What a great project (and lifestyle!). There are others on here that have much more knowledge of layout and design, but in terms of the overall picture, I'm thinking you might be better served with an island rather than the peninsula. It seems that would be more handy for the type of cooking that you do. And you might extend the kitchen a little more toward the dining room for additional counter space and storage. Perhaps you could add another sink, too. If you often have more than one person in your kitchen, that would be a huge help. My dream kitchen would have two large sinks (and another in a nearby laundry room, which I see you have).

Kudos on homesteading and sustainable living. I admire you for that. I agree for all you are planning to do in that kitchen, I think you need two sinks and more counter space.

I would also vote for the island/more counterspace and 2 sinks. I do a lot of preserving too, and we just started using our new kitchen- so I tried it out and canned some garlic! The island is very very convenient for laying everything out/working around. It would also make it more convenient to take things to the eating area instead of having to walk around the peninsula w/ dishes etc.

If it were me I also may not put the composting toilet right by the entryway...while I have been around 1 that hasn't smelled, the majority I have seen smell at least some of the time- hopefully yours won't though! :-) It's very exciting that you will have that though! I wanted one but it ended up not happening.

I also agree that the freezer looks very small! If you do a lot of butchering, won't you need a large chest freezer somewhere? Or do you also can the meat? We put our large chest freezer in the basement, and have a regular fridge/freezer in the kitchen which is more convenient for us.

Is the main entrance to the house through the mudroom? I think that whole area of the plan could be reworked for better function, and to get all the plumbing on one wall. The washer looks inaccessible in the mudroom, and I don't see a dryer- are you planning to line-dry? I think you need to allocate more space to the mudroom, so you have a roomier, more welcoming entrance with plenty of storage.

I agree that an L shape kitchen, and a large island with a sink, would work best for your needs. I would expand the countertop L further into the dining area, to line up with the pillar. I have never heard of a top-opening fridge- did you mean a full length fridge, and a top opening chest freezer?

A summer kitchen is a great idea, especially for canning in the heat. Will you have a basement where you could have cold storage? If not, you may want to put a cellar outside, next to the kitchen.

It looks like the pantry is a cold cupboard, maybe it's against a north facing wall so it stays cool?

I agree with the suggestions to rework the entry/mud room/laundry. Right now people would pass through your laundry area as they enter. Or is there another entrance into the living room?

Thanks for the input so far. Still working my way through the suggestions, but in the mean time to answer a few questions -

The house is facing North (top of the page) but we are in the southern hemisphere, so the sun will shine in the living/dining rooms.

Yes the main entrance is through the mud room, which isn't too lovely for guests but we're pretty heavily focused on function over form. There's also some sliding doors on the eastern veranda they could potentially come through, and we may also use the kitchen door on the south side a bit if it turns out to be more convenient.

Regarding the fridge and freezer. It's to do with efficiency. This explains the fridge. It is small for a family home I agree, but we were going to try and make it work. We might have a cellar in addition to the cool cupboard too as jlc712 suggests. It sounds like I should allow space for a larger unit though just in case..

What about something like this? It gives you a nice big Prep Zone in the island with a decent sized "prep sink" (24" sink base/21" or so interior width sink basin). There is also space on the end of the island (cleanup sink wall end) and even some b/w the range and cleanup sink. The cleanup sink is 36" wide for those really large projects.

Based on your description, you will be doing a lot in your kitchen and will need plenty of workspace. This idea gives you a lot of workspace located where it will actually be used. There are two sinks b/c truly functional Prep Zones need water very close at hand.

Note that I moved the walls a bit. The pantry wall was moved down 18" and the stairs were shifted 12". I don't know if you can do this, but to have a great place to work, I think you need the space.

If desired, there are two seats at the island.

The window is 54" wide and is counter-height to bring plenty of light into the Kitchen as well as give the kitchen a more open feel.

The counters in the Cleanup Zone are 3" deeper than standard with base & upper cabinets also 3" deeper than standard. This will add quite a bit of storage space, deeper workspace around the cleanup sink, and more space behind the sink for the faucet as well as to reduce splashing of the window.

