tough one: you must ultimately decide this. My choice would be leave the opening that exists, but put the frig where the range is, hinged on the left-push it all the way to the left...you'll get some counter to the rt of frig then. Place the range on the wall opposite the sink..center it there and you may need to eliminate the run that wraps to your hallway to bedroom. That is okay-put some shelves up there. Your hall opening remains with a reduction in some of the traffic directly in that opening because you had the frig there and people access this a lot. The traffic is dispersed in this smallish kitchen in a little better way.I'd do a smaller sink-now you'll have usable counter free on both sides of sink-that would feel better to me.

I think we could get a better idea if you could post a layout in the context of the surrounding floorplan.

The fridge stove swap you suggested isn't possible (although I wish it were). That little wall to the left of the stove has a window in it - covering up windows is definitely against my instincts.

then put the frig opposite the sink...same issues for dealing with the area wrapping over to bedroom hallway.

Oh I see what your saying herbflavor. The run of cabinets at the bottom of the picture is a bitler's pantry. The doorway I am talking about it directly infront of the fridge (the space on the left hand side of the picture).

Okay, that last description now really has me confused. Can you label the drawing? (And we still need to see the whole floor, as Pal suggested.)

OK I put something together to show the general house layout (well - the main level). I don't have software on my computer (its a work laptop) so I am limited to whatever is available online. Hopefully this helps! I am considering eliminating the entryway that goes from the kitchen to the hallway by the bathroom and master bedroom -
meaning we would have to walk through the dining room and down the hallway to get to the bedroom and bathroom.

How about blocking off the doorway for a few days and seeing how that works?

I can understand wanting the door there so you don't have a dead ended circulation patter.

Have you tried the range over to the right where you have the corner arrangement now?

this looks like a Georgetown townhouse or such..is this a period structure?? anyway, there is a lot of sq footage between dining room/closet/butler pantry and kitchen. If you open up the space and have a wider opening in the middle of hallway...about where that closet is, you could do a dynamite remodel here. I've seen townhouses that get this "opening up" approach-I think it's nice and worth it quite often. Are you thinking "bigger" at all here?

herbflavour this is a 1910 douplex (the up and down are identical). I wonder if georgetown townhouse is what its called? I never was able to pinpoint the exact style of the house.

We are not looking to go bigger - I love the butler's pantry and I don't want to lose it. Knocking out the butlers panty and the closet or knocking out the cellar stairs would be the only options for going bigger, we aren't willing to do either.

I could be misinterpreting what herbflavor is suggesting but this is what I imagine based on what HF wrote ('scuse the sloppy cutting and pasting):

You don't lose the butler's pantry, it just moves to the other side. You do lose the upper storage but you could always do shelves in front of the window, especially if you have lovely dishware and glasses to display. The closet shrinks a bit, too.

But look at what you gain in the kitchen! Might be worth the trade-off of a slightly longer pathway to bathroom and bedroom.

Old houses are meant to have quirks. ;-)

I still don't think I am willing to move or lose the butler's pantey. I love the walkthough pantry - one of my top fav aspects of my old house. If I went with the u-shape, it would just be the closed off door on the right hand wall. The only reason I am reluctant is because I can't think of a layout that I like.

I second Lisa-a's suggestion or something along those lines (i.e., moving the butler's pantry a smidge so that you can rework the doors/traffic flow). You could also achieve almost the same result more cheaply (and without losing that door to the bedroom) by scooting the butler's pantry over to the left, as Lisa suggested, and therefore moving the kitchen-to-butler's-pantry door over, but NOT closing off the door to the bedroom/powder room, and thus NOT needing to move the dining room-to-hallway door at all. That would obviously require a slightly different kitchen layout than what Lisa has suggested, but it's still light years better than your current plans.

Does this revision resolve your concern?

The butler's pantry still moves from right to left but the separation between kitchen and it and between it and the DR is retained. I love butler's pantry - wish I had one - so I'd never advocate eliminating one.

The closet section now acts as a back hallway between kitchen and living quarters. Not sure how you use the closet now but turning it as I've done, accessible from the hallway, not through the DR, allows it to be used as a coat closet for you as well as for company.

This idea also lines the hallway entrance up with the window in the butler's pantry, which will help bring more light into the center of the house. I drew it with an opening not a door to help bring that light into the hallway. The butler's pantry and window area would provide a very nice view from the hallway.

My first thought from your OP was that, having the world's smallest bladder, I wouldn't like to have to go so far to reach a bathroom. I visit there so often, and do so from the kitchen. I don't often go from kitchen to master though.

