Neither image came up like I hoped it would, but the second link didn't work at all so I'll try it again. I also wanted to say thank you in advance for any ideas or input and if anyone has any questions, I will be happy to answer. I have a lot more thoughts and specifications, I just don't want to make this so long that no one will read it.

Can you also take a few photos of the dining room and kitchen/laundry as they are now. I'm asking because as an old house lover, there's a fine line to get something functional.

Would you consider a stackable WD behind closed doors in the kitchen area and opening up that mudroom/laundry are to the kitchen?

Thank you cpartist, for looking, and yes, of course I'll get some pictures. Because it's been torn apart already and is quite frightening, I'll try to find some old pictures first, but if I can't find any, I will take some.

Yes to the stackable WD, if it will help the kitchen.

Brohe, might I suggest you download the Ikea kitchen design software and use that to play around with your design: you simply plug in all your dimensions, doors & windows, etc, and then slot in cabinets, appliances, and so on. It's very easy and simple to navigate (hey, it's fun too!), and then you'll get some idea of traffic flow, viewscapes, etc, because you can float around it in 3D as well as 2D.

Even if you don't like Ikea cabinets, the sizes are pretty much standard, with so many options, and then you can take your design to a couple of pros for further tweaking.

You can now also add living room furniture, office furniture, dining room furniture, etc, which is great if you're planning a great room, etc.

Thank you summery, I'll definitely try it. With the amount of money we have to work with, I will be using Ikea and/or building everything myself.

cpartist, I took some photos but be warned, this is in full demo. mode. I really wanted to see what was original to the house and what wasn't before I decided anything.

Here's an idea with uppers only in the niche and for the MW. I have a corner cab next to the range, on the DR side corner is void.

I love your china cabinet in the dining room. I love the overall look of your house. How lucky to have such a gem. I'm going to try and play tomorrow evening with your plan.

Can the fireplace be unblocked on the kitchen side? Would you want it to be?

sena01, Wow! How did you do that so fast? I enjoyed seeing your summer house kitchen photographs. You have a gift for working with unusual spaces and for organizing. Thank you so much for taking the time to work on mine! I love the amount of shallow shelving you put in - I haven't been able to get that much in my attempts. Just looking at it, I don't think the refrigerator will go there and leave enough access for the doorway, but I will wheel it over there and try it as soon as I get a chance. The swinging door has 6 1/2" from the wall to the frame on that side and 4" on the other. So it could be moved that 4" and possibly more, but there is only 4 1/2" more before I hit brick and I still don't think that would be enough since our refrigerator is 29" deep. Plus, I have a feeling that trying to move that door would go horribly wrong. Thanks again for your help. Oh, I love the views you gave me!

You're losing a window (current exterior door) but could this work with the swinging door?

cpartist, thank you, I love it too, most of the time. Right now it's making me nuts. I have kept any added woodwork quite plain, trying to match or stay in tune with what I thought was original, but over the past two weeks, have found evidence that every door and window in the kitchen once had a more decorative top piece that has removed.

By unblocked, do you mean removing the wood-framing around it or the bricks that have been laid in the firebox? Thank you for your time.

Your space reminds me of my house, though yours is bigger. This is what my KD came up with, in case it sparks some ideas. Note laundry area in top left corner.

I'm not sure I understand how much of the built-in section is usable, so
the end cabinet/counter (red outline) can be omitted to provide access. The window is off-center, but the faucet is centered on the window to disguise that fact. Depending on the end cabinet size, the sink and DW can be adjusted to the right (if you can use a cabinet there).

The
short red arrows indicate deflectors for the register--the pantry/broom
cabinet can be built over a frame to allow air flow. The tall pantry in the utility area could be base and upper, if you need more laundry counter (or could be computer/homework station).

I changed the swing
of the entry door, and added shallow storage on that wall--the depth
depends on the swinging door and trim.

(My Paint program doesn't do
diagonal boxes, so excuse the wonky corner range.)

I removed part of the dividing wall in the above plan (forgot to remove the door), but it could be kept, with a sliding door if you want the view blocked. The pantry/homework station would be narrower--not much space for a computer, unless you use a laptop and keep it on a shelf above (with the cookbooks?):

(I just realized I have your washer and dryer backwards--I have them arranged in the same order as mine :).