I don't know the actual sizes of your chest freezer & refrigerator, so I made them 33" wide and 27" deep. I did look them up on AJ Madison. If you plan to have the larger sized chests, then you will need a lot more wall space - they ranged from 48" wide to 66" wide for 15+ cubic feet. If you're planning on the larger sizes, then you need to either add a few feet to the length of the house or take (more) room from the Cold Pantry.

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Layout:

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Zone Map:

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(I didn't put in the window in the Dining Room b/c I was focused primarily on the kitchen. The windows in the DR can go wherever you'd like them.)

Forgot to label them, but the doors are 36" wide doors - both the left and the top wall.

buehl - thank you so very kindly for going to such trouble with those plans!! We're astonished at your generosity of time and thought. We will use this as a new basis for our detailed design.

Something I should have mentioned is that we are trying to rely on natural light as much as possible during the day - do you think another window on the southern wall (on your plan the wall on the left, where the freezer and fridge is) would be a good idea? Or do you think the window above the sink should provide sufficient light into the kitchen? Note the northern wall (dining and living areas) is all floor-to-ceiling glass. I guess one draw back of excessive windows which I hadn't considered is that they eat into potential upper cupboard space.

We're definitely agreeing with you and the others with regards to having an island work bench. We're also coming around to the idea of a second sink (I just read this http://kitcheneeringstudio.com/design-tips/second-sink/) despite it conflicting with my preference for simple plumbing.

jlc712 - There have been a few compromises with the layout of the mudroom, hallway, etc. Getting plumbing all on the one wall is certainly something I was going for but unfortunately I haven't been able to achieve due to a few constraints. Yes we intend to line dry. You're right about accessing the washing machine - I'll review the size and layout of the mudroom. If it came down to the wire, would you sacrifice a little space in the shower (this only needs enough room for a shower and for someone to dry and dress - no bath or sink/vanity) for more space in the mudroom?

Another window on your south wall is a great idea. It will give you the light you need without the glare of direct sun. So no need for window coverings, unless you need them for privacy.

Have you considered passive solar heating/cooling for your house? It sounds like it would fit into your goals, and I would have mentioned it sooner if I had realized the orientation of your house. For example, if you rotated the entire thing most of your windows would then be on the south side of the house. A large overhang on the south side w/ lots of windows would allow the sun's rays into the rooms in the winter and offer more shelter in the summer. One author who writes about this type of building is Dan Chiras. We did this with our home and it has been great! We get a LOT of natural light coming in through the southern windows. Our kitchen window is on the northern side of the house but it is an open floor plan like yours, so is definitely bright enough. It seems such a shame to waste most of the south side w/ storage/pantry and only one possible window in the kitchen. This is of course assuming that you live in the northern hemisphere.

I thought I read something about you living in the southern hemisphere and just found it again- oops!! It makes sense now ;-) and looks like you are getting the most out of your windows. Silly me...

Here is a suggestion:

1) Your front door is now on the side of the house. Like this:

I would suggest getting a front door with glass panels so light can get into the hallway. Between that and the light coming down the hallway from the west-facing window in the dining room, the hallway shouldn't be dark.

2) Moving the front door allowed me to use the space a lot more efficiently and make all the rooms around the front door and the hallway more spacious without changing the overall outline of your house. It also gives people entering the house the option to spread out in different directions instead of having that bottleneck mudroom and single-file-line hallway. Someone who needs to go to the bathroom can go straight there and get out of everybody else's way. Someone who wants to drop dirty shoes in the laundry room can go straight there. Someone who just wants to put away their mud room stuff (coats, bags, etc.) can go straight down the hall and use the closets/cupboards there. And the entrance/hallway is now wide enough that multiple people can be entering and putting things away at the same time without being in each other's way.

3) I put the laundry room and the shower together. It meant you get:

a) a larger shower
b) more walking/moving around space in the room
c) a long counter to use while doing laundry or getting ready
d) the combination of the shower and sink in the same room means someone can get completely ready in the morning in here
e) the ability to strip off dirty clothes and throw them in the washer and jump in the shower all in one go

4) You no longer have an awkwardly long and skinny half bath.

5) Both the shower/laundry room and the half bath now have north-facing windows, so you will have plenty of natural light in both all day.

