Thanks. It looks like I got 2 votes for option (A) - curved counter. I do have a LR/DR combo at the front of the house for formal dining. We will spend majority of the time in the family room/kitchen. We have 2 eating areas (casual table and counter/booth) because I want to have 1 are for eating dinner and the other area for spreading out homework (2 teenage kids) without having to clean up homework stuff for dinner. The house is simple modern-ish style with very open floor plan and tons of windows. If I have thought of option (C) with Island & built in banquette booth, I would change the layout of the kitchen and have banquett booth and some counter space with bar chairs. However, the walls are already up and I can't come change current floorplan - perhaps you have some thoughts and suggestions?

Sorry, no pictures yet but I am going to have all those on one wall and yes, it was a little challenging to figure out where the microwave was going to go! We have an L shaped kitchen with island. The long wall with the appliances meets up perpendicular to a window wall with sink (and an upper on each side of window. There's also a sink on the island, which is parallel to the cooktop. We considered, but ultimately did away with corner cabinets in favor of uppers that meet in a right angle. Facing the wall we will have (from left to right) a microwave/oven/warming drawer stack, built in fridge, and upper cabinets flanking a hood. Below the hood is a full range. If you are willing to split up your ovens that way it's one way to solve the microwave dilemma. Depending on the type of range this may or may not be a more costly option. Toaster oven will be the only appliance I keep out on the counter. There's another wall across the room where I'll put the coffee "center." The other option would have been to go with a cooktop instead of a range, double ovens and microwave built in to the island. PS Not meant to be a hijack, but my dilemma with this particular configuration is what to do about the hood. Even though I really like side pullouts down to the counter, my instinct is that it would chop up the space too much and call attention to the fact that the range is not centered on the run.

I want to thank each of you for your help and good things to think about so far. Though those of you who posted may not expect answers back with your questions, I'm going to answer on here as it will help me in sorting/reviewing/staying focused and perhaps it will help others as they sort through their kitchen plans. I know that as I've been reading on here, other people's feedback has been every bit as important as the people who posted opinions and suggestions. I should have mentioned in my original post, it is just my DH and me in the house. No children, occasional guests. Kitchen use in all ways is almost exclusively me... grocery putting away, prep, cooking, baking, clean-up, garbage taking out...all me, almost exclusively. There are some things that if doing this for a resale value, I would consider doing differently to cater to a two-cook kitchen. But we hope/plan on being here for a long time (our house was built in the early 1950's and we are only the 2nd owners...our hope is to have this house and stay here to love it like the original owners did) Truth be told, if we were to resell for unexpected reasons, this kitchen would be WAY more upscale than anyone would anticipate finding in their house hunt. I believe the kitchen remodel at surface level at least would be looked on favorably and be a giant selling point for most potential buyers unless they were like us here on GW and are TKO! All that being said, I appreciate the concerns brought up about eliminating extra steps...I'm a bit on the lazy side (haha) and am all for making use and clean-up as easy as possible for me when using the kitchen. *will you be able to easily reach up to / in to your mw at the level it is? taking hot things out of it could be dangerous if it's too high. I think it will be okay. It will be within a few inches of where the oven/micro combos are, as I'm planning it. It will sit higher than counter level (maybe about 10 inches higher than counter height), but not extremely high. The drawer underneath the oven isn't necessarily as high as shown in my plan...I'm still ironing out depth on each of the drawers. We had a microhood in our last home, which was up high, and it was okay. I don't use the MW much so I feel a bit reluctant to give it a prime real estate space favoring other things to get primo space. *the handles on your trash cab and the appl lift cab are shown on the side corners of the doors - is that where you want them? most people have the handles for a pullout type put in the center. Good question, and NO! :) That was a software limitation - wouldn't allow me to easily place the handles where I wanted them, so I just let them default where they wanted for the layout. I will be supplying detailed drawings to my contractor for how handles should be when we get to that point - and yes, they will be in the center for the trash pullout, appliance lift, etc. *and also, be sure that your drawers in the corner area will easily open past the handle to the door to that corner area. you might need a bit extra /filler on the left side of the drawer bank on fridge wall. There is a bit of an area there, it's just not easily seen. But good to note and I'll put that down in my plans to make certain that our contractor remembers that as well. *oh, what's the space between counter top and lower edge of upper cabs measure? I think 18" is about normal. Our current kitchen is 16", which has been fine, but we're planning on 18" in our remodel. *and when you build on and the door to the outside is gone... will you be ok with not having a door to the outside in there anymore? Well, we have to be okay with it. No other place to put the addition. We have a neighbor to the sink side of the kitchen and a street on the opposite side, plus set-back lines from the township for all sides. So, the only place to go is back since we are on a double lot. The addition will be a basement and master bedroom suite. The basement will be a daylight basement and there will be access in and out of the house from the basement in the back of the house. We will also probably have access to the outside from our bedroom because we plan on a deck off the back of that, and DH and I have somewhat talked about having that current door become a pantry and/or laundry area which would also have access to the bedroom. I actually LOVE the idea of