I'd go with the first plan. I like the larger and continuous prep space on both sides of the sink. Without a sink on the island, it might make prep more difficult. Also, the frig seems to face the dining room in the 2nd plan; is that right? I think it would be a nicer view from the dining room to see the counter rather than the frig. It isn't redundant to have eating space in the kitchen and dining room. Before our renovation, we had a tiny eat-in space in the kitchen. When our kids got bigger, they outgrew the small kitchen area and we had to eat meals in the dining room. Not convenient! When we added onto our kitchen, we made a larger eat-in space that not only accommodates family meals but also some company meals. If you can feed the kids at the countertop, you'll be able to continue to cook while feeding them. That works well for me.

Can't thank you guys enough for all your advice. This is awesome. Ok, a little bit about the house: it's a foreclosure. We are renovating it from top to bottom using a rehab loan, which means we really need to do as much as we can all at once. Funky, it is over a crawl space. I didn't realize it wasn't that costly to move electricity/plumbing. That's great to know! Would you guys have a better layout to suggest given that we can possibly move that all around? What annoys me too is that window, which is smack in the middle of where the old kitchen used to be, but which is obviously weirdly off to the right in the new layout. That's why we wanted to widen the window, but we also considered adding in another window on the other side (symmetrically). We sort of nixed that idea thinking it might be too costly, but maybe we'll re-visit? To answer your other question, yes, you can access the dining room both from that opening off of the kitchen but also from the family room via french doors. The bottom left corner: the kitchen is a rectangle with the bottom left 90 degree angle removed. So there's space there, but if we extended it more, it would feel like it was going into the family room. Just occurred to me that I should post some pictures of the space! They're not great, but i'm linking them. Maybe they will help make sense of the space. http://imgur.com/IZ3lkHI http://imgur.com/b6Lf6p7 http://imgur.com/r6vUf4V http://imgur.com/E3DQMNa Oh, also, we weren't envisioning using the island for seating - just extra prep/counter space and cabinets. Not sure if that matters...? Now I'm rethinking that, though. I didn't think we had enough room for seating.

We just did this! Everyone said it could not be done. Everyone said "why do you want your island to move?" Everyone said "Don't do that otherwise you can't have power (electricity) in the island." Everyone said "it will be too heavy for casters." Guess what? We did it and we LOVED it. In fact our contractor fought us on it and then after we forced him to do it, he admitted it was a great idea and he was going to recommend it to others. We have wine racks on one side with stools and plenty of storage on the other side - 2 cabinets, 2 top drawers and 2 deep pot drawers. It was the best thing we ever did, being able to move the island if we had to is key. Plus we don't need power in it as we have plenty of outlets elsewhere. The only hiccup was finding casters that were strong enough - because the island is 70x40 and with the granite it is very heavy. Home Depot doesn't really have the right size/weight so we had to order casters online.

Dear Rosebloom2, Having not interviewed you I have no idea what you’re trying to accomplish. I have reviewed your kitchen design with this in mind. A kitchen’s purpose is to provide food and beverage service. If you design your kitchen well it should last 50 years and remain current and valuable regardless of changes in design trends. Being a simple machine with the only moving part being whoever is working in it. It should perform its purpose as efficiently as possible and look great while doing it forever (50 years). I believe you should buy your kitchen once, use it, enjoy it, and reap the benefits of owning a kitchen that doesn’t need to be replaced in 8 to 12 years when your appliances start to fail. If it’s designed to meet the latest trendy, new, and wow, and most are. The Impact You Expect your kitchen project to have could be extremely short lived. And you’ll quickly find you own a kitchen much like the one you so desperately wanted to replace. My Review: You have no pantry (could be a huge problem). Having all the mass (weight) of the refrigerator and broom closet on the one short wall makes your kitchen composition unbalanced (lopsided). Having the broom closet doors open to the left make the sides of those cabinets, in context, look out of place adjacent to your refrigerator enclosure. The inside corner wall cabinet is a waste (in my opinion). Sure you can fill it with lots of stuff but you can’t reach the back of that cabinet from the bottom shelf of it, and as you go higher it gets even less accessible. You could install a wall lazy susan but the results aren’t great because it leaves a lot of cabinet space unusable. What is in the front you see and what is behind that consider it lost because you’ll have to take everything in front out to get to it. continued....