Plan with a door from the laundry room to the future deck:

I like bneje's plan but would not sacrifice the hutch. People will pay through the nose for old details like that hutch and those of us who are old house lovers would live with slightly less functional to have the beautiful old elements of a house. Hard to explain to those who aren't old house lovers. :)

Brohe, I was asking about the brick in the firebox.

I don't have the design chops other posters do, but I would look seriously at benjesbride's suggestion about the all fridge/all freezer duo as an alternative to your chest freezer. We put the Frigidaire Pro pair in our recently remodeled kitchen. With the same issue you have, i.e. lots of GF flours to store in the freezer, I've found it a huge improvement. I can see and reach everything easily, have room for the flour and other things besides. Woohoo! Before my freezer was all GF flours and not much else beyond the odd bag of frozen peas.

The Frigidaire Pro models are reasonably priced, but they're not as well built as the pricier versions. They look great in the room. We'll see how they hold up. They're also not built in, if that matters to you.

Good luck with your design. It's so fun to watch it evolve.

My thought was not to hide the w/d behind a wall and make the room smaller but to hide the back wall behind cabinets, including the W/D.

I wanted to expose the fireplace but instead, how about using it as the backsplash for the range?

I would put a drawer microwave in the island and you can have drawers for dishes and glassware.

Kitchen Landenberg, PA · More Info

I like CP's suggestion. As a bonus, you might be able to put an exterior door between the water heater closet and the broom closet/fridge for a more direct route to the new deck.

sena01, from the timing on it, I must have overlooked your second post earlier. I liked your first configuration better, but this seems to flow better as far as foot traffic. I still haven't had a chance to roll it over there and find out for sure; I'm trying to wait until everyone's out of the house for a bit, starting to get comments about blocking off the kitchen so much.

caligirl5, the spaces are very similar and thank you! Are you building yours yet or did you decide on a different plan? This is very helpful - thanks again!

Brohe, if you're interested in my idea, I like the idea of doing the fridge/freezer columns. I would still put the freezer on the back wall, but that would give you more storage/pantry space on the back wall since the columns aren't as long. Here is how I'd rearrange the back wall if you did that.

Also one of the main reasons I'd want to make both spaces one large room is to allow the light from the windows in the back area into the kitchen area. It will help the whole area have more light.

If you consider the Frigidaire Pro twins, one of their drawbacks is that the doors are not reversible. The freezer opens on a left hinge, the fridge on a right hinge. In CP's plan above, I would want a left hinge fridge.

Hi Brohe, that is the latest plan, I'm working on budget and finding a GC so haven't put it in action yet.

I considered a plan with a small laundry/mudroom area at the back door with a U-shaped kitchen (closer to your existing layout). I'd love a dedicated laundry room/closet but decided to keep it in the kitchen due to the light as cpartist mentioned; also my house is only 1020 sqft so hard to divide up the space into more rooms.

I love cpartist's plan. I don't know how it works with the
built-in--if shelves are too far to reach. The tall pantry on the left would
need to be just a base cabinet for access to the electrical panel, if
that's where it's located.

The flow is excellent--my only concern would be the
chest freezer. My parents had a 6' chest freezer when I was a kid, and
it was not an attractive feature--it was banished to the utility room. Having the freezer in the kitchen would be very convenient for
you, so the all fridge/all freezer option sounds good. If the hinge is on the wrong side on the fridge, and mostly what you store is flour, can the flour be held in the coldest temp possible in a fridge? You could have two standard fridges with bottom freezer--one in the prep area and one on the back wall.

I'm overwhelmed, thank you to everyone who has taken time to work on this! I am trying to catch up, but not doing so great, so I'll take one thing at a time. mama goose, I uncovered a bit more of the built-in and took more pictures to explain what I'm not doing well with words. (I really need to learn how to use a magic drawing thing like you do- it's fantastic)

mama goose - the shallow shelves you put on the south west wall would work well. When I took the uppers down I stacked them there and was surprised at how much would fit there. Everytime I look at your plans I see something new, so I'm grabbing any extra time I can to study them. Thank you again for your time and expertise.

benjesbride, Thank you so much for drawing up plans! I'm blown away - I love that you could fit a built in seating/ eating area - and even took the time to post the specs! That gives me something to reference over and over. I also love the island with room to work on. I do tend to spread out and roll doughs for pies and pizza with flours everywhere and was worried about how to do that on a counter against a wall. You bet I considered the standing refrigerator/ freezer set, but when I started to look at them, the price jump made me ill. I mean, I would like to keep food cold in a stylish way, but the prices were impossible for us, which is part of the reason I haven't been able to work out a decent plan for this kitchen. I will make another effort to research what is available because frankly, when I saw something over $10,000 I was personally offended and quit looking. I'll start with the one you pictured, which looks like it might be larger than my first house.