laundry there since it would be right beside our bedroom which is where most of our dirty clothes come from. *This would drive me nuts because I often use both appliances on the same dish: starting something on one and fnishing it on the other (sear roasting, browning under the broiler, gravy-making in the roasting pan, etc.)and I often use my oven to hold serially-cooked items (pancakes, sauteed chicken breasts, for instance) while I complete the other portions or finish the dish. The picture I see of this kitchen is the cook traipsing back and forth around the island with a fiercely hot skillet, or even a pancake on a spatula. Good point. If I could, the oven would be on the sink wall as well. But, I don't see putting it as a range (I really don't care for ranges as I feel that the oven is a bit too low). I also love the look of the granite around the cooktop. And in terms of overall usability, I prefer having my pots/pans under the area where I'll use them rather than placing those elsewhere. I rarely transfer something in one uninterrupted movement anyway. If I'm making gravy, I've often used my terra cotta roaster in the oven and it can't go on the cooktop, so the drippings get transferred into a pot, which will happen on the island or over the sink. If I'm using the MW or oven as a holding area, it gets transferred to another plate anyway not directly to the oven, so the plate sits to be loaded and then open the oven. I do occasionally sear meats before putting them in the oven to finish, but not really enough to make it matter to me. But, again, a great point and it made me think more about how I cook, so thank you! *(The other issue is the venting: my ovens create smoke and steam and smells that I am really glad to have under the exhaust hood.) I don't typically wind up with smoke when using the oven. If I do, well, something has likely gone quite wrong in my cooking. Smell is a different issue, and it's there. Of course, I'm coming from the current kitchen where the hood isn't vented outside at all and so, cooking smells are a part of life. Hopefully, even if the exhaust fan has to pull across the room, that will still lessen the amount of cooking odors. Except for when I'm baking cookies and cakes...I WANT that scent to linger. :) *May I suggest getting a range with an oven underneath it? If your MW is used for meal prep move it closer to the action zone; if it's primarily used for snacks it can live in the periphery. MW is seldom used. Mainly for reheating tea or some veggies sometimes. To tell you the truth, if we didn't have it, I probably wouldn't miss it that much. Duly noted about the range, and appreciate your feedback on that. Thinking about my cooking methods, I won't say that it's not a bit of a trade-off no matter which way I go. I had briefly considered putting the oven in the island, but then it would be lower and all of my bakeware would have needed to move to the area where I currently have the oven, so it wouldn't be near its point of use, so I nixed that idea quickly. *On another subject, I would store your dishes in the island instead of beside the fridge. This would result in easy unloading and relatively easy access for plating. Stowing them on the other side of the sink - and farther away from both the table and the cooker will make for unnecessary backtracking when preparing the meal. That was my original thought to put the dishes in the island, but there is an issue with having the drawer open and the DW at the same time because where they open overlaps so both couldn't be open at the same time and that is way more of an issue to me. a2gemini has a layout similar to what I'm planning - I hope she doesn't mind me reposting her photo here: I will stand in front of the sink to unload the dishwasher - reach for the dish, pivot and place in the drawer. When plating, I would do a similar but reversed movement. I imagine my plating will happen by getting flatware out and putting it on the table as I do currently, my plates will sit on the counter on the DW or the island depending on if I have both cooktop and oven use or just one and everything will be placed on there and then brought over to the table. Since it's just the two of us in most cases, I plate and serve rather than placing in serving dishes. *One thing I found very useful is thinking through the food pathways within my kitchen. Where the food comes, where it's stored and how it progresses from there through prep and finally to plating. I also resolved that I would try to store kitchen equipment where is was needed and be willing to break up sets and challenge the notion of "likes with likes", if necesssary. Storing equipment where it is needed is one of the big reasons that I'm going with the separate oven and cooktop. My oven cookware will be with the oven, and my cooktop things will be with the cooktop. There's a bit of overlap cookware in going from cooktop to oven, but putting the two together as a range means that virtually all of my cookware would need to move to another area and be less easily accessible to where it's point of use will be. If I could eliminate the island which is a bit of a barrier, I would, but I need the countertop area. I considered putting the oven on the same wall as it is currently shown but beside my broom closet and when I looked at it in the layout, I hated how it looked...it was very slightly more functional perhaps that way, but the look was terrible, and the extra 2 steps to keep it in it's current location is well worth it to me. *Can you get a table with a more organic look, and rounded off ends to make it less of a hip-bruiser? Yes, the table shown is just a placeholder - bound by the limitations of the software. We are probably going with rounded off corners, although not oval. And we will have it as a pedestal rather than 4 corner legs making it easier to get in and out from the benches. *Also don't worry about your relatively narrow island (by most peoples' standards). My own kitchen is planned for one that size and I tried working with a live mockup for several months and found it quite useful and nothing tumbled off the other side. That's good to know. If we could go wider, I would in a heartbeat, but it's just not possible. *Your drawings are very clear and easy to read, thank you! I'm glad it was easy to decipher. I've been working really hard on this. *I think it looks wonderful! Every little detail has been considered and I think this will be a lovely kitchen to cook in and bake...especially with the island. Without stools, it is