I am going to try to address the last few comments and questions comprehensively. Prep sink: I have thought about swapping the sink and trash like a few people have recommended, but feel the corner is probably the best placement for me, with the faucet in the back corner. Having it in the corner allows for 30" of work surface to the left of the sink on the short end of the island and 36" between the sink and setting area on the long side of the island. If I switch the sink and trash, then I just have 18" on each side. Trash: I think it makes sense to keep the trash and recycling on the north side of the island, near the prep sink, since a lot of recyclable packaging will be coming from the pantry, fridge and freezer. I picture rinsing veggies at the sink and then moving them onto a cutting board just to the right of the sink to chop. I am trying to decide if the trash would be more convenient right next to the sink (where I am likely to stand) or if it should move down to the right a little more. So, should it be sink, trash, storage, seating or sink, storage trash, seating? I will need a second small trash can near the clean up sink and DW to scrape plates off. I am still trying to figure out how to line up the lowers on that wall. Pantry: Our last house had a 17" wide pantry cabinet with ROTS in the kitchen, then a nearby laundry room with 8' long of 18" deep shelving, 5 shelves high with the highest at about 6'. I used maybe 4' of the 18" deep shelves for cans and bags and boxes of food. The rest of the shelving held overflow pots and pans, picnic basket, Costco paper towel and TP purchases and random house hold items. I guess that is why I figured that having a 4' wide pantry with 18" deep shelves (plus extra storage behind the doors) plus the 24" pantry with ROTS would suit our needs well. I must admit the primary reason for replacing the 24" wine tower with a 24" tall pantry cabinet was to maintain symmetry with the 24" oven cabinet at the other end of the wall. 30" on each side of the range was what we had at the last house and it worked well. 24" was too small, but I think 30" will be plenty. I bought a steam oven on clearance, so I will have two 24" ovens to place. I am debating between stacking them together in one cabinet and having the other deep cabinet be pure pantry, or putting one oven at about counter height in each tower, with storage above and below. We have lots of wall cabinets in our garage where we store the huge packages of paper towels, TP, diapers, wipes, etc from Costco, with just small amounts going into the house. We considered a walk-in pantry like the architect drew, but you lose a lot of storage space in the middle of the walk-in. We plan to do the reach-in pantry from the kitchen side, with an 18-20" deep hall closet immediately behind (pretty easily accessible from kitchen). The 9'8" hall closet will have a few feet of shelves for linens, shelves for cleaning products and paper products, shelves for games, and standing room for the vacuum, steam mop, ironing board, etc. There will be a 26" deep x 8' wide coat closet further down the hall. Hopefully this will give us enough storage space in the house. Maybe I can design the kitchen reach-in pantry more like a double door closet (with the doors going down to the floor), rather than like a cabinet. Thank you all for your help in working through these decisions.

Wow, I went out for most of the day, and came back to some wonderful comments! My architect is the one who put the fridges (two 27" subzeros) on one side of the kitchen, and he had them on the other side of the kitchen before. We were waiting until the kitchen designer came on the scene, and we have had one meeting with the kitchen designer. So basically, nothing is set yet, and I did not post a picture because nothing is set (and, wanted to get my architect's permission...). But, you guys have given me some incredibly great things to think about! My pantry right now is very small, on an angle, and quite frustrating. I can barely fit anything in there, so I now store quite a few pantry type things in cabinets. For the most part, having the pantry separate is not a big deal. The location is great when coming home from the store - I will pass by it, can leave things in the pantry on my way to the kitchen. In our current kitchen, we store cereal, canned goods, snacks, pastas, etc in the pantry. We store flour, sugar, carbs in the kitchen either in drawers or cabinets. Given this, I could see it being a pain to deal with breakfast if the pantry is far from the fridge - there would be a lot of back and forth and steps taken to get the cereal out of the pantry, then go get the milk, then put the cereal back in the pantry. Of course, we could solve that by storing cereal in the kitchen. I would say that we use our fridge for meals, not for snacks. Most of the snacks in our house are crackers or fruit, most of which are not in the fridge. I would say that my kids rarely go in the fridge except for meal times, and when they get a drink it is usually water from the tap. If the fridge is on the other side of the kitchen, it is certainly out of the walking path, and that is a good thing. But, the bad thing is that the fridges would be taking up a space where we could have cabinets - and cabinet space is going to be at a premium in this kitchen (we aren't planning on having many, though). SO many great things to think about! Thank you very much. I will post pictures the next time I post!

