Consider your family and how you will use the kitchen, today and years from now. Do/will you have teenagers who want to help? Do you cook alone or have help? Where are your work zones?

Most here say not to have the cooktop in the island for safety reasons plus the added difficulty of venting. You have the added problem of no counter space beside the fridge or oven to land stuff. Landing on the island is minimal with the cooktop on that end. Could you have a stove rather than cooktop and eliminate the wall ovens?

There is very little useable storage in both plans. Have you made a list of everything you plan to store to see where it would fit? Do you have a walk-in pantry or additional storage nearby?

In plan B, how/when do you see people walking through the tight corner? You have a narrow walk space between the LR furniture and the kitchen in both plans. Plan B seems to compound that problem if you plan to walk through there.

The bar sink takes up scarce cabinet space and doesn't appear to add functionally. Consider eliminating it.

What about a large rounded corner to open up that narrow walkway in your Plan B? Maybe put a curved cabinet there, if your cabinet maker offers one. Maybe also not extend the wall shelving so far towards the kitchen. Do you really need a bar sink? You may appreciate having more space without it for prepping and cooking. At least push it as far to the end of the island as you can and maybe go with a smaller sink.

While some GW'ers try to discourage people from putting a cooktop in an island, as long as you provide sufficient space to the sides and back of the cooktop, it is perfectly safe. We love our island cooktop. Now we can talk to our guests face to face when we are prepping and cooking, instead of having our backs to them. Venting can be a bit more of a challenge, as you need to add some ceiling supports to hang the hood from.

Here's a couple of photos of our island, if you are interested. We had the support column issue as well.

This post was edited by gpraceman on Sat, Nov 30, 13 at 9:42

Do a search on this forum for "cooktop in island", and you will find detailed discussions of why it's a bad idea. Please don't buy into all the cooking shows where the cooktop is on an island - necessary for filming, but so difficult for real-life kitchens. And your exhaust will not only cost much more over an island, but it will be less effective to boot.

So, move the cooktop off the island to the perimeter, and re-do your design from there.

Thanks for the feedback.

gpraceman I love your island!

I did dither for quite a long time on wall vs. island cooktop. I research everything on GW and I know the consensus is that island hoods are a bad idea.

My parents have an island cooktop setup for their big ol Wolf range. Yes, the ventilation isn't as good as it could be, and yes, the house does fill with food smells sometimes because of it. But I like cooking while chatting with people and etc.
I would rather have food smells and a bit of smoke/steam some of the time than cook facing a wall all of the time.
So, after some hand-wringing, I decided to put it in the island -- and now the ducts are in, so I'm afraid it's not moving unless I want to be strangled in the night by the HVAC guys. :]

Storage: I agree that the in-kitchen storage is scant, but I do in fact have a large walk in pantry (in the more zoomed out floorplan, it's that little room you can see part of down in the lower right corner). Still, the lack of storage worries me (I am the type to keep a lot of dry goods on hand), so I want to maximize it wherever possible. Most (all?) of my lowers will be drawers, so hopefully that will help.
Oh, and my freezer will also be in that pantry.

Here's a plan C following some of gpraceman's ideas. (at least I think this is what you meant)

I'm also still not sure about how I feel about disrupting the sort of natural symmetry of the whole area. The large windows, vent hood, and entire dining area setup are all centered... the island would be the only main focal point that's not centered, and it might be visually upsetting to have it skewed off to one side like that?

The question of "do I really NEED circulation into the living room up there by the bar sink" still remains as well.

Overall, I just feel like I'm maybe trying too hard to force the long island into this space. Should I just stick with Scheme A?

I doubt this helps since this is a crappy mockup(I later did more solid mockups with cardboard boxes, don't have pix though), but here's a few actual photos of the space, looking towards the living room:

This is the Scheme A layout. The sawhorses show the outlines of the 'small' scheme A island.
The vertical beam to the left is the unmovable support beam.

So basically, some people think that the peninsula that cuts across the image, from the strawbales to the support beam, is really chopping the space up and that it should be eliminated.

You could just do a 45deg angle instead of the curve, if you want to keep it linear. I know that some cabinet makers do offer curved or angled end cabinets, so maybe the cost won't be too much more than a regular cabinet.

Your drawing does look pretty general. Have you made up an actual cabinet layout drawing?

I think that is the fist time that I have seen straw bales used in building a house. Do they frame walls on the inside side of the bales to attach the drywall to?

If you're going to remove that portion of the island, make the angle the same as the wall beyond rather than curved. That will be more in keeping with the modern look you're going for.

