It might be helpful to post your entire plan, so we can see how the kitchen relates to other spaces :)

Good idea!

Good idea!

{{!gwi}}

Warning - I am no expert!

It seems a long way from the kitchen to the dining room.

What's in the corner in the lower left of the kitchen?

Do you have a microwave? Where will it be?

I feel like the corner pantry really breaks up the space, and everything else is too spread out.

Here's one idea. Things just started flowing, so I kept adding! You never know what will spark an idea from someone else...

This provides a peninsula layout. Range is on the outer wall for easier venting. Also turns the counter seating to have a focal point of the range and also two windows to look at. You could also put a third matching winding in the laundry area if you wanted. It seems like the dining room is more formal, so I added a small two person cafe table for morning coffee and quick lunches, plus the coffee bar where people can get coffee or breakfast (if you put the cereal, mugs, etc there) and access the fridge without entering the kitchen proper. The little area in the bottom left corner is in a great location to stash the cooking books, and also deal with mail, etc brought in through the mud room.

A similar layout with an island instead of peninsula. This provides a larger cleanup area.

Without more info on how you need to use the space (see the stickied thread for instructions) you may find that either you don't get as many responses, or you may get responses, but they might not meet your needs.

Sorry, I should have included more info.

We have three kids, ages 1, 4, and 6 so they are often in the way with cooking. We want the kitchen to be the hangout hub while cooking is going. I want the island to be a place for kids to eat a meal, do homework, sit and talk while we cook. The back of the kitchen that currently has the sliding doors as well as the sink wall have a view over our pond. I do not want to have a full table in the morning room area but I would be okay with a two person table for coffee or breakfast. I would like to use the dinning room table for meals where we are all actually home and not racing around to evening activities so I was trying to pull the oven and general cooking closer to that room.

I want this to be a very open and highly functional kitchen, I'm sure that is everyone's goal! This will be our forever house so one shot!!!

Thanks for your help!

I agree with annkh - dining room seems remote and pantry breaks-up counter awkwardly.

Are you familiar with the 31 kitchen design rules? Granted that rules are made to be broken, but it's good to have a starting point. The pantry breaking-up the counter seems to violate rule #4.

Here is a link that might be useful: 31 kitchen design rules

This post was edited by GauchoGordo1993 on Mon, Oct 14, 13 at 18:00

I posted this on the other forum...what do you think? :)
{{gwi:1506172}}From Kitchen plans
{{gwi:1506173}}From Kitchen plans

If you can and willing to change the lower left corner to have a passage to DR, you can have something like below. I think the kitchen would still be very open to the GR. Also, it might be better to have island seating as 2+3.

Ok, throwing more ideas out there...

This puts all activities where the view can be enjoyed, including the island seats. Plus a bumped out window above the clean up sink, which a few people here have used and it is beautiful! The interior wall then becomes storage of all sorts- pantry, fridge, shallow cabinets to compensate for lack of upper cabinets, and you could even use a bit at the end as a broom closet if you wished.

I don't do so well drawing with my finger without a grid, but if you have 16 feet to work with, then you should have plenty of room if it was drawn to scale.

The door at the top of the kitchen seems to limit you to some extent since you have to accommodate for the swing of the door. Would you consider moving the door to the far left window space? That would probably allow you to have a wider island that might allow for non-ducks-in-a-row style seating. Also, I'm not really a fan of a corner pantry. I'd rather see a set of pantry cabinets, for example where lavender_lass has proposed the pantry might go.

I agree with most of the posters above on the kitchen layout and changing the island. Also, I would consider moving the study to the dining room area and then opening up the entire great room/study for a dining room and great room combo. That way the dining room is close to the kitchen and it's really open.

I agree with most of the posters above on the kitchen layout and changing the island. Also, I would consider moving the study to the dining room area and then opening up the entire great room/study for a dining room and great room combo. That way the dining room is close to the kitchen and it's really open.

Hi, Elacey. My initial feeling was that this design uses a lot of space, spread over a lot of space, and leaves nonwork space in a long strip that lacks flexibility of use. Plus, of course, the DRM currently lacks a fairly direct route and is a bit farther away as a result, part of a set of tradeoffs I imagine you guys are fully aware of, though.

That said, now knowing a lovely and important view is out that long wall explains a lot for me and makes sense of the island being oriented to pay homage to the view. What might look a little odd on a screen often turns out to make perfect visual sense in person. I also like the relatively elegant simplicity and open feeling of the layout. It seemed very large, but isn't really too large because it has an entire, efficient work triangle contained within a compact area. I normally am not crazy about corner pantries breaking up counters, but there are exceptions to anything, and it works here because of that. It's unfortunate that cleanup is so far from dining, but you're raising a troupe of energetic little helpers, so again an eyes-open tradeoff.

If you were to consider change, sena01's island and counter layout have a fairly similar relation to the rest of the house and pull the elements together a bit more, if that were something you wished. And sitters could look at each other more easily as they played and chatted. Of course, creating that more direct route to the DRM, if acceptable tradeoffs were found would be great. If not, oh, well.

I have my doubts about the usefulness of that area you're thinking of putting a little table and chairs in. It's a little tight, and the counter's right there, especially if a stool on the short end allowed glancing out the window too. It would hold an easy chair for relaxing with the cook, or by the cook, though.

I know you came for positive ideas, but feeling it works well pretty much as it is, without indication yet that you're interested in undertaking dramatic changes to something else entirely, there are only a couple of things I see that I might like to change on that design. One might (I'd have to play with it, though) would be to create short wing walls on both sides to frame and suggest a gentle transition between the living room and kitchen. It would create a little protected space to back that easy chair to but shouldn't block monitoring of what's happening in there. The other would be to deepen the stove counter to more like 30". I always like that if there's room, 25" being a good workable standard minimum depth, not a law of nature. :)