Thanks again for the great plans, it takes me a couple of days to really study and think about everything. Oh, and my husband already bought a tankless water heater, which is what got me in a panic to figure out where everything should go for a cohesive design because prior experience has taught me that he will put it in a very convenient place to put it that will be always visible and annoying (to me, not to him, bless his heart.)

cpartist, I love your idea for opening the whole room. I think letting more light in will work with the higher than average ceilings to make this space really, really nice. I agree about the washer and dryer, too, but I have to really think about being able to keep things in a way that is okay without being able to shut a door and hide it all. I need to sleep, thank you so much for giving me so many great things to consider!

algeasea, I can't thank you enough for speaking up on this! It's really, really good to hear someone's actual experience on how something works. I guess that because I have all my GF flours in large jars and labeled on the tops, I found it difficult to picture a stand up freezer working for me. And yes, those frozen peas work well on twisted ankles which is why they are still tucked in my freezer too! Part of the reason I'm tired now is that I woke in the middle of the night remembering the stash of frozen GF cupcakes was gone and I had to make some more before I could take my daughter to a birthday party today.

I did not think a different freezer was remotely possible for us, so thank you for telling me about yours. Three others have brought it up also, so I will get on the research train again. (and I did catch a glimpse of what you said about the hinges, great info. - thank you)

I was going to suggest tankless. It's small and can be hidden so now you have more cabinet space. With the tankless which hangs on a wall, it will give you more cabinet room to put laundry baskets of stuff waiting to be washed. You can build a wood covering for the freezer and put it under the window and move the w/d to the right and put them in full closets! That will give you room to hang clothes above and more room to sort clothes.

Can your tankless water heater be mounted outside?

I've been quiet but busy and wanted to thank everyone again for the floor plans. algeasea, my husband said some tankless heaters can be mounted outside, but not the one he bought. I have spent countless hours trying to research refrigerators and freezers and don't feel that I have gotten very far. Same with ranges - but at least I have been able to channel some of that frustration into demolition (which has uncovered some old termite and water damage.) I have followed cpartist's advice in another thread and sat in the kitchen with all these plans and tried to picture how they would work. Sena01, I moved all that junk off the wall so I could try the refrigerator over there, then realized the water hook-up for the ice-maker was still attached, so still working on it. benjesbride, I have tried to open up to losing the built-ins, but just can't bring myself to do it. cpartist, the bricks could probably be taken out, and I would love to do it, but the fireplaces haven't been used in years and the tops are actually now taken down to below roof level. Plus, other nasty surprises keep knocking that as a project lower on the list. mama goose, I did some research on how cold the GF flours need to be kept, and while a lot need to be in the freezer, some of the starchier ones would be fine in the refrigerator, and some in the cupboard. I'm glad you asked because I threw them all in the same place to make things easier at the time, and any less freezer space used will help me get closer to getting rid of the chest, which I agree is ugly and a space hog. Caligirl5 , I'm going round and round with the same problem of wanting to separate the laundry but not wanting to sacrifice the extra light and space. cpartist posted some photos of people that handled it well.

Has anyone done a study on the emotional stages of kitchen renovation? So far mine have been (sticker) shock, confusion, frustration, panic, anger, and depression.

Just to chime in that I think cpartist's plan to open up the whole space could work really well. A friend has her washer/dryer behind cabinets off her kitchen and it looks great / you wouldn't know they were there.

As for the freezer, we have a small upright freezer and will probably upgrade it to a full size at some point, and I do think that would really help your space. Would you have anywhere to store the chest freezer in the meantime if you need some time to save for it?

And we have a celiac as well, so I feel you on the last minute GF cupcake run. We've bought emergency peanut butter cups on more than one occasion for just that reason.

Has anyone done a study on the emotional stages of kitchen renovation? So far mine have been (sticker) shock, confusion, frustration, panic, anger, and depression.

I think you've managed all the stages. LOL. Just think of it like pregnancy. At the end it will be worth it. (At least until the teen years, but that's another story.)

BTW: I hear you on the brick. Maybe you can remove the brick and use it somewhere else. Maybe in the garden?

BTW: Please don't forget to come back and post photos.