Detailed Analysis: . General: First, note that I expanded the Kitchen a bit into the Nook space. With the configuration you appear to be forced to stick with, you really need more counter space. You don't want to try to combine the Prep Zone workspace with the Cleanup Zone workspace. It's an exercise in frustration when you try to prepare a meal while dirty dishes are in the same space. So, you really need plenty of space on both sides of the sink. The zones are nicely separated for allowing more than one person to work in the Kitchen at the same time - prepping and/or cooking and/or cleaning up. In addition, you don't want your dirty dishes "front and center" and on public display - so you need to hide them somehow - either behind a wall as in this design, or on the back wall where they're out of the way. Oh, and no one likes to sit at a counter with dirty dishes in their face - prepping OK, b/c you're working there, but not the day's dirty dishes. OK, maybe it's just me, but I find it very distasteful to sit at a counter with the day's dishes in my face. The peninsula is a more useful squared off design (similar to what your DH designer did - that was a good change, btw.) The counters on the bottom wall are 3" deeper than standard - this allows for more and better dish storage as well as enough counter space in front of the uppers - which are a Dish Hutch style and go to the counter. More on that in the "Dish Storage" discussion. The normal kitchen workflow is Refrigerator/food storage --> Sink/Prep Zone --> Range/Oven/MW/Cooking Zone --> Either Serving Zone (table) or Cleanup Zone. While the design doesn't follow the flow perfectly, it's actually pretty good. The cabinet on the peninsula end (left end) is turned 90 degrees. This gives you a better use of space than a corner cabinet. For cabinets - get as many drawer stacks as you can. Drawers are far more useful & functional than stationary shelves or even roll out tray shelves (ROTS). There are a lot of discussions about drawers vs ROTS on the forum; here's one: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2664194/drawers-or-doors-with-pull-outs The landing zone for the refrigerator is either to the right or across the aisle. With French Door refrigerators, landing space across from the refrigerator is usually more useful than next to it. The MW is mounted under the cabinet to the left of the sink. Alternatively, it could be in the corner - just be sure you can open the MW door. Or, you could make the Dish Hutch shorter (say, only 27" wide) and gain a bit of space to fit the MW in the corner. I put in a wider aisle b/w the peninsula and the range wall b/c the Cooking Zone and range are not only unprotected, but in the middle of a busy aisle. By making that aisle wider, it will allow people to swing around farther into the Kitchen and farther away from the range. Will they do it? I don't know, but at least the option is there. -- However, It doesn't address the issue of trying to cross a busy aisle with a pot of boiling water from the range to the sink for draining. Without changing the range's location -or- the location of the peninsula and the DR doorway, I'm not sure there's much to do to fix that. It's unfortunate as I think the cost would be relatively inexpensive (as opposed to changing later if you find it's an issue) and well worth it at this point – no walls are up yet, just frames. -- Do you have young children? That would be the biggest hazard – children (or pets) running around underfoot and you trying to dodge them without spilling the boiling water on them or you. I put in a 9" utility cabinet b/w the refrigerator and wall for a couple of reasons -- First, it pretty much guarantees you'll have enough room to open the refrigerator doors fully -- Second, it pushes the refrigerator out of the somewhat narrow aisle in front of the DR doorway. When the refrigerator is open, the person opening the refrigerator and the refrigerator door will block that aisle. It should only be for a short time, but it will block it. (I have a similar pinch point in my Kitchen - b/w the refrigerator and the end of one of my peninsulas.) -- Oh, and a third - it pushes the refrigerator into the Kitchen more it's even easier to access it from the Prep Zone. OK, it's just 9", but that's 9" closer! :-) Dish Storage: The dishes are stored in a Dish Hutch arrangement. The