6) You have a HUGE amount of storage on either side of the hallway. This will function as your mudroom, but it can also store china for the dining room, pantry overages for when you've done a lot of canning, extra rolls of toilet paper for the bathroom, extra things of laundry detergent, and anything else you have to put away. One side of the hallway is 24" deep for hanging coats (and anything else deep that you want to store), and the other side is 12"-18" deep (whatever you prefer) for shallow storage. You can do cubbies, shelves, whatever. A long row of shallow storage like this is the best kind of storage -- you can see everything at once and nothing gets lost in the depths of the back.

7) I swapped the locations of the kitchen and the dining room because:

a) In its original location, the dining room table was quite a hike from the outdoor kitchen. Now it doesn't matter which kitchen you are using, the dining room table is right next to it.

b) The original dining room location has better natural light. This is more useful in a kitchen. You don't really need excellent task lighting to eat a sandwich. Dim lighting in a dining room is often considered "mood lighting," but dim lighting in a kitchen is just bad lighting. Plus the majority of big sit-down dinners happen at night anyway when natural light is gone, after you cooked all day and could have been using the natural light in your kitchen.

c) Moving the kitchen also means it now overlooks the living room, so cooks can interact with people who are just hanging out. There is some bar seating now between the kitchen and living room to facilitate those interactions.

Before, the cooks could only really interact with people sitting at the dining room table, which is not where people who aren't cooking usually hang out. Usually people only come to the table when everybody is sitting down to eat, and then the cooks are no longer cooking.

d) In general, it is nice not to have the kitchen be the very first thing you see when you walk in a house.

8) Inside the kitchen, you have two prep counters -- one on either side of the sink. This eliminates the second sink you were hesitant about, but it still gives you the function of a second sink because both prep areas have access the sink. One prep counter overlooks the big windows, and one overlooks the living room. Working at either should be very pleasant.

9) While still handy to the rest of the kitchen, the fridge and freezer are outside the major work zones and close to the dining area, so people can grab a snack and sit down without entering the work zones and bothering the cooks. (If you do a microwave, it should go next to the fridge for the same reason.)

10) Can the internal pillar be worked into the staircase wall? Or maybe into the end of the closet I added? I left the pillar where it was, but it'd be nice if it weren't just in the middle of everything.

11) I forgot to move the fireplace, but I am envisioning it in the living room in front of the windows like this:

Lil, it has taken me a couple of days to get back to this. Buehl's kitchen plan is excellent! and Jillius's reworking of your plan is so thorough that I hesitate to post what I was thinking, but here it is anyway--

I am making several assumptions, so I may be off base. First, I moved your washing machine to the kitchen, next to your fridge and freezer, for two reasons: so it could share the plumbing on that wall, and since you intend to line dry, you will want to be close to your south side door to the outdoor kitchen and yard. I'm assuming you would put the clothesline on that side of the house. You will also want to put some retractable clotheslines, or a drying rack, inside the house for inclement weather.

I'm also assuming you had the composting toilet in it's isolated location due to the setup of the system and for odor control. Hopefully it will still work to have it moved to the opposite side of the house, so that the sinks/shower could share plumbing.

I kept a sink in the mudroom area, since you had one drawn in-- but I would eliminate it if you don't need it, and put a little sitting area in the foyer.

You could do any combination of closets, shelves, coat hooks, etc in the mudroom for your needs. I would put in some benches or chairs, for taking shoes/boots on/off.

Good luck to you, hope you will post the finished project!

Thank you thank you Jillius and and jlc! You've come up with some layouts which we hadn't contemplated at all..it's amazing what a fresh set of eyes (brains?) can do. There's a few other considerations I am trying to juggle but I'm going to use your ideas to try and improve that layout.

I'll be sure to come back and do a write up on our project once it gets under way :-)

Do you do any butchering in the house? That's something to keep in mind. I have a large butcher block slab of countertop that I put on my table and while it's convient and easy to move, it's hard on the back at table height. I find the same thing when I do canning. I often have to use my table a lot and it's a PITA. I like how in your original plan you have lots of counter space next to the stove which is very important for canning.