I've given this a lot of thought and I just can't warm up to idea of the sink on the peninsula and losing space with a counter overhang in what's already a small dining room. I much prefer the sink on the outside wall. We need to keep the office closet and the shower because this is our "aging in place" house, and at some point we might need a downstairs bedroom. This morning our architect and his assistant crawled under the house to take the structural measurements and see what would be possible. There's a city requirement that the garage must be at least 9'x20' which has complicated things a bit because our original plan was eating into the 20' length. The stairs are a limiting factor as well. The new plan is this: steal up to 18 inches from the current furnace/water heater area to allow for cabinets to be recessed, and steal even more from the garage to have space for the fridge. With fridge/cabinets set into the back wall, that gives us 12 feet to work with for the rest of the room. The math so far is: 26" sink/window cabinets 36" aisle 36" island 46" aisle --- 12' The bad news is that there's no room for a double oven, so I've switched the cooktop to a range. The furnace gets moved to the spot just to the left of the door from the hall to the kitchen. We'll have a smaller furnace there because we're going to heat the upstairs from a 2nd furnace in the attic. The plans: The first tall cabinet unit will have to be shallower on top because it's limited by the stairs. The windows can't be centered on the back wall because the new office will come 3 feet into the end of the kitchen. I put in a few more uppers. The island will just be 2 cabinets with a 12" overhang, but I drew it as 4 to get the dimensions right. Maybe I can add another 12" set of drawers on the stove end. Comments welcome!

...Continuing... Layout #2 The island holds the only sink in the kitchen. As such, it has to be big enough to accommodate both dirty dishes and prepping at the same time. (Unfortunately, I think there will still be competition b/w prep space and dirty dish space, but at least there's room to help with it.) The sink has two bowls. This will help by allowing you to dedicate one to prepping and the other to dirty dishes and cleaning up. However, you will still only have one faucet - so you'll have to share it! The sink acts as the separator b/w the Cleanup Zone and the Prep Zone. But, that means you will both want the sink when cleaning up (rinsing, DW loading, etc.) is going on at the same time as prepping & cooking. "...Usually only one person is cooking at a time, but someone else tends to be loading or unloading the dishwasher..." I understand about prepping/cooking and cleaning up at the same time - that's how it is our home! In our old kitchen, we always competed for the sink - even with its two bowls. One of the goals when we remodeled was to eliminate that competition. Note the location of the DW, this location keeps it out of the Cooking Zone...in particular, it's far from the cooktop so you don't have the danger of someone taking a step back from the cooktop with a pot of boiling water and stumbling over an open DW door. I was able to keep the Prep & Cooking Zones on the same side of the kitchen as the refrigerator to help reduce zone-crossing not only to/from the refrigerator but also to/from the two zones themselves. Like the first layout, there's a 36" Dish Hutch. It's still close to the DW for unloading. In this layout, the Dish Hutch is much closer to the BN for setting the table - but it is farther from the DR and this time people will probably cross into the kitchen if they're setting the DR table b/c it's closer than going around the island. The refrigerator is still on the periphery. While it's closer to the DR, it's farther from the BN - but it's still outside the Prep & Cooking Zones and should be easy to get to without crossing into the kitchen. The island is a slight barrier b/w the refrigerator and Prep Zone, but it's not too bad. I think it's doable. The ovens are in the corner - recessed to the back wall. Check out Alku05's kitchen and others in the thread I linked to below for pictures of corner ovens. Like Layout #1, the counter in the cooktop perimeter run is 28.5" deep - 3" deeper than standard. While the workspaces in the Prep Zone and around the cooktop aren't as generous as in Layout #1, they is still plenty of space in both cases. The pantry is a bit smaller, but it's still 5' wide. The island is deep enough that someone sitting at the island will not be splashed when the sink is in use (something that is usually more of an issue when cleaning up than it is during prepping.) One comment I would like to make about the Cleanup Zone...

Thynes, that's a great space and a pretty nice design already to go tweaking, but if it were mine... :) I don't know how many hours your folk may be from the nearest good grocery store, but that giant pantry suggests it's a lot. I'm being facetious, of course, but...it's a really big investment of space. To stand in. Do your back-strengthening exercises in private? If it were mine and I wanted seating at the peninsula, of course I wouldn't want the cleanup on the peninsula. Given the problems with sliding the sink around the corner to avoid that, I'd definitely investigate, instead, the possibility of taking...maybe the first 3 feet of the stove side of the pantry and maybe combining that with a bit of the existing counter area as my scullery. The sink would be on the stove end of the scullery, so that side would serve prep function, with the DW in what is currently pantry space. That would move dirty pots and dishes far away from the social area, practically out of sight altogether, including to people walking in. Then the stove would stay roughly where it is now, could slide up or down a bit as desired. That would allow good prep areas on both counters--your in-laws could face someone at the peninsula or move up the kitchen a bit to keep the peninsula uncluttered and available for serving, drinks, etc. Or prep in any of the 3 potential work areas (both sides of stove) this creates. Not least, I'd do there what I have in my own kitchen--no uppers over my prep counter. I love working without upper cabinets in my face. I'd move that overhead storage right behind me to the fridge wall. In any case, this single design device would make their windowless kitchen feel airy and as large as it really is. I would also put the microwave elsewhere, out of sight on either the fridge wall or under the peninsula. Definitely not over the stove, where it'd be, willy-nilly, a major feature on looking into the kitchen. This would also avoid traffic congestion at the stove. A noncirculating air filter could be mounted above the stove without being attached to a microwave, and its mount could be designed to look far more elegant than a microwave ever can. It could even masquerade to look like a regular externally vented hood, although I'd probably try for something else altogether--maybe tuck it into an over-stove shelf, with space to display art above. Or whatever. A fun drawing tablet project, but then the whole thing is. Have fun!

If you can remove the top half of that wall...I think that is a great idea! :) Five kids and you cook most meals. As the kids get older, I'm sure there will be more than one wanting to spend time with you in the kitchen. (LOL) What if you move the sink under the window and move the range to where you have the sink? This would put the fridge on the 'back' wall with the microwave...making an easy snack area for the older kids to use. Pantry stays close to cooking and snack area...but I would think about taking out the closet and putting in a cabinet...with pull out storage. Since you have a fairly narrow space, two changes might make a big difference. Sink under left window with dishwasher on the 'half wall' area...far enough down to open dishwasher and still stand at sink. Keeping the half wall will mean the kitchen is not completely open to the dining room and the kids can see you, but you can still direct traffic around your work space. There's an upper cabinet on the right side of the sink, but over the dishwasher would stay open, to keep an eye on the cuties pies! The other is to think about putting a banquette on that long wall of the dining room, with a (pedestal?) table...maybe with curved corners. This would leave you room for four to five chairs and plenty of seating for the kids. Outdoor fabrics on the banquette, cushions and maybe chairs would make clean up much eaiser! Hope this helps. I always need more storage, so just a suggestion to add cookbook storage by the fridge (facing doorway) and cabinets with shelves above on each end of the banquette. Toys and games (or computer stuff) can go in the cabinets with books, dishes and display on the shelves. From Kitchen plans This post was edited by lavender_lass on Wed, Jan 1, 14 at 13:05