Welcome Josh!

I assume this is a new build (since you're coming to us form the "Building A Home" forum), so what can be changed?

We have a thread that discusses what information we need from you to help us help you. If you could check it out and let us know the answers to the questions (such as your family composition, how you envision using your kitchen, etc.) and post a larger layout with all known dimensions labeled, it would really help.

How do I ask for Layout Help and what information should I include?

• http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2767033/how-do-i-ask-for-layout-help-and-what-information-should-i-include

The above thread and other, relevant topics are included in the "Read Me" thread:

New to Kitchens? Read Me First!

• http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3638784/new-to-kitchens-read-me-first

Right offhand, I see a lot of wasted counterspace to the left of the corner pantry and not enough workspace where it's needed most - in the Prep Zone - which I assume is in the island since it's the only source of water (water is a key component of the Prep Zone).

You have all three primary work zones (Prep, Cooking, Cleanup) crammed into one small area.

I suggest moving the Cleanup Zone off the island and moving it to the counterspace to the left of the pantry. Then, add a small sink to the island and, maybe another 4" or so to the island's length. Ideally, you should have at least 42" of work space in your Prep Zone - not counting the sink.

I also suggest adding a set of 15" deep cabinets to the back of the island - for seasonal or seldom-used items. I would put a 15" wide cabinet opening facing the new sink wall and then 45" of all cabinets facing the seats on the long side. Adding the extra 4" to the length and the 15" deep cabinets now gives you room to put a fourth seat on the "top" of the island - 3 seats (6') along the long end, then another 16" for the fourth seat (includes the 1" decorative door/end panel on the backs of the cabinets.) With four children, not having enough seats for everyone may cause conflict.

Now, your Prep Zone & Cooking Zone are together and separated from the Cleanup Zone. It would also provide you with a secondary Prep Zone to the left of the cleanup sink.

This setup will allows you to have multiple people working in the kitchen at one time - prepping and/or cooking and/or cleaning up. While that may not seem desirable or needed now, once your children are old enough, I suspect you will begin teaching them each how to cook and how to clean up (very necessary life skills! - for both boys & girls!) This setup will allow that to happen b/c you will now have nice workspaces where needed and zones spread out so there's little to no interference.

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Josh's thread with more information on the "Building a Home" forum:

• http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3669064/need-help-with-layout

I encourage you to think through how you and your family cook, hang out, and entertain in your kitchen and what you like to have and to use when you are doing those things.

As a place to start, usually when you are cooking, you are mostly going between the fridge, sink, and cooktop/range. Areas of the kitchen between the sink & fridge, between fridge & cooktop/range, and between sink & cooktop/range will therefore be your busiest areas. That's where the cook will be bopping around. So the cook isn't running all over the place or taking annoying, circuitous routes constantly, you want to have a relatively short, straight walk between the sink & fridge, between the fridge & cooktop/range, and between the sink & cooktop/range. (A common mistake in kitchens these days is to place a "barrier island" between the sink & fridge, between the fridge & cooktop/range, or between the sink & cooktop/range. This forces you to walk around the island to do anything and gets annoying fast.) If any of the three (fridge, sink, and cooktop/range) must be a bit more out of the way, it should be the fridge. (It is not a big deal to get in the habit of collecting everything you need from the fridge in one go and not going back, and it can be beneficial to have the fridge farther out if you have snackers who are often in your way while you're cooking. Keeps them out of your hair.)

As you think about how the cook will move around in your kitchen, know that it's accepted wisdom that you generally go about making a meal in this order: grab food from food storage (fridge/pantry) --> take food to a big counter next to a sink to wash/chop/mix/prep the food --> take food to range/cooktop and cook it. So we typically design kitchens to flow from fridge/pantry to sink to cooktop/range, in that order.

Planning for short, straight walks between the sink&range, sink&fridge, and fridge&range keeps running around to the minimum, and planning for proper flow (fridge/pantry --> sink and counter --> cooktop) keeps criss-crossing and backtracking to a minimum. It's all more efficient for the cook and makes it less likely that other people in the kitchen can get in the cook's way.