upper cabinet goes to the counter and gives you a lot of extra storage - something that I think you may need in this Kitchen. (It's also a nice look.) The upper cabinet is 39" wide x 15" deep - the extra depth will allow you to store wider dinner planes, platters, etc. Note that when a cabinet is stated as 12" deep, that is the total depth - including the back wall and the front frame. The wall & frame can shorten the depth by up to 1.5" - leaving you with a cabinet that's really only 10.5" deep. Adding 3" to the depth gives you 13.5" of usable depth. (If you have frameless cabinets, you only lose the thickness of the back wall since there is no face frame in frameless cabinets.) The 27" wide base cabinet below it is 27" deep - also adding 3" of additional storage. The location of the dishes will help keep people getting a dish or setting the table out of the Prep and Cooking Zones. It also puts them next to the DW and next to the DR. It's also a direct shot from the Nook to the dishes w/o wandering into the Prep Zone. Prep Zone: Utilizing the peninsula, the Prep Zone has a nice expanse of counter space - 27" immediately adjacent to the sink and another 30+ inches on the peninsula. The trash pullout is in the Prep Zone for easy access during prepping (prepping and cooking generate the most trash & recyclables than cleaning up - and for a much longer period of time.) When prepping on the peninsula, you are a bit closer to the range, which will help when you're carrying prepped food across the Kitchen to the range/Cooking Zone. Cooking Zone: The Cooking Zone contains the range and surrounding landing space. Prep work will (should) be done near a water source, so you will be prepping next to the sink across the aisle. However, you do need space for emergency landing space as well as staging food/ingredients for placing on the top of the range or in the oven. You also need landing space nearby when taking things out of the oven Post & Pans can be stored in the drawers next to the range. I would have like to include the MW, but there really isn't enough room on that wall. Cleanup Zone: I think I've covered most of the Cleanup Zone comments throughout the above discussions. To summarize, the Cleanup Zone is separated from the Prep and Cooking Zones and it's near the dish storage. .

Her big splurge, the BlueStar platinum 48... I love our Bluestar. It's an amazing range. Would absolutely buy it again in a heart beat. But a 48" Platinum would be unlikely to be anything I'd normally recommend. That model is all about looks and not really that great for functionality. I understand about splurging. But if I spend all that money, I'd want it to actually be something I like to use. The 25kBTU Platinum burners are fun (we have one of those in our range), but the 22kBTU burners of the RNB are very similar; if this is the only reason for the Platinum, then it doesn't really justify the much higher cost. The griddle on the RNB is IMHO a better design. Can't comment on the grill, but I personally don't think an in-door grill is a great option anyway. The fancy oven burners in the Platinum are great for faster pre-heating, but are overall a more questionable design than the more traditional burners in the RNB. A 48" range is much less ergonomic than a rangetop plus wall ovens. The venting requirements for a 48" range are crazy. You need somewhere on the order of 2000 CFM, which means a loud expensive vent hood, a very complex make-up-air system, and no upper cabinets. Unlike a 30" range, a 48" range doesn't have spacers in-between the burners. So, you will need to put the grill or griddle in the center between the burners. Otherwise, your burners are too close together and you can't ever use big pots. But with the grill/griddle in the center, you have to always walk a long distance left-to-right when using more than one pot. Alternatively, you can decide for eight burners and no grill/griddle, but I have yet to hear of anybody who can actually keep all eight burners in active use. Again, a more reasonably sized rangetop and wall ovens work better; the wall ovens can be used for simmering much more evenly than any hobs. We have four hobs and three ovens in our kitchen. I use all three ovens every so often. But I can't remember the last time I used more than two hobs. I wouldn't have any idea what to do with eight of them.