I really like Lisa's last drawing. Butler's pantries seem so cool. I'd love to have one, too. I like that there's a way to keep the pantry, but make your kitchen layout much more functional.

Sheesh I had to write this post twice (comp froze!)

I do like the most recent suggestion that allowed me to keep the butler's pantry, but it isn't possible. My layout drawing doesn't show it, but there is actually a chimney in the wall between the pantry and the closet.

Here are the layouts that I can come up with:

Does anybody have any similar layout plans they can share and comment on? The kitchen is only 12(w)x 10.5(L).

htracey,

To me the change you're suggesting seems like one of those "six one way, half dozen the other" changes. There are advantages to keeping the doorway, and there are advantages to closing it off. Myself, having lived in and potty trained a toddler in a home that had a bathroom that was down-a-hall-up-a-stairs-down-another-hall away from the kitchen, I'd never want to go there again, so needless to say, having lived through that, I like the flow of your house much better WITH the doorway there -- I'd leave it in, particularly since the layout hadn't ever bugged you before.

Kris

If you close off the kitchen opening to that bath/bedroom area and take one of those plans with a run across that wall, how about at least moving the dining opening to hall up higher-you come through the butler pantry, turn immediate left walk across the top of dining room and then turn into hallway up at the top.Save navigating down around table and then back up that same distance in the hall. You'd get kind of a traffic pattern across the top bit of dining room, but the butler pantry is untouched, you gain in the kitchen, and that's not such an arduous path to the bath is it??

Kris_ma - good point. We don't currently have kids and aren't 100% sure we will, but we are still open to the idea. If we do have kids, it will be in the next 7 year or so (I'm 27 - my uncle gave me my most recent reminder yesterday with his "your almost past your expiration date" comment). If we have kids, it won't be alot, but they may be in the future.

Good thought herbflavor, I would be open to that idea. Hubby will be a tougher one to convince (he'll see it as a whole lot of work to move a doorway by 10 feet or so), and won't see much point, but I'll bring the suggestion.

Well, dang that chimney! ;-)

Moving the DR door instead seems like a good alternative, if you're willing to give up the kitchen doorway. I can't decide if your cabinet maker did you a favor by mentioning this possibility or not. ;-)

But since it's under consideration, why not look at all the possibilities before pulling the plug and going ahead with the remodel? At least this way, you'll know you've looked at it from all sides and the plan you went with was the best of the bunch.

So here's an idea if you leave the kitchen doorway in place:

And another if you close the kitchen doorway off.

Both of these rely on a corner sink. You need 74 to 80 inches of wall space to install the DW (allowed 26 for DW and cabinetry), 12" cabinet between DW and sink and 36" or 42" corner sink cab to make this work.

Corner sinks have their pluses and minuses but one thing I think they help with is fitting the sink and DW in an area you may not have thought they fit - that corner by the window in plan C. Moving the sink to that area allows you to move the range over to the fridge wall, which gives you more space on each side of the range, making it easier for 2 to work in the same space. I'm assuming that your windows on the wall to the back door are counter height, hopefully I'm not making a mistake with that assumption.

In Plan C, if your fridge cab is 39" wide, the range is 30" wide and the cabs on each side of it are 20" wide, and your DW wall measures 80" (42" sink cab), you'd have 40" between the two runs of cabs. If you stretched the cabs next to the range to 24" each, you'd have 33" between the cab runs. If you shrank the DW run to include a 36" sink cab instead of a 42" sink cab, you'd have 37" between the two cab runs. Don't forgot to include an open DW door when considering clearances. You don't want an aisle so tight when the DW is open that you can't walk through the kitchen.

In Plan D, you could have a 18" cab (trash pull-out?) between corner sink cab (42") and range before a 36" corner Susan cab. If you went with a 36" corner sink cab, then you have room for a 24" cab between sink and range. It's tight but it's a small kitchen.

You haven't said but I'm assuming that your fridge is a left hand door swing (hinges on left) so that you can place it up against a wall as you've shown in your working plan. I'm also guessing on a few other measurements, including the size of your fridge and its cab so you'll need to check my measurements based on those assumptions to see if either plan fits in your space.

So far I am wondering if the gains are at all worth what you'll lose, particularly since you two are comfortable with what you could have as is.

And especially if you have children. How are they going to run around if there's no around? Or get under your feet when you're working if you're always abandoning work to find out what's going on waaay front-and-back there? Silence is very ominous with children, and you'll run many, many miles over the years to go put a stop to it even with that doorway.

Well put, Rosie, "silence is very ominous with children" --- that's half of parenting right there: being able to figure out when it's a little too quiet. :-)

Too quiet = kids up to no good! LOL