I actually don't think that the peninsula is a bad idea. I think it would be a great coffee station, bar station and useable buffet area. I am normally a "big open space" type of gal, but I can see that the peninsula might be great storage below and because it's only half height, you will still get the feel of an open room. Perhaps it depends upon how much you entertain and how you entertain, but I can definitely see that peninsula could be used in the mornings as the coffee station--with milk in the refrigerator below and water available, you could reduce that bar sink a tad so that it wasn't so large. Then later in day you could serve drinks on it and have a bar/wine station so that people are not cluttered in the kitchen.

I find that the other support beam in the dining area is a bit awkward. I was initially wondering if you might add a half height storage cabinets there too to balance both sides of the room. But it looks like the two support beams are not symmetrical to the walls?

Cool space.

I like the overall scheme B better, but don't care for the angle at all. I feel it kills the aesthetic you are using.

I think the strong L in the island is very interesting and I would not detract from it. I suggest ending the cooktop/sink side at the sink and using a rectangular edge.

Not sure if you island is one level or multi level, but if multi, then I would do a second L in the cooktop sink side counter and run it under the other counter to butt up to the back area of the wine fridge. A little recessed area that you could use for the wine opener and bar towel.

I'm not a designer or an experienced participant here on GW but I LIKE the curve very much. Also, know it is good Feng Shui from having a friend who is a feng shui (sp?) consultant. She strongly encourage me to eliminate a corner if I could. But.. I also suspect it will be more expensive. I have an intersection similar and found an Ikea base cabinet (that is what I'm using and CAN afford) that gives me an angle there instead of a curve - it is three layers of open shelves. Maybe it is commonly found in other cabinet lines?

Anyway just my thought:

Strawbale! How neat that you are building with strawbale. I always thought if we built that we'd do that, but isn't the direction we went.

Your pantry looks pretty spacious to me. Lots of good storage if you don't mind walking over to get it.

Also, I think you have to clip or curve that corner... 2 feet is pretty tight and if it's open, it'll have traffic. I like the curve, fwiw. Curves can be modern... more sloped and less half-circled maybe?

For what its worth, can't help voicing my thoughts on your design though I'm obviously a newbie--

--Still like the curved end of the island VERY MUCH.
--move the large fridge next and to the left of the dishwasher
--I would move the cooktop to where the 30" oven is (or install a "slide-in" range there where the 30" oven is now located)
--but if you still want a cooktop instead of range, move a 30" oven under the counter in the island
--Move your microwave if it is in the 30" oven stack onto a shelf in the pantry.
--keep bar sink where it is - I would make it a tad larger than just a bar sink
--seating and bar fridge says the same

This post was edited by elphaba on Sun, Dec 1, 13 at 17:59

I really like plan C. Although, if it were mine, I would flip the oven and the refrigerator locations...I go to the fridge 20 times more often than the oven, and would prefer it closer.

How about putting some $$ into an engineer and some steel to get rid of those posts? They're the fly in the ointment. And what's behind the fridge/oven wall? Can you push that wall back enough to make the clearance at that tight corner better? Or maybe do a galley kitchen with the fridge to the left of the sink and the range to the right and give up cabinets on that wall? When you do an island cooking zone, and you want to prep there too, you need about 3' of space between the cooking zone and the prep sink. So, the island needs to be bigger if you want it to work. And, I'd ditch all but just a couple of seats there since the eating area is so right there in sight of the kitchen. Put the extra space into more storage on the island.

This post was edited by hollysprings on Sun, Dec 1, 13 at 20:47

kaourika,

GW isn't the greatest of sites for thoroughly modern designs. I'm not here much anymore but popped by today and saw your post and some of the follow-up posts and felt compelled to sign in and post. Ignore the suggestions to radically change the layout - your aesthetic is really quite wonderful. If those tall units are about 15-18" wide, you'll have a lot of storage in them. My pull-out pantry is either 15" or 18" wide and literally *all* my unrefrigerated storage is housed in it and with room to spare. You shouldn't be wanting for space.

While I don't think plan-A is at all difficult, I love your plan-B. Rather than doing too much that's cute to make this work, I'd do one of only two things if you can - pull the island out a foot (if possible) so that the worst of that kink is 3' rather than 2' OR close it off altogether a la the first of your inspiration pictures - the ZeroEnergy Boston Architect's design. Yes the support beam will intersect the island if you pull it out but that's not the end of the world either and you might be able to make a feature of it in the bargain. In fact, if you do pull the island out, you could also do deeper cabinets on the sink side which I guarantee you will love.

The one suggestion that might be a seriously worth a rethink is to switch oven and fridge. Otherwise, I think you have a magnificent layout. When does it come together? Can't wait to see it.

Part of the narrow isle issue can be resolved by shortening up the shelving to the right of the fireplace. Make that the same length as the left side shelving.

I would prefer scheme A.

All the big island schemes seem to leave you with only one entry to the kitchen. So when someone is prepping, while others are setting or cleaning the dining table there can be a lot of traffic in front of the fridge and the sink.