Another thing that keeps non-cooks out of the cook's way is not having things in the cook's main working area that non-cooks need. Non-cooks might be looking for a snack, helping with clean-up, hanging out, or doing something else (depends on your family). For hanging out, a non-cook would need a chair and part of counter to put a glass of wine down on or the newspaper or whatever. For clean-up, non-cooks typically need the sink, dishwasher, and drawers/cabinets for dish storage. For snacks, non-cooks typically need the fridge, pantry, microwave, and dishes from the dish storage drawers/cabinets. Whatever the non-cooks in your family need, place these things outside the cook's area or, if completely outside the cook's area isn't possible, place them tangentially to the cook's area. For example, if you can have a second sink that is just the clean-up sink and place it with the dishwasher and dish storage outside of where the cook is working, that is ideal. A person cleaning will never be in the cook's way. But if you have space for only one sink, it will have to be shared by the cook and someone cleaning up. In that case, you want to place the shared sink at the boundary of the cook's area and the non-cook's area, so at least the non-cook doesn't have to enter the cook's area. (And still place the dishwasher and dish storage on whichever side of the sink isn't in the cook's area -- keep what you can out of the cook's area.)

To the same end (of keeping non-cooks out of the cook's way), you want to put everything a cook needs in the areas the cook will be bopping around. This includes the trash/compost, prep materials (knives, measuring cups, spatulas, mixing bowls, etc.), and cooking materials (pots/pans, spatulas, wooden spoons, etc.). Then the cook won't need to leave the cook's area.

That about covers the main concepts of where you want to place items relative to each other. Not every cooks (or non-cook) operate the same way, so think about what of that describes you and your family and where you deviate from norm and then plan your kitchen accordingly.

I also want to address the concept of where you want to place counters and how much:

• You want counter on both sides of the cooktop/range. You will be needing a place to set things down and likely also to chop, mix, etc. I like to have at least 1.5-2 feet on one side (landing zone) and 3-6 feet on the other side (work counter).
• You want counter on both sides of the sink(s). It's very common to pile dirty things on one side of the sink, pass each one under the faucet, and place each one clean on the other side of the sink. If this is a clean-up sink only, 2-3 feet of counter on either side of the sink is sufficient. If this a clean-up and prep sink, I like to have 2-3 feet on one side (landing zone where dirty stuff gets piled) and 3-7 feet on the other (work counter).
• You want counter immediately next to or behind the fridge. Just as a landing zone where you can place stuff you're pulling out of the fridge. Two feet or so of counter for this is plenty.
• You want counter immediately next to or behind the oven. Again, landing zone for hot stuff coming out of the oven. I like 3 or 4 feet of counter for this because I'm a baker and cookie sheets, etc. take up a lot of room. You may be different.

Lastly, your average cook spends the most time prepping the meal (washing/chopping/mixing food before cooking it) and goes back and forth between the sink and range most often (rinsing fingers or utensils while cooking, dropping pans in the sink, pouring pasta water into the sink, etc.).

Because of this, it's accepted wisdom that, ideally, you want to have a nice, big work counter between the sink and range. It's an area that will get a LOT of action, and you always want lots of uninterrupted counter for your convenience wherever you are working the most.

I specified above that you should have a big work counter next to the sink and a big work counter next to the range, but in an ideal set-up, this would be the same counter -- one big work counter between the sink and range that is shared by both. This means you aren't crossing walkways to get from sink to range, so you're not having to drip all over the floor going from the sink to the range or having to carry boiling hot water across the aisle to dump in the sink. This also means that once you collect all your ingredients and start prepping on your big work counter, you have easy access to both the sink and range from that counter, so you basically never have to move again or pick up and move all the stuff you've prepped until you're done cooking. Very efficient and makes it very unlikely that other people in the kitchen will get in your way.

Based on all of these concepts, I notice these red flags in your kitchen:

• No big stretches of counter anywhere near your sink and range.
• The sink and range are not on the same side of the aisle (not the end of the world, but still it's something you should be aware of and choose deliberately).
• The aisle between the sink and range is wide. (I like a wide aisle generally, but considering how much back-and-forth people do between the sink and range, you may not like one here. I encourage you to mock it up with furniture or boxes and see what you think.)
• There is a very long counter that would be an awesome main work counter, except it's not anywhere near the sink or range. Not really near anything, actually. That'll be a very expensive stretch of uselessness.
• The fridge and pantry doors will hit each other.
• Where are you planning to store your dishes? The drawers next to the range closest to the dishwasher would work well in terms of ease of unloading, but I imagine you need that storage for pots/pans/cooking gear, and also you don't want snackers/clean-uppers/table-setters being driven into the cook's area just to grab dishes.
• The corner pantry is really chopping up the space and compressing the work area into a small area of the kitchen.
• How are you going to vent the range hood?