the perfect place to set hot pans out of the oven. The banquette will be a great feature and a nice, soft contrast to the cabinetry. I look forward to seeing your progress...and pictures! :) Oven usage was why we eliminated the stools. I remember you checking my original design and we were trying to put seating there at that point. And, it just didn't work. At all. The island was winding up that it wasn't good for baking, it wasn't good for seating, and it wasn't going to be great for prep. The banquette makes for a very usable kitchen with a lot of good space for seating if we have friends and family over. Our expected start date for demolition is end of September/start of October, so I'll be doing lots of research on here for all the other little odds and ends - lighting, backsplashes, etc. Checking out fabric to use on the seats for the banquette - leaning toward Crypton...the company just sent me a sample and it seems pretty amazing. Might even go with light colored fabric without worries! Will definitely post pictures when we finally get started and as we finish. We're pretty excited that this is all starting to come together and that the 70's kitchen will be going! *Seriously giant fridge opens in front of dish storage. This could be annoying during activities like cleanup where the sink is in use and people are opening/closing the ref to put away left-overs as well a something like pouring a glass of water. I'm thinking there will likely be other conflicts that I'm not seeing. "People" for cleanup and leftovers is ME...singular, I'm almost the sole person in our kitchen. DH makes a few trips to cabinets to get snacks and the fridge to get a drink, but aside from that, he just doesn't inhabit the kitchen! We have our fridge already (our old one died earlier this year, so we got the fridge we wanted) It is a French door fridge - the right hand door is where most of the drinks are kept and the right hand shelves are where leftovers go, so it will be able to be opened by DH for a drink when I'm putting dishes away from the DW. Water and ice are dispensed through the left door, so no need to open if we need one of those things. The ref door actually comes pretty close to touching a person using the sink. If it were me, I'd sit back in my current layout with a little piece of blue tape at 18" from the sink and watch how often I crossed that line and how often the ref was opened by others and evaluate if that got in my way. Easy remedy is to use a single door ref. *Again, left hand door is used for lesser accessed items - mostly cooking/condiment related and I would get those. So, I wouldn't be at the sink and the fridge at the same time...though it would be wonderful if I could master being two places at the same time. ;-) *I could also be talked into putting the dw where you have dish storage and adding an 18" cabinet between it and the ref. Then use the 24" hole where the dishwasher was for dish storage. I'm afraid that 24" isn't enough space for my dishes, flatware/knives, and food storage containers. 30" would be tight really. I'm also not a fan of narrow cabinets, even less so since we will have framed cabinetry (wanted frameless, but we are going with an Amish cabinet maker who does not do frameless construction. *I would guess that having to reserve a lot of blank wall will end up being more annoying than the morgue drawer would be beneficial. I would guarantee I'd stick a storage/desk piece there and end up not using the drawer at all. That would be because gaining about 60" of floor to ceiling-ish storage - more attractive to me than an 18" by 36" or so single drawer. Oh, we opted NOT to do cabinetry there. It seemed like the room was getting closed up way too much if we put much more cabinets in. We haven't decided exactly what will be going there yet, but there will be something decorative on that wall. The single drawer will be 48".

Thanks so much for all the input so far! sjhockeyfan- I think I mocked it out and the dishwasher opening will just miss the stove. But even if it doesn't totally, I would rather have it be there than its current location right across from the fridge. That causes conflict on a near daily basis, whereas there would be less conflict between dishwasher and stove. Thanks for your input on dividers in lower cabs, that is kind of what I was thinking also. suzannesl- THANK YOU for posting my pics! I will have to experiment somewhere to figure out what went wrong. As to the cab over the fridge, it is not currently counter or fridge depth. I do not want the wood walls on the side of the fridge. I think that I would feel more closed in then with just the fridge. Plus, as uncouth as it is, I actually put stuff on my fridge on all three sides with magnets. I have hooks with potholders and recipes on side close to stove, kids art on the front and a couple of pics, and calendar and kids school notices on the side by the door. It may not look like a magazine picture, but it is very functional for me. The other reason is that we may not upgrade our fridge right away and I don't want our little fridge to look silly in a big hole. And I don't want to make it hard to pick a new fridge due to size limitations because of a wood box. So because I don't have the side pieces, I think that I am stuck with a standard depth wall cab above the fridge. I will have to look up what it means to be frameless. I do know that there is no wood strip in the middle of the front of the cabinet. We are keeping the wood floor. Love the dishes in the drawer! That is totally my plan- we currently have dishes in the lower cabinets so that kids can empty the dishwasher and put them away themselves :). I was hoping they would fit in the drawers to the right of the dishwasher. Glad both you and sjhockeyfan like the arrangement. Do you guys have special dividers in the drawers? annkh- The current aisle width, from countertop edge to countertop edge is 53". It would be less from the fridge to the opposite countertop. And thanks for the advice on figuring out what would go where. I definitely need to do that, and then see how deep the drawers are in the different configurations and layout what will fit where. Hopefully more will fit then does now. If you look on the far left countertop you will see my dishdrainer, behind it is my toaster oven, then there is a Pampered Chef wooden dowel rack thing with my stones and cookie sheets, cooling racks and cutting boards. They do not fit vertically in any cabinet in my kitchen as the shelf is too low. I want them off my countertop!