Hi, hobokenkitchen Guidelines are just guidelines, and my husband and I never have felt crowded with the aisle and dimensions that we have in our kitchen -- true we each have a body mass index under 25! But things feel efficient in there: we can easily turn from one line of counters or from the range to the island without taking more than a couple of steps, and the 24" square island utility sink is easily accessible from both sides of the narrow island, from the prep counter against the windows and from the range on the interior wall. The refrigerator/freezer doors are not 36" wide, either, so it doesn't swing too much into the space, and even when the dishwasher door is fully open (on the window side, to the left of the island utility sink) it is possible to sidle around it. I think my only concern having lived with this arrangement for over a year is: it will be interesting to see how well the cork floor holds up over the years, because we really do cover the same territory on that floor over and over. So far no sign of extra wear. But I have extra cork tiles saved! Good luck to you, and thanks to CoCo for supplying those links. lynn

Thank you guys so much - I thought this thread was going to fall into oblivion so I am happy to see responses. One thing I noticed was that both of you have, in one form or another, a free side without chairs blocking access. Today when I was bringing in groceries I thought about how it wouldn't work so well to have to lift things over chair tops to set them down on the table. Hhhhm, gets me thinking. I really like the concept of making it 1/2 "real island" like yours budge1 - and that only uses up 1 side while leaving 3 for seating. And antiquesilver, your kitchen is really pretty. I think the table adds a lot of attractiveness to your kitchen so this is showing me I am on the right path for my own kitchen asthetically.

Our island is partially centred to our cooktop area. It's not exactly centred as we allowed more clearance to the right of the island as we have sliding doors that go into our backyard and ancitipated people traffic there. We personally needed that symmetry as the upper cabs on either side of the range hood were the same, and because we have two pendant lights hanging over the island. Photo with dirty floors but upper cabs are in. Photo with no upper cabs because we had to shorten the range hood cover, but this shows the pendant lights and finished flooring. However, before you start obsessing about your island placement as I have been reading your other post, have you considered adding to the right of your island? You have quite a bit of clearance there and could easily accomodate a "mini island" with a different countertop material, such as a nice wood butcher block top. You could even make it a different height so as to make it look intentional. DH actually suggested this when he looked at your beautiful kitchen photo. Something like this, TERRIBLE mockup but you get the idea:

One of the goals of my kitchen remodel was to reduce/eliminate clutter on the counters. Things that used to live on the counter but now live in drawers (or in the super susan) include canisters, knife blocks, chargers, and toaster. The only thing permanently left out on the counters are the MW (tucked into a corner) and a paper towel holder. I love my knife drawer! My Mom has a small kitchen in an apartment, with very little counter space, and downsized a lot when she moved from a big house. She added a small knife insert to her flatware drawer - the knife insert is at the very front, and the flatware organizer behind it. I wish I had a photo. I think her insert holds 4 or 5 knives, which is all she needs.