Gardenpixie, I just looked at your layout and actually your island is basically in the same place as mine. My cooktop is where your sink is. Where your patio doors are is where I enter my kitchen area. That is my doorway that I reduced from 6ft. 10 in. to 5 ft. to make my kitchen a little wider. Where you are putting your pantry wall cabinets I have a bumped out sitting area. Any way, I think you will like the new layout but maybe you should make you're sink dishwasher aisle a couple inches wider since you will do more work on that side of the kitchen/ island than the pantry side. I think you will like having all the drawers in your island. I have drawers across the aisle from my dishwasher and it's great to have one of those drawers for dishes. Makes loading and unloading so easy. Today I copied breezy girls idea for a spice storage drawer and I really like it. Just wait til you start using those drawers, you will wonder what you did without them So good luck on your kitchen remodel.

The backsplash and floor look great, but when I look back at your original photos and compare them to the new ones I'm struck by how different the tones look on my monitor; which leads me to be very reluctant to make any advice about color based on what it looks like on a computer. If there's a Benjamin Moore store near you, you can take advantage of a free sample coupon valid through June 30. (Thank you, GW'er kathec!) It's a good size sample (they gave me a 15.75 oz can) and they'll mix it in any color. That would give you a chance to try one of your leading contenders for free and see how it looks on your wall in your lighting. Here is a link that might be useful: Benjamin Moore Coupon

You don't show the floor plan, view lines, associated areas, which can change everything, but, that little caveat aside, extending your sunny blond flooring sounds very, very good. With the walls and floors blending in a calm, warm whole, and the whole set off by pops of color, it should be very elegant. Your reasons, all of them, for passing on a dark stain, handsome or no, are compelling. The reason to go that way would be if you wanted to create a more dramatic look in your home with big blocks of dark and light. I'm old enough, BTW, to both know how wonderful a home with a sunny, pale honey floor looks and to expect that many of these nice cool, dark floors will inevitably eventually be sanded and refinished in that style. Too beautiful to be anything but classic.

To explain my second sentence about moving the range and hood out of the sight line of the central hall. In the layout shown above, 27" is currently occupied by the two components that are 9" and 18" wide. Assume for a moment that the sink stays, and the lazy susan stays. Assume for a moment that the two components, 9" and 18" wide, get replaced by a single component (e.g. drawers). Then, this statement may be clearer to you now: A size smaller than this total (27") will take up less width than the current two-components, and thereby cause the entire cook zone (hood too) to get moved to the right. This also causes the left hand side cabinet to increase by the same number of inches, if your cabinet run remains the same overall length. When you reduce dimensions in one component it increases dimensions in another component, if the total has to remain the same. You get more useable space if you have large components instead of two smaller ones. In addition to the space, the ergonomics are better not worse. People here in this forum have discussed this, earlier this year. On the left hand side the cabinet run ends many many inches before the wall ends. You could cover more wall and have more counter and more storage. -- it is good to have an all-fridge and an all-freezer, too. -- A small sink of the size you have is good. A big sink can be smaller than shown since you have so much sink volume already available in the small one. If so, the loss of total sink volume is a minor thing. But the gain of space in the other cabinets might be significant. I quote plllog: "What I really see in your plan, however, is a lack of storage space in the kitchen area" =Hth. -- An oval table is the right shape. The island could be longer. Since the island can be seen from almost all angles anyway, there is no compelling reason to end it arbitrarily at the perceived-on-a-layout line that the long hall wall makes, and exactly on that line, to the inch. Now, you might ask how much room is needed behind the chair backs around the oval table. I won't put a specific number on it here because it might then cause a lot of buzz about how much is enough, recommended, necessary, etc. Currently that space is shown as 12' by 15'. Twelve feet is too much. Even if you put a hutch or other furniture on the far wall. In my house I have less than twelve feet, and I have furniture on the far wall. And, nobody has ever had a problem passing others, during fancy meals. Besides, the people serving the plates don't need to pass each other as if they each demanded an aisle equivalent of passing space. And, in your case, you have the two main aisles too, which I don't have in my house. So, your house is far far more open than mine. I think an oval DR table will appear dwarfed and floating in a 12' by 15' space, and that you really should do a layout and 3-d simulation that extends the island overhang. -- I think that with 2 DW's you will need less storage not more. Or the same not more. With 2 DW's, one is holding stuff while the other one is empty or being emptied. You can get that advantage with two dishdrawers because they each operate independently. Please note that today all DW's take plates that are not rinsed previously so there is no need to have an immense total sink volume for dirty stuff that is "on its way to the DW". I think that with 2 fridges you might not need more pots. How you manage meal leftovers is up to you. I never let more than one meal's leftovers get stored. It's a self imposed rule. I have two fridges. I have fewer pots in 2010 and 2011 than I have had in the last 30 years. I got an induction cooktop. -- an undermount sink "can" fit inside any base cabinet because you can groove out some of the cabinet sides to leave space for the sink rim. A sink can also straddle two base cabinets because you can groove out the sides to give space for the sink body. The latter exercise might make some people want to then write a lot about the wood of the cabinet sides. (How much wood, what type, how much id left over after the cut, will this be"enough", would one want to reinforce,,,,....) People don't do this, in this forum. But, within X period of time they might start writing about it and thereby encourage someone to do it and post their final result. I cut two adjacent cabinet sides in order to let my cooktop straddle two cabinets. Nobody whined or opined anything negative. Not the countertop fabricator and installer (they heard about it and saw it). Not GW kitchen forum participants. The same notch/cut/groove/cut idea can be applied to make room for a sink. Yes you may add a piece of steel to reinforce things too... more later if and when. When I stand at my cooktop I can open either drawer underneath while remaining close to the cooktop because each drawer occupies half of the space under the cooktop. This is great for a one-person cooking team, and a bit awkward for a two-person cooking team. But consider this: the big advantage of trash pullouts when they were invented was that they were on the side when you stood at the sink, instead of forcing you to step aside and to Open A Cabinet Door. HOWEVER now that undercounter drawers are proven to be ergonomically better than doors, one may consider a sink straddling two cabinets that contain all-drawers. Hint hint. This is new thinking. -- by moving the cook zone over several inches you will have to rework the wall shelves and cabinets. Do not symmetricize the sink under the window. Let the window be mostly to shine light on a countertop.