I worked something up that might be of interest. I change the pantry to a rectangular pantry and made the pantry a "hidden" room. The door to the pantry is made to look like pullout pantry doors, but in reality, it opens up into a walk-in pantry. Note that it assumes the door will fit on the inside - I'm not sure since you stated you think you have only 6'2" ceilings in part of the pantry. If not, then either have the door swing out or you could go back to the corner pantry. However, I think this configuration (either door swing), provides you a better use of space overall in the Kitchen. The pantry door is a standard 32" door - it could also be a 24" door, if that helps with the fit. (I have a 24" wide pantry door and it's not a problem.)

The location of the refrigerator can be either where I show it (and my preference) or on the left end of the sink wall - with the sink, etc., shifting over. I prefer it where I show it b/c then the island isn't a barrier to it and b/c it minimizes zone-crossing - the refrigerator is b/w the Cleanup Zone and the Prep & Cooking Zones, so no crossing through the Cleanup Zone to get to the refrigerator. Others can still use the refrigerator w/out getting underfoot of those working in the primary Prep Zone or Cooking Zone.

Note that I put in a standard-depth refrigerator. With four children, a counter-depth won't be big enough! It's recessed into a bumpout in the garage so it appears counter-depth and doesn't cause issues by sticking into the aisle too far.

Dish storage is on the outside so someone can unload the DW during meal prep or someone can get to the dishes to set the table w/out getting in the way of meal prep.

I forgot to mention earlier that one of the big advantages of moving the Cleanup Zone off the island is that you no longer will have your dirty dishes "front and center" / "on display". Anything on the island is on display!

Regarding venting your hood - it can be done from an interior wall. It's easier if the range & hood are on an exterior wall, but it's not required. You can either go straight up through the wall & out the roof - if the upstairs configuration easily allows, or you can run it along the ceiling to an exterior wall - probably out to the wall the DR is on.

Zone Map:

Wow. Amazing input everyone. I'll sit down with my wife later this morning and go over all this with her and reply as I have time. Thank you for the visuals.

That corner, under-the-stairs pantry is triggering a bunch of problems. Jillius made the bold step of taking it out which I think really helps the design of the kitchen but I think you were planning on accessing the tornado/safe room through the pantry, correct? I read on the other threat that you do not want to access the safe room through the garage. What about accessing if from a door where the bath vanity is now, putting the vanity where the study closet it now, and putting the study closet against the dining room wall? It sounds like the safe room is important to you but I wouldn't want to design the whole house around something you hopefully will never use. UPDATED: Just realized you may have already incorporated something like this because the plans on this thread are different than on the other thread.

Stan: your correct that the corner pantry is causing problems. I like Jillius's design but I have to have a corner pantry because the bonus room stairs turn and cut into that corner of the kitchen. Without a pantry you would see the slope of the stairs above, if that makes sense.

I did change up the safe room entrance to the bath on this layout, but the layout doesn't work for that bathroom doing that. I might just have to have the entry of the safe room off the garage to make the design work better.

I also wanted to have the last 36" of countertop closest to the living room as a desk where the kids can do homework, but that further limits the work area.

I didn't read your other thread, and I can't add any more to buehl's and Jillius' informative and detailed posts, but I'll throw you a twist. How much time do you spend eating in the DR, compared to time prepping and cooking in the kitchen? I switched the kitchen and DR, moved the exterior door into the corner of the LR, and made the new kitchen window larger. I included a peninsula rather than an island, and put the MW on a shelf next to the fridge. I know the U has two blind corners, and the DW is close to one of those (which is against the NKBA recommendation of 21" from a corner), but it's a nice work space with a protected cooking zone, and room for a secondary prep space on the peninsula. Dishes could be unloaded to drawers under the MW. If the fridge is not CD, it could be recessed into the two closets behind it, for a built-in look.

The pantry, and much storage, is still in the area beside the stairs, but I made it deeper to accommodate a reach-in pantry, serving area, and access to the under-stairs storage area and the safe room. The door to the 'second pantry' could be made to look like the other one, except it should open in, in case it were to be blocked from opening to the outside, by debris.

In addition to the storage in the pantry wall, you could have shallow storage along the bottom wall, using stud bays, and incorporating shallow niches for artwork.

You might have already considered--and rejected--this layout, if you'd rather be more connected to the living area than the view to the outdoors.

