Skybird- That is an incredible photo, it belongs on the front of a Jackson Hole travel brochure. Also, I will not be claiming a rear. J- Dog photos!! How adorable Pablo is! The best kid book I've ever read is entitled "Skippyjon Jones" and its about a siamese cat who keeps pretending he is a chihuahua. Your photo reminded me of it with your Pablocito cavorting around the house in his food tub. Dafygardennut- Your daughters are beautiful (like their mom), they look a lot like you, especially the one on the left. Stevation- The photos on your site are incredible, what are you shooting with? What a handsome family! I'm still waiting (in vain) for a kiddo with my hubby's eyes. I tell him he has sold me a phony bill of goods and he has to make good on his "promises" but he knows my threats are empty. Two kiddos are enough he tries to tell me. Bonnie- You have a beautiful smile and I love your dimple. Digit- I love the curls, the hats, chubby baby legs, buckets of sunflowers and the quickness you removed the photos. Around here, you snooze or you lose! Aliceg8- Chance is adorable and lucky to have you snuggling him in that photo, does he hate the snow?

I'm just going to talk about a coupla things. This is just talk about issues and trade-offs, not criticism. So this is about a half-thought out plan that I made up just so it wasn't critiquing an existing one. I'm drew in detail both cleanup and baking prep. I am showing two blue lines that illustrate routes used with or without a prep sink. The rest of this is long and highly opinionated. Ok. So, let's start with cleanup. We've mostly all said that a 4 foot deep cleanup area is a bit much for "cleaning the clean up area" so this steps it back into the window a foot - yielding a three foot deep space which might be reachable (depending on god, the universe, your height, sink gismos and everything). The other thing it does is create a nice wide aisle around the open dishwasher - when duffers pass through on their way to Doritos or a beer or whatever, the human dishwasher can ignore them. A pass through area with double sided upper cabinets is entirely possible, but you need to put a ledge or a ledge plus a shallow base cabinet in the dining room side for "sit down" space for people getting dishes from the cabinets. I'm having some trouble understanding your friend's criticism about stuff being on the wrong side. With double sided glass fronted wall cabinets, you need to remember that the entire contents will be plainly visible. I find that leads to very few junky places and more order for me. The cabinets are only about 12-13" deep, so its is difficult to think of what would be piled up in front of your plates or soup bowls. Perhaps they were thinking of base cabinets? Food prep (of any sort) has a flow to it. Stuff from the ref usually goes to the sink, unless its a snack - in which case it either moves towards the dishes or the microwave or both! From the sink, or directly from the ref if you belong to my tribe, it travels to the prep counter area to be joined with water, prep tools, pantry stuff and pots or baking pans which are then put on the range or in the oven or the micro. The process may later need to drain something or slide stuff out to cool or be stired frequently. The messy leftovers go to a disposal or trash or compost. The packaging goes to the trash or recycling. The dirty pots and prep tools go to cleanup. So the arrangement of the appliances is important, and the positioning of water is vitally important. So, the cleanup seems good because you don't need to walk much at all - just for putting pots or prep stuff back. Trash isn't going to be optimally positioned (unless you're a garbage disposal person) caused it would need to be under the sink, probably forcing you to keep the under sink door open. Cooking is a little bit freaky. This is mostly because of the relative locations of the ref and the pantry and the prep area. You have one of those places where some of the spacial relations are difficult. Since all of the dry storage is across the hall, it's nice if the ref is closer to it BUT the ref can't be placed directly on the hall wall. It probably won't be able to open completely, leaving you to wrestle with it when you want to clean it. It's also not perhaps the best idea to bury your only ref inside the prep zone as it is the most frequently accessed appliance - particularly by those other folks who live in your house. Adding cabinets between the wall and the ref push the pass through up towards the sink. In every iteration of a corner plan with the sink in the bay - the sink or the dishwasher have an issue. Either the sink is too close to the corner and can only be used from one direction AND/OR the dishwasher is on the wrong side. If we reversed the sink and dw in the sample plan, the sink is better positioned, but the dw is not as it opens in front of the cabinets you like to use for dishes. Unloading becomes a two-step, first to the counter and then the cabinets after you close the door or drawer. In the ones with a corner and the range where the ref are traded, the dishwasher opens between the range and sink potentially causing serious accidents as its possible to turn from the range and trip over the dishwasher. The ref is shown near the sink. You can reach the peninsula counter to sit things down, which mitigates the distance somewhat, but it still might be crazy-making... Is it more crazy making than having people constantly walking behind you? Since the pass-thru moved up closer to the sink, I could put the range where shown. Its got counter on both sides. It won't prevent others from using the sink, altho others can prevent you from sliding over to dump a colander. Adding a prep sink kills the dark blue triangle that goes into the cleanup zone - always a good thing but really good in this example because that pot full of water and pasta can now pretty much always be drained without getting someone to move first. Other crazy stuff: ---- A person needs at least two feet of counter edge. If they are adults, it might feel slightly squished in. ---- The overhang for counter height seating should be at least 15". This isn't for the depth of the stools - its for knees. ---- The peninsula is tempting to hang a wall cabinet, but if you do, the second stool will be kinda difficult to use because the wall cabinet will be in the seated person's face and the last door is guaranteed to hit them in the head! ---- The ref location is hard to plan. There are two kinds of people in this world. The ones who get everything they are going to use out of the ref at once; and then there's my tribe. My tribe kinda fetches this, that and the other thing outta the ref all during the prep and cooking process. People say they can learn to be the other type, but I don't know. ---- Same thing with the views and prep-or-cooking-or cleanup. To me, windows are the most wasted in front of a cleanup area. Not the light wasted, but the views! When I'm doing cleanup, I'm looking at the dishes, not the view. And with dishwashers, I'm not in front of that window for very long. I think windows are more useful at prep or cooking (both!). ---- Also consider the social aspects of any plan. In this plan, you are oriented to the family room, and primarily the family room windows. You'd have a side view of the bay window - a front view would happen while rinsing veg - maybe. When you're cooking or doing cleanup, you'd be turned away from others. In all of the "real" designs, other things happen in your interactions with people and the views. Be sure you end up with the ones you'd like.

Thanks all that commeted so far! This reno wouldnt happen for another few years atleast. I guess I should have been more clear, that this wouldn't be all that I would change in the grand scheme. I’d be changing the cabinets out and taking out that L shaped island completely (there used to be a wall there). The fridge would go next to the range. Where the current fridge is, I’d like to do a smaller rolling island that can be tucked under the cabinet, creating more open floor space. The future sink wall would get a new window that would look out to my backyard and the dishwasher would go next to it on the same wall. The current window looks out to my neighbor and driveway which I don’t enjoy looking at. That’s why I was thinking of trying to salvage the frame/trim for the range hood eventually. Maybe tile it or paint it as part of the backsplash. The former owner (who did a half ass job with the kitchen and bath because they rented it out) used low end-everything and we are slowly re-doing everything, as its starting to fall apart 10 years later. Thankfully they left the oringinal floors, trim and plaster walls intact. Thanks again everyone :)

decoenthusiaste Like I said earlier, the windows are all the same. There is no variation in the window trims. My husband and I built this house and purchased all the windows. They are the same. I think they look different in the photo because some have screens and some don't or possibly the lighting. Yes the center window is in the 2 story foyer. Thank you for the porch ceiling color suggestion. The blue might lighten things up some but the porch faces the south and it gets a lot of sunlight and I have never considered it a dark area. I do like haint blue on porches and would consider if we ever decide to repaint. Right now my priority is new railing and possibly shutters.