I've taken a lot of cr@p for doing what you're wanting to do. My scale is a bit smaller though. See the unusual spot in the island? That's where my banquette will go. A bench against the island seating two with a half circle-ish shaped pedestal table and two chairs. We had a banquette for our kitchen table in the old space and I knew I wanted to work in a kitchen table spot in the new kitchen. I couldn't make a space large enough on the perimeter for a table during our whole house reno so got a crazy burr in my bonnet to inset the banquette in the island. Many here think I'm nuts, and I think one of the reasons I haven't finished the area 14 months later is because I am doubting my vision now. DH works for a restaurant supply company so has a custom booth maker ready to build this for us. I told Marcolo if it didn't work after it was done, I would just never post a pic and would live in shame forever. We'll see......

Wow, you have found the most beautiful fabrics in existence in those colors. This is what I would do: 1) Pick one of the fabrics that somehow brings in the color of your beautiful floor (along with the blues and yellows) 2) Put that fabric on the back of the banquette. 3) Put a solid colored vinyl / leather on the banquette bottom (this is what I did on my banquette - fabric on back, solid leather look vinyl on the bottom.) That way, people can slide around on it easier, it won't grab your dress / skirt bottom like fabric will when you slide, and clean ups are a breeze. Stuff tends to drop horizontally... This is mine from > 10 years ago. I'm very glad I put vinyl on the bottom because any fabric would have long since worn out. The Raymond Waites fabric along the back has held up fine. You might need to turn up the brightness on your monitor for this one. But I like the darker picture because it includes the stagecoach blinds at the top behind the light. I was trying for a Texas country look. The only disaster has been to the table finish. Someone left a frozen turkey in a grocery bag on top of the table for maybe an hour. Now there are a spiderweb of hairline cracks inside the finish radiating out from where Mr. Tom the Turkey rested.. It's still the favorite hang out place in the house.

That's a lot of knees all squished in with the table supports! Also, I used to have an octagonal table like that, and you really couldn't seat people comfortably for meals on the corners. If you think of the banquette as kid seating, you can squeeze more of them in, but they're going to grow. Given the size of the bow, however, you're probably occupying the least amount of floor space that way. One thing you can do to maximize it is to have the banquette curved, rather than following the angles of the bow. You can squeeze more kids in that way. :) You could do a combo too, with the cushion support and cushion curved but the base angled. That might get you four on the banquette, or even five if they're little and don't have HE TOUCHED ME problems. Also, you could extend the end of the banquette all the way to the door on the left, even though it wouldn't be symmetrical. So...how formal is your dining room? Is it a proper room, or one of those little ones that hold six people that they throw in to be able to advertise that it's a dining room? Because, especially when your folks are over, it might be a lot easier just serving in there. Perhaps a better alternative (though I'm not in a position to figure out the exact measures and angles) would be to put in an oval table with leaves and be willing to block the doorways when you put one in for extra seats. You could push it more toward the window if you had chairs there, and pull it out for seating. That seems like a very make-do kind of solution, though. As to the rest of the kitchen, you have a basic L with island, which almost always works. Things are arranged efficiently enough to work fine. For optimum use, I'd shift the sink over toward the fridge, with some room on the end for landing. That would make fridge to sink easier, and get you away from tush to tush between the sink and stove. That's not crucial, and you might prefer the visual symmetry of having them lined up. There's only one thing bugging me about your plan (barring the problem of trying to make eight people comfortable in your window bow): Those supports, or whatever you call them, on either side of a gas stove. That's very confining. I know it's a popular look, but you have to cook in a cave that way, and you can't just set something down by a pot. If you're straining soup, you have to pull a heavy pot around those and over to your bowl. If you have a ladle, you have to put it down on the other side of the uprights. There's no room, except over the heat, to reach the pots in the back to stir, season, etc. But most important, if you have a boil over, a fire, or some similar mishap, you can't just grab the pot and push it off the stove. You have to reach--potentially across another burner--and LIFT the pot out while something bad is happening. Similarly, you don't have side access with a lid, fire extinguisher or box of baking soda. Be really sure that's something you want to live with and cook with, and you've felt what's it's like moving big heavy pots (which I assume you have with regularly feeding eight at a time), and stirring them.

I've never built a banquette, but my kitchen and dining room is exactly like yours, layout and dimensions. We don't have a wall between the DR and LR however, so we've put a buffet server on the long wall between DR and LR. Clearly, you've outgrown your house. My dining room looks so much bigger than yours because I'm not trying to make it do double duty by storing stuff that should be in the kitchen. The open storage is not doing you any favors of making your space look comfortable and peaceful at dinnertime. Rather than built-ins, consider a hutch or buffet server with some closed storage that you can take with you when you move. Simplify your stuff, and I guarantee you'll add to the function, and you'll feel much more relaxed. There's a principle of elementary education that says if the classroom is disorganized and chaotic, the students will be too. Besides whether a banquette is doable, does it make sense for future buyers? I would ask a realtor before I went any further. I don't like the idea of the banquette against a peninsula with a sink. My counter extends 19" beyond my sink, and I get splash almost to the edge. Seating--we have a 36" x 54" table--a little narrower than most rectangular tables. We put 4 chairs on the long sides. I find that arrangement more roomy than a chair at each end. Extensions pull out from under the table on the short ends for guests. Mine is positioned with the long side along the peninsula, but you could turn yours the other way.