ETA, also didn't see the last post, about the turn in the stairs, so I don't know if my plan can be adapted. Could the kids do their homework on the peninsula, under a parent's watchful gaze? ;)

Could the stairs go straight up so that the sloped underside extends into the garage instead of making the 90 degree turn? You'd have to figure out the details to see how much this would impede head room in the garage. If you did that you would also be able to set up an under-the-stair storage closet accessed from the garage.

With regard to the intrusion of the stairs into the current kitchen area, I don't think a corner pantry is the only way to deal with that. It's not the end of the world just to drywall the bottom of the stairs and just see it:

You could also just move the stairs:

There are some real bonuses to this:

• Safe room is more easily/readily accessible when the family needs to get to the safe room.
• The fourth bedroom is no longer a weird shape and has better closet space.
• No room is compromised by the stairs.
• You could add a door directly from the garage to this new back hallway, which would certainly be nice when you're bringing in groceries. It'd be a much less cumbersome route to the kitchen from the garage than the current set-up through the laundry room.
• Exterior walls in the kitchen

Laundry Room...you have family and close friends coming in through the Laundry Room. I don't know about you, but I would not want the first thing family and close friends see when they enter my home to be dirty laundry (or even clean!) I don't like doming into someone's home and seeing their dirty laundry either - I don't care how close a friend or family that person is!

A Mudroom is fine, and I heartily agree with, but not the Laundry Room. If there's any way you can at least put a wall & door that can be closed b/w them, I strongly suggest you do so.

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Desks in kitchens...are clutter magnets and become dumping grounds for everything no one immediately knows what to do with, so I recommend not putting a desk in the Kitchen. In fact most people who have one say it's the first thing they want to get rid of when they remodel!

First, I recommend putting in a Message/Command Center near the Mudroom where the family enters. This is where keys, the family calendar, notes from school (with a way to break out by child), mail (with some kind of sorting system), purses, cell phones & chargers, answering machine (if you have a landline), directories, etc., would go. By placing it in or near the Mudroom, it will be the first place someone encounters to drop mail, etc., and it will be far less likely mail and other items will end up cluttering the rest of the house. You can also check the family calendar when entering/leaving the house, be reminded of school notes, see notes someone left for you, see if you have phone messages, drop your keys when you get home and pick them up as you walk out the door, etc. These are all things most of us need to see/be reminded of when entering and/or leaving home. It becomes more important when your children reach school-age, as you probably are finding out now with the 7-year old (and possibly 5-year old). Think what it will be like when all four are in school!

Next, see if you can create a "homework/study" nook where each child can have their own space (to avoid fights), preferably, with some space b/w them (again, to avoid fights!). You want it to be somewhere fairly public so you can see what they're doing when young and to encourage them to use their computer in that space. I know that many people allow their children to use the computer in their bedrooms, but that can lead to unwanted consequences such as children accessing things they should not be. Yes, with the proliferation of smart phones in the pre-teen and teen age group (and in some cases even younger) it can be difficult to monitor what your children are doing online, but don't make it any easier for them! There is such a rise in porn, cyberbullying, etc., in part b/c parents have lost the ability (or desire) to easily monitor what their under age children are doing. [Sorry - I just hit a tender spot - I've had friends who have had their children bullied online (and resulted in one suicide) and who have had their sons get involved in pornography when using their laptops in their bedrooms, so I'm probably more sensitive to it than most. Off my soapbox!]

Here are some thoughts:

This is just a general idea. E.g., the Closet & Message Center could be switched, if you prefer.

I like Jillius' general ideas. I'd probably tweak the Kitchen a bit (don't I always?!), but it's a nice change to the overall configuration - it also puts the Tornado Shelter/ Safe Room access back inside the house like you'd prefer. It's still, though, a long way from the other three bedrooms - especially as a Safe Room in the case of intruders (it's probably fine for a Tornado Shelter - unless you don't hear the warning until it's right on top of you - but even w/o the warning a tornado is loud! We had one go through our backyard 2 or 3 years ago - and the warning didn't come over our phones or computer until after it passed! We don't live in what's normally tornado country (Maryland), so it was a shock to us!)

I apologize I have not responding more to all your comments. There is a lot of detail and suggestions to digest and review. I've printed off the suggestions last night and need to sit down with my better half to get her thoughts. Thank you to everyone that took time out of your day to respond and provide sketches. There are many great ideas that I plan to implement into our design.