder room would feel. You'd have about 18" less in front of the toilet than you do now. Would that feel tight to you? Could you still have kids queue up to wash their hands as easily as you do now? Would the cost of moving plumbing and walls be worth it to you? If I did my calculations correctly, you should have a 68" hallway in your latest plan; that's a generous hallway. I'm not saying don't do it, just think through the pros and cons of the choice.

Based on your feedback, I made a few tweaks to Plan A.

I widened the aisle to the back door. It's still a 36" wide door and I still place it close to the office wall but you'll have a few more inches between the opening and the cab and counter there than you would in Plan A.

That required some changes on the sink wall. I reduced the sink cab from 36" to 33" (that will still accommodate a good-sized sink). I also eliminated the dish hutch. I also added a upper cab on the range wall to give you more storage for glasses and dishes.

I also increased the pantry cabs from 36" to 42", decreasing the buffet counter slightly, and added a window above the buffet to bring in more light to your DR.

I kept the prep sink at the top of the island. The bottom is a prime landing spot for groceries as they come in from the garage and for fridge items. You could certainly work around it if the sink were moved to the bottom end of the island, if that's your preference though.

The reason I suggest a prep sink is it saves steps during prep. The path from fridge to sink to range is much tighter. You could do without one but I think your kitchen benefits from a prep sink in the island.

However, if you were to swap clean-up sink with range, then I think you can do without the prep sink in the island. Like this:

I put it together rather quickly because I need to dash to an appt. I can explain it in more detail later.

Lisa_A's right, Jillius. The elevations are different between our entrances and the kitchen. Even if it weren't I feel like the office is small enough that I don't want to encroach on any of it's space. In fact I did the opposite and make it longer in latest revision of layout posted below. I do understand and agree about needing to have a clear vision of layout in as much detail as possible. To that end, I actually drafted up layout with cabintery sizings to see if it would work for us. I'm trying to go the route of only drawers under counter except for pull-outs (racks & garbage). DH thinks I've gone TKO. I just want to make sure we don't have any post-reno regrest (Is that a possibility? OK, how about minimal regrets then?)

OK, so updated layout. I'm back to Lisa_A's originally proposed 42" width to back door. I now understand why you did that in the first place. =) That only gives me 19" space for a cabinet/drawers. I'm considering putting the 19" cabinet by the corner instead to give more frontage access to clean up sink. The sink being right by a corner feels a bit awkward. I'd also really like to utilize that corner space (Love the Richelieu Magic Corner systems). Further research to be done here.

I've also extended the island to 72" so we can seat three there. It'd be ideal if we could seat four in an L-configuration but that would mean even less storage which I'm not sure I can afford. I've extended the counterspace along the range wall so that the fridge starts where the island ends. Also, no need for a west facing window in our dining area. It would be a view of our AC unit and the side of our shed - not pretty. Practigal, I will look into stained glass. I was planning on putting privacy roller blinds there. It does have a nice view of our front garden. If we do stained glass, we'll have to take into consideration it's effect on curb appeal. Might actually work well in this case.

Other changes..., I also made the office longer so we can have a loveseat in there for lounging/reading, desk seating (is 72" sifficient for two to sit side by side?) in front of window and still have some floor space for kids to play with their toys.

I think we are going to have to look for an extendable dining table. That way I can keep a 6-seater sized table when it's just the four of us and maximize through space to fridge. And still have option to extend to 8-seater when we have dinner parties.

Any suggestions on where to locate pull out for waste disposal and also microwave? Would it be tacky to have the MW sitting on the buffet counter? Should I give up prep sink for more storage?

Alright, that's all I can muster up